When Joe Jimenez signed on to the board at uBio­me last fall, the new­ly ex-No­var­tis chief was clear­ly hop­ing to put the con­tro­ver­sy over his re­la­tion­ship with Pres­i­dent Trump’s per­son­al at­tor­ney — Michael Co­hen — be­hind him and start a new chap­ter in his sto­ried ca­reer.

Joe Jimenez

In­stead, he’s found him­self in­volved in a fresh scan­dal in­volv­ing an FBI in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to uBio­me’s billing prac­tices. To­day, the com­pa­ny’s founders who re­cruit­ed Jimenez, Jes­si­ca Rich­man and Zac Apte, have been placed on leave while gen­er­al coun­sel John Rakow steps up as in­ter­im CEO in charge of an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

John Rakow

In a state­ment out Wednes­day af­ter­noon, Rakow said:

As in­ter­im CEO of uBio­me, I want all of our stake­hold­ers to know that we in­tend to co­op­er­ate ful­ly with gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties and pri­vate pay­ors to sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly re­solve the ques­tions that have been raised, and we will take any cor­rec­tive ac­tions that are need­ed to en­sure we can be­come a stronger com­pa­ny bet­ter able to serve pa­tients and health­care providers.

The Wall Street Jour­nal first re­port­ed a few days ago about the fed­er­al probe.

Jes­si­can Rich­man

Billing it­self as the “lead­ing mi­cro­bial ge­nomics com­pa­ny,” uBio­me was launched 6 years ago from its base in the Bay Area, mar­ket­ing a pair of con­sumer tests that can do at-home tests on your gut or the STDs that women face, like chlamy­dia and gon­or­rhea. When I talked to Rich­man last fall, the com­pa­ny said it had raised $83 mil­lion from ven­ture back­ers — led by OS Fund — in a new dri­ve to join the pack de­vel­op­ing mi­cro­bio­me ther­a­pies. 

A few months lat­er, though, uBio­me was al­ready lay­ing off em­ploy­ees from its staff of some 300, say­ing it want­ed to fo­cus more on drugs and part­ner­ships with drug com­pa­nies, where Jimenez could help.

Zac Apte

I nev­er got a chance to talk to Jimenez last fall, but he told one oth­er writer that he had put the Co­hen af­fair be­hind him and moved on. Dur­ing his last year as CEO, No­var­tis paid Co­hen $1.2 mil­lion for what it said was a brief con­sult­ing pe­ri­od as they sought to learn more about Trump’s health­care pol­i­cy.

The mon­ey, though, went in­to the same ac­count that paid porn ac­tress Stormy Daniels hush mon­ey. And when that emerged, the phar­ma gi­ant and Jimenez were caught in one of the ugli­est scan­dals to hit Wash­ing­ton DC.

Co­hen told law­mak­ers that No­var­tis had want­ed him to open a back door to the White House, seek­ing help in mak­ing con­nec­tions with the top play­ers in the ad­min­is­tra­tion. He re­fused, and while No­var­tis paid out the con­tract, they even­tu­al­ly stopped talk­ing. By that time, No­var­tis spokes­peo­ple had shut the win­dow on com­ments.

A new at­tempt to reach Jimenez this af­ter­noon has so far been un­suc­cess­ful.

Blue­bird bio $BLUE has un­veiled its price for the new­ly ap­proved gene ther­a­py Zyn­te­glo (Lenti­Glo­bin), which came as a big sur­prise. And it wasn’t the on­ly un­ex­pect­ed twist in to­day’s sto­ry.

With some an­a­lysts bet­ting on a $900,000 price for the β-tha­lassemia treat­ment in Eu­rope, where reg­u­la­tors pro­vid­ed a con­di­tion­al ear­ly OK, blue­bird CEO Nick Leschly said Fri­day morn­ing that the pa­tients who are suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed with their drug over 5 years will be charged twice that — $1.8 mil­lion — on the con­ti­nent. That makes this drug the sec­ond most ex­pen­sive ther­a­py on the plan­et, just be­hind No­var­tis’ new­ly ap­proved Zol­gens­ma at $2.1 mil­lion, with an­a­lysts still wait­ing to see what kind of pre­mi­um can be had in the US.

Em­bat­tled UK fund man­ag­er Neil Wood­ford — who has con­tro­ver­sial­ly blocked in­vestors from pulling out from his flag­ship fund to stem the blood­let­ting, af­ter a slew of dis­ap­point­ed in­vestors fled fol­low­ing a se­ries of sour bets — is now pay­ing the price for his ac­tions via an in­vestor ex­o­dus on an­oth­er fund.

Har­g­reaves Lans­down, which has in the past sold and pro­mot­ed the Wood­ford funds via its re­tail in­vest­ment plat­form, has re­port­ed­ly with­drawn £45 mil­lion — its en­tire po­si­tion — from the in­vest­ment man­ag­er’s In­come Fo­cus Fund.

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.

Re­gen­eron’s close­ly-watched bis­pe­cif­ic con­tin­ues to ring up high re­sponse rates

Re­gen­eron’s high-pro­file bis­pe­cif­ic REGN1979 is back in the spot­light at the Eu­ro­pean Hema­tol­ogy As­so­ci­a­tion sci­en­tif­ic con­fab. And while the stel­lar num­bers we saw at ASH have erod­ed some­what as more blood can­cer pa­tients are eval­u­at­ed, the re­sponse rates for this CD3/CD20 drug re­main high.

A to­tal of 13 out of 14 fol­lic­u­lar lym­phomas re­spond­ed to the drug, a 93% ORR, down from 100% at the last read­out. In 10 out of 14, there was a com­plete re­sponse. In dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma the re­sponse rate was 57% among pa­tients treat­ed at the 80 mg to 160 mg dose range. They were all com­plete re­spons­es. And 2 of these Cars were for pa­tients who had failed CAR-T ther­a­py.