STAT

The 2024 class of #STATWunderkinds is here! This year, as in past years, STAT found the unheralded heroes of science and medicine who are blazing new trails as they attempt to answer big questions in their field. The list includes ⬇️ 🥇 Akanksha Thawani, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, University of California, Berkeley 🥇 Kwasi Adu-Berchie, Wyss Institute at Harvard University 🥇 Haleh Alimohamadi, University of California Los Angeles 🥇 Alaina Beauchamp, PhD, MPH, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School 🥇 Carlos E. Bravo Iñiguez MD,PhD, The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health 🥇 Alexander Chern, The Johns Hopkins University 🥇 James Diao, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School 🥇 Erin L. Duffy, USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics 🥇 Sasha Ebrahimi, GSK 🥇 Ramisa Fariha, PhD, Brown University 🥇 Stephanie Hall, University of Michigan 🥇 Margaux Hujoel, Brigham and Women's Hospital 🥇 Divya Jain, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai 🥇 Michael Anne Kyle, University of Pennsylvania 🥇 Guang Lei, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center 🥇 Romain Lopez, Genentech 🥇 Wilfredo Matias, MD MPH, Brigham and Women's Hospital 🥇 Miguel Paredes, Fred Hutch 🥇 Jorge Diego Martin-Rufino, Boston Children's Hospital and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard 🥇 Jon Arizti Sanz, PhD, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard 🥇 Diane Shao, MD, PhD, Boston Children's Hospital 🥇 Mariluz Soula, PhD, Lime Therapeutics 🥇 Yapeng Su, Fred Hutch 🥇 Caitlyn Vlasschaert, Queen's University 🥇 Darshali Vyas, Massachusetts General Hospital 🥇 Sean Yamada-Hunter, Stanford University 🥇 Zachary Zappala, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Learn more about each person's story here: https://trib.al/RQ3A3qR

Margaux Hujoel is a natural problem solver. As a child, she’d pore over a book filled with math problems and concepts from the ancient Greeks and other cultures. Today, as a postdoctoral researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital, she grapples with problems of a different kind: the complex connections between our genetics and our health. Meet one of the selections to the 2024 #STATWunderkinds here: https://trib.al/V3eQrI2

What did the first round of Medicare drug price negotiations look like? Director Meena Seshamani shares her inside view in STAT's First Opinion. "The themes that have guided the implementation to date — being thoughtful, inclusive, transparent, and decisive — continue to drive CMS’s work moving forward," she writes. https://trib.al/4ehJj92

The field of cancer vaccines is popping with new ideas and clinical trials. Here's a list of nine scientists you should pay attention to: 💉 Catherine Wu, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute - She and her colleagues were among the first to create personalized cancer vaccines, publishing a landmark paper in Nature in 2017. 💉 Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, BioNTech SE - The co-founders of BioNTech are overseeing the company's current effort to develop multiple cancer vaccines including personalized vaccines and “shared antigen” vaccines. 💉 Vinod Balachandran, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center - He's leading research on a BioNTech and Genentech vaccine for pancreatic cancer. Early results have already shown promise. 💉 Elizabeth Jaffee, The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine - She's been called a “legendary” force for cancer immunology and has held multiple leadership roles in the space. 💉 Bhardwaj Nina, Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai - The physician scientist is conducting research on an ongoing clinical trial on a vaccine for a type of blood cancer. 💉 Alena Gros Vidal, Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) - She is leading work on the so-called “dark matter” of cancer, or noncanonical antigens in cancer immunotherapy. 💉 Patrick Ott, Melanoma Disease Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute - He developed the personalized peptide cancer vaccine, NeoVax, which contains up to 20 neoantigens derived from the patient’s tumor. 💉 Ryan Sullivan, Mass General Cancer Center - His research in part focuses on understanding which patients benefit the most from cancer vaccines and resistance to certain immunotherapies like checkpoint inhibitors. Read more on the scientists leading the charge: https://trib.al/4TATwzw

Novartis increased its earnings guidance for the third time this year, driven by growing sales of its psoriasis drug Cosentyx. Quarterly sales were up 27%. The cancer drugs Kisqali and Pluvicto, which Novartis is trying to move into additional indications, also performed well. Read more about the company's third quarter success: https://trib.al/cY8OuZn

Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren wants the FTC to scrutinize deals that would allow drug middlemen McKesson, Cardinal Health, and Cencora to also provide cancer care. In August, McKesson agreed to pay $2.5 billion for a 70% stake in the administrative organization that controls Florida Cancer Specialists. A month later, Cardinal Health said it would buy Integrated Oncology Network for $1.1 billion. Last year, Cencora bought a minority stake in OneOncology with private equity firm TPG. The primary way these companies could profit is by handling the practices’ pricey oncology drugs. In Warren’s letter, she said McKesson and Cardinal could mandate these practices to buy their sourced drugs and other products from their wholesale distribution business. This could lock out competing distributors. https://trib.al/Cyz4hJN

A feud between Prime Medicine, Inc. and Tessera Therapeutics has spilled out into public. When Tessera started talking about its programs a couple years ago, the technology looked to some observers eerily similar to prime editing. Prime Medicine is built on prime editing, a technology out of David’s Liu lab at the Broad Institute. Liu has all but publicly accused Tessera of copying his technology. That changed at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cell and Gene Therapy conference in Rome. According to the scientific publication GEN, Prime’s chief scientist Jeremy Duffield walked on stage after Tessera presented and opened his talk by saying “It is great to follow Tessera, because we can see they’re doing prime editing!” Read more about the rivalry here: https://trib.al/c9YgkHa

At #STATSummit, Tony Coles revealed how one politician would not support the Black Economic Alliance, which Coles co-chairs, because it has the word 'Black' in it. Read more from his interview with Matthew Herper here: https://trib.al/4I4W1Xz

Stephanie Hall (Michigan Medicine) is helping to pinpoint the policies that could help new parents get the mental health care they need. Meet one of the selections to the 2024 #STATWunderkinds here: https://trib.al/0TwiYa7

When Chelsea Smith met Jason Martin she knew right away that he was the one — so she refused to get his phone number. That’s because getting married would make Smith ineligible for Social Security benefits and Medicaid. But the possibility of marriage for Smith and Martin could be closer than they think. The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) in Berkeley, Calif., is working on redrafting a national bill to end penalties for people like Smith who receive Social Security Disability Insurance. Watch this video to learn more: https://trib.al/xb2CYCv