With tens of bil­lions in an­nu­al ap­pro­pri­a­tions, a group of four Re­pub­li­can sen­a­tors is pub­licly won­der­ing why the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health can’t do a bet­ter job of en­sur­ing tax­pay­er-fund­ed re­search is pub­lished in a time­ly man­ner, they said in a let­ter sent last week to NIH act­ing di­rec­tor Lawrence Tabak.

The let­ter comes as a re­cent HHS in­spec­tor gen­er­al re­port found that 72 clin­i­cal tri­als re­quir­ing re­sults to be sub­mit­ted in 2019 or 2020 were sub­mit­ted on time, late or not sub­mit­ted at all. While NIH con­curred with the Au­gust re­port’s rec­om­men­da­tions and said it would take steps to ad­dress them, the sen­a­tors are cu­ri­ous as to what ex­act­ly NIH is do­ing on the mat­ter.

“When Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers spend bil­lions of dol­lars on fed­er­al pro­grams, they ex­pect ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and re­sults,” Sens. Mar­sha Black­burn (TN), Chuck Grass­ley (IA), Roger Mar­shall (KS) and Ron John­son (MO) wrote. “HHS OIG’s re­port makes clear that the NIH must do more to hold grant re­cip­i­ents ac­count­able, so that the pub­lic is able to ac­cess time­ly clin­i­cal tri­al re­sults.”

They al­so sought a list from NIH of the 37 grant re­cip­i­ents that failed to com­ply with fed­er­al and NIH re­port­ing re­quire­ments in 2019 and 2020. And for the 21 re­searchers who failed to com­ply with fed­er­al re­port­ing re­quire­ments but were al­lowed to be­gin new NIH-fund­ed tri­als be­fore sub­mit­ting the re­sults of their pre­vi­ous clin­i­cal tri­als, the sen­a­tors want to know how much the NIH gave them.

Till Bruck­n­er, founder of the non­prof­it TranspariMED, which is work­ing to reg­is­ter and ful­ly re­port clin­i­cal tri­als, said in a state­ment:

Fi­nal­ly, U.S. pol­i­cy mak­ers are wak­ing up to the im­mense cost of re­search waste in pub­licly fund­ed clin­i­cal tri­als. TranspariMED looks for­ward to learn­ing how many NIH-fund­ed tri­als have failed to com­ply with fed­er­al and NIH re­port­ing re­quire­ments since 2007, and what NIH will do to en­sure that their re­sults are made pub­licly avail­able.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

The DC Circuit Court has struck a blow against the pharmaceutical lobbying group PhRMA and other plaintiffs’ attempt to stop states from importing drugs from Canada.

Joined alongside public health group Partnership for Safe Medicines and advocacy group Council for Affordable Health Coverage, PhRMA was rebuffed by Judge Timothy Kelly on Monday, who dismissed the civil suit due to a lack of standing.