As a result, the researchers contend the patents may be unfairly used to preclude competition from companies that may want to market lower-cost generic products. They also suggest antitrust regulators may want to widen a probe into improperly filed patents for asthma inhalers and epinephrine injectors to include drug-and-device combination products for combating diabetes.

A total of 188 patents were examined for 10 combination products that include a delivery device and a medicine known as a GLP-1. Among the products reviewed was Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic. Patents for another Novo Nordisk treatment, Wegovy, were also reviewed since it contains the same key ingredient as Ozempic, even though it is approved only for weight loss.

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Hired someone new and exciting? Promoted a rising star? Finally solved that hard-to-fill spot? Share the news with us, and we’ll share it with others. That’s right. Send us your changes, and we’ll find a home for them. Don’t be shy. Everyone wants to know who is coming and going.

And here is our regular feature in which we highlight a different person each week. This time around, we note that SpliceBio hired Aniz Girach as chief medical officer. Previously, he was chief medical officer at ProQR Therapeutics.

But all work and no play can make for a dull chief medical officer.

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This year’s selection is so deservingly obvious that I won’t fabricate suspense by starting with an honor roll of runners-up. More on those high-achieving folks later. Let’s get right to the main course: David Ricks of Eli Lilly is the runaway, rock star, who-else-could-it-be Best Biopharma CEO of 2023.

What an incredible year it’s been for Ricks and the Lilly executive team who helped him achieve so much. My colleague Matt Herper wrote earlier this year about the “dynamic duo” of Ricks and Chief Scientific Officer Dan Skovronsky.

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Hello from ASH! Writing this Readout from a press room at the annual hematology confab here in San Diego. Today’s edition is chockfull of Vertex content, plus some extras from ASH and elsewhere.

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Good morning, everyone. Damian here with another multibillion-dollar deal, a word on the future of Sanofi, and a setback in one of medicine’s longest-running quests.

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The deal marks the second billion-dollar acquisition by AbbVie in under a week. Facing the prospect of declining sales from two of its best-selling drugs, the company also acquired Immunogen and its ovarian cancer treatment for $10 billion last Thursday.

With the buyout, AbbVie will acquire several clinical-stage molecules for Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, and epilepsy, among other disorders, many of which previously belonged to one of the company’s biggest rivals.

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We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. We discuss why AbbVie is spending $10 billion on a cancer-focused company that spent four decades on the path to its first FDA approval, a deal with implications for biotech in 2023 and for a burgeoning area in oncology. We’ll also talk about the latest news in the life sciences, including safety concerns for CAR-T cancer treatment, the slumping industry job market, and some curious explanations for clinical failures.

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Hello, everyone. Damian here with a rebound for biotech stocks, the potential of Wegovy, and a major change at the FDA.

The need-to-know this morning

• Abbvie said it would acquire ImmunoGen, a maker of cancer drugs, for $10.1 billion. ImmunoGen is being acquired for $31.26 per share, or a 95% premium to its Wednesday closing price. The company markets an antibody-drug conjugate called Elahere used to treat ovarian cancer.

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Under the agreement, AbbVie will pay $31.26 per share in cash for Immunogen, a nearly 100% premium to the company’s recent trading price. Central to the deal, expected to close in the middle of next year, is Elahere, an Immunogen product that won Food and Drug Administration approval for advanced ovarian cancer in 2022.

Elahere is among a surging class of cancer medicines called antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, which are designed to deliver a targeted dose of chemotherapy directly to tumor cells while sparing healthy tissues. AbbVie’s acquisition is the latest multibillion-dollar deal in the space, following Merck’s $22 billion agreement with ADC specialist Daiichi Sankyo and Pfizer’s $43 billion buyout of Seagen earlier this year.

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People who almost certainly had Alzheimer’s were also included in the study, but in this group, a placebo outperformed Cassava’s drug.

The conclusion, of course, is obvious: Simufilam is inactive. It’s an inert compound no more effective than a placebo. Cassava’s assertion that simufilam is showing “disease-modifying activity” falls apart given its study was opened to people who should have been ineligible because they were misdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Whether that was done intentionally or unwittingly isn’t known, but it’s certainly troubling and makes the case for immediate, regulatory intervention even stronger.

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