It’s been six months since the last in­ci­dent, but 2021 end­ed with the tal­ly re­set­ting back to “ze­ro days.”

Viona Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is re­call­ing 33 lots of met­formin hy­drochlo­ride af­ter find­ing traces of ND­MA, a known prob­a­ble hu­man car­cino­gen with can­cer-caus­ing po­ten­tial. It’s a much larg­er re­call than the two lots of 750 mg ex­tend­ed-re­lease tablets it re­called in June.

Met­formin is used to help im­prove glu­cose con­trol in adults with type 2 di­a­betes, and is pack­aged in bot­tles of 100 tablets. The drug can be iden­ti­fied by its cap­sule-shaped, un­coat­ed off-white col­or tablets that fea­ture a “Z” and a “C” on one side and “20” on the oth­er.

The fol­low­ing lots are be­ing re­called:

1. M008130 – 06/2022
2. M008131 – 06/2022
3. M008132 – 06/2022
4. M008133 – 06/2022
5. M010080 – 07/2022
6. M010081 – 07/2022
7. M011029 – 08/2022
8. M011030 – 08/2022
9. M011031 – 08/2022
10. M011032 – 08/2022
11. M011304 – 08/2022
12. M013394 – 09/2022
13. M013395 – 09/2022
14. M013396 – 09/2022
15. M013966 – 09/2022
16. M013967 – 09/2022
17. M100831 – 12/2022
18. M100832 – 12/2022
19. M100833 – 01/2023
20. M100834 – 01/2023
21. M101267 – 01/2023
22. M102718 – 01/2023
23. M102719 – 01/2023
24. M102720 – 01/2023
25. M102721 – 01/2023
26. M102722 – 02/2023
27. M104172 – 02/2023
28. M104173 – 02/2023
29. M104174 – 02/2023
30. M104175 – 02/2023
31. M104176 – 02/2023
32. M105889 – 03/2023
33. M105890 – 03/2023

ND­MA has can­cer-caus­ing po­ten­tial, and is some­times found in meats, dairy prod­ucts and veg­eta­bles. Is­sues with the car­cino­gen have plagued the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try in the last few years.

Last Jan­u­ary, Nos­trum Lab­o­ra­to­ries twice vol­un­tar­i­ly re­called its gener­ic met­formin. In No­vem­ber 2020, a batch of 500 mg tablets were re­called for the same rea­son.

More re­cent­ly, in June, Pfiz­er yanked its ground­break­ing an­ti-smok­ing drug Chan­tix off of the shelves and halt­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion. June, Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber all saw lots of the drug re­called by Pfiz­er for con­t­a­m­i­na­tion by ni­trosamine, an­oth­er known car­cino­gen, or ND­MA. Lots were dis­trib­uted in the US, US Vir­gin Is­lands and Puer­to Ri­co from May 2019 to Sep­tem­ber 2021.

Of­fi­cials at Pfiz­er orig­i­nal­ly said the drug­mak­er be­lieved the ben­e­fits of the an­ti-smok­ing drug out­weigh any po­ten­tial risk of ex­po­sure to ni­trosamines or ND­MA, and that those who have been tak­ing it should con­tin­ue to do so. It stuck by that mantra, but a lat­er an­nounce­ment fea­tured ex­ten­sive in­for­ma­tion about how to re­turn the dis­trib­uted batch­es and stop fur­ther dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Since No­vem­ber 2020, there have been two ad­di­tion­al drugs re­called be­cause of re­ports of ND­MA. In 2018, blood pres­sure drug val­sar­tan was pulled for the same rea­son.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying so hard to politicize the FDA and demonize the federal government that he entered into an alternate universe on Monday evening in describing a recent FDA action to restrict the use of two monoclonal antibody, or mAb, treatments for Covid-19 that don’t work against Omicron.

Without further ado, let’s break down his statement from last night, line by line, adjective by adjective.

Bristol Myers Squibb recently joined 11 of its peer pharma companies in limiting how many contract pharmacies can access certain drugs discounted by a federal program known as 340B.

Bristol Myers is just the latest in a series of high-profile pharma companies moving in their own direction as the Biden administration’s Health Resources and Services Administration struggles to rein in the drug discount program for the neediest Americans.

The summer before Cellino CEO and co-founder Nabiha Saklayen started at Harvard, she lost her grandmother following complications to diabetes. Before then, she hadn’t taken a biology class since ninth or tenth grade — the mark of a classic physicist — but it was then she decided she wanted the rest to sit at the intersection of the two for the rest of her career

Combine that with being across the way from the University’s stem cell institute in Cambridge, and you get the birth of Cellino, an autonomous cell therapy manufacturing company that just announced the closing of its Series A.

Amgen wanted to know how people with asthma really felt about daily life with the disease. So it bought a promoted tweet on Twitter noting the not-so-simple realities of life with asthma and ended the post with a #DearAsthma hashtag, a megaphone emoji and a re-tweet button.

That was just over one week ago and the responses haven’t stopped. More than 7,000 posts so far on Twitter replied to #DearAsthma to detail struggles of daily life, expressing humor, frustration and sometimes anger. More than a few f-bombs have been typed or gif-ed in reply to communicate just how much many people “hate” the disease.