The Wash­ing­ton Post man­aged to whip up the quick­est in­dus­try con­sen­sus I’ve ever seen that one of its re­porters was pur­vey­ing overblown non­sense with a sto­ry that Pfiz­er was sit­ting on da­ta sug­gest­ing that En­brel could be an ef­fec­tive treat­ment for Alzheimer’s. 

In cov­er­ing that bit of an­ti-Big Phar­ma fan­ta­sy — there are lots of rea­sons to go af­ter phar­ma, but this piece was lu­di­crous — I not­ed com­ments in the sto­ry from some promi­nent peo­ple in the field crit­i­ciz­ing Pfiz­er for not pub­lish­ing the da­ta. I sin­gled out Rudy Tanzi at Har­vard and then ap­plied some added crit­i­cism for the things he’s done to hype — in my opin­ion — high­ly ques­tion­able as­sump­tions. You can see it in the link. 

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has lit­tle love for Big Phar­ma, but there’s at least one new drug that just hit the mar­ket which he is en­am­ored with.

Trump, ev­i­dent­ly, has been read­ing up on J&J’s new an­ti-de­pres­sion drug, Spra­va­to. And the pres­i­dent — who of­ten likes to break out in­to a full-throat­ed at­tack on greedy drug­mak­ers — ap­par­ent­ly en­thused about the ther­a­py in a meet­ing with of­fi­cials of Vet­er­ans Af­fairs, which has long grap­pled with de­pres­sion among vet­er­ans.

One day af­ter the FDA sanc­tioned the ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval of Roche’s lat­est an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate, the Swiss drug­mak­er has un­veiled the new head of its $13 bil­lion di­ag­nos­tics unit.

Roche’s di­ag­nos­tics arm gen­er­at­ed CHF 12.9 bil­lion ($13 bil­lion) in sales last year. It sells a myr­i­ad of tests for blood, HPV, can­cer and di­a­betes and is dri­ven by its cen­tral­ized and point of care so­lu­tions busi­ness. The head of this well-per­form­ing unit — Thomas Schi­neck­er — is be­ing pro­mot­ed to CEO of Roche Di­ag­nos­tics, and will be­gin his tenure from Au­gust 1, the com­pa­ny said on Tues­day.

Sanofi’s board has turned to some­one who’s not French to be its next CEO.

The Paris-based phar­ma gi­ant named No­var­tis phar­ma chief Paul Hud­son — a British phar­ma ex­ec­u­tive with an in­ter­na­tion­al pedi­gree — to the top post as cur­rent CEO Olivi­er Brandi­court heads off to an ear­ly “re­tire­ment.”

In a care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed re­sponse, No­var­tis CEO Vas Narasimhan con­grat­u­lat­ed Hud­son and named Marie-France Tschudin, a Swiss cit­i­zen who’s head­ing up the re­cent­ly ac­quired can­cer group Ad­vanced Ac­cel­er­a­tor Ap­pli­ca­tions, as Hud­son’s re­place­ment. In do­ing so, he im­me­di­ate­ly po­si­tioned Tschudin — who speaks 6 lan­guages — as a top can­di­date for any fu­ture Big Phar­ma CEO open­ing.

There’s a shake­up un­der­way at the high-fly­ing can­cer test­ing start­up Grail which is bring­ing in one of the best known biotech ex­ecs in the in­dus­try.

Thurs­day evening Men­lo Park, CA-based Grail an­nounced that ex-Roche ex­ec Jen­nifer Cook is step­ping down from her post as CEO for fam­i­ly health rea­sons and hand­ing the helm to Hans Bish­op, best known for steer­ing Juno Ther­a­peu­tics to a $9 bil­lion buy­out by Cel­gene.

Af­ter sev­en event­ful years marked by a takeover bid, a turn­around mis­sion and some po­lit­i­cal tur­moil, As­traZeneca might be part­ing ways with its chair­man, Leif Jo­hans­son.

The British drug­mak­er’s board is be­gin­ning to plan Jo­hann­son’s suc­ces­sion as a cap on his tenure looms, Sky News re­port­ed. Sources said there was no for­mal time­line but some ac­tion from As­traZeneca’s nom­i­na­tion and gov­er­nance com­mit­tee.

PHILADEL­PHIA — You know the drug pric­ing de­bate has reached a new height when the act­ing FDA com­mis­sion­er starts to chime in on a pub­lic fo­rum.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion on gene ther­a­pies posed dur­ing a fire­side chat at the an­nu­al BIO con­ven­tion, Ned Sharp­less ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of dis­cussing cost — though it doesn’t fall un­der the FDA’s purview — but said he’s “a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed” in the cov­er­age of the re­cent ap­proval of No­var­tis’ spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy treat­ment, Zol­gens­ma. The treat­ment was priced at $2.12 mil­lion spread out over a 5-year in­stall­ment.

Just 2 years af­ter Tom Lynch stepped from the board room to the top sci­en­tif­ic po­si­tion at Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb, he’s out.

The phar­ma gi­ant re­port­ed Wednes­day morn­ing that Lynch will leave his post as CSO in four months, mov­ing Cel­gene R&D ex­ec Ru­pert Vessey in­to the top re­search po­si­tion af­ter the big merg­er while re­cruit­ing No­var­tis on­col­o­gy de­vel­op­ment head Samit Hi­rawat for chief med­ical of­fi­cer with com­mand of the de­vel­op­ment group.

Sci­en­tists the world over have found plen­ty of rea­sons to con­demn their Chi­nese col­league Jiankui He’s ex­per­i­ment with the world’s first CRISPR ba­bies late 2018: The al­leged med­ical need to con­fer HIV im­mu­ni­ty was un­found­ed, the con­sent process seemed du­bi­ous, the ac­tu­al gene edit­ing ap­peared spot­ty, just to name a few. But a new re­search pa­per may have un­cov­ered the most stag­ger­ing of them all.