I’ve had a lit­tle over a month in the Ex­ec­u­tive Ed­i­tor seat here at End­points News, and I want to take a mo­ment to in­tro­duce my­self to this great com­mu­ni­ty of read­ers and talk about where we’re head­ed next.

For the last 20 years, I’ve been lucky to cov­er some of the biggest sto­ries in health­care. I had a front-row seat on Capi­tol Hill for the Af­ford­able Care Act, wrote the first sto­ries about our cur­rent drug price de­bate, and spent three years lead­ing projects on the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Dur­ing that time, we’ve wit­nessed amaz­ing ad­vances in the treat­ment of can­cer, the ma­nip­u­la­tion of ge­net­ics and our un­der­stand­ing of hu­man bi­ol­o­gy.

I came to End­points be­cause those sto­ries are on­ly get­ting more com­plex, ask­ing more from jour­nal­ists, and hope­ful­ly of­fer­ing more to read­ers.

The fu­ture of End­points, and much of news me­dia, is in that com­plex­i­ty. “Trade jour­nal­ism” for me has al­ways been a mis­lead­ing and un­der-am­bi­tious de­scrip­tion of what we do. I pre­fer the term “spe­cial­ty jour­nal­ism.” We’re a news­room of ex­perts fo­cused on the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try – with the abil­i­ty and am­bi­tion to com­pete with (and beat!) the biggest pub­li­ca­tions for scoops and smart analy­sis on our turf.

To that end, we’re hir­ing: To­day we’ve post­ed six new jobs at End­points that will ex­pand the size and am­bi­tion of our news­room. You can find the list­ings here (along with de­scrip­tions of our great ben­e­fits and our work-from-home/any­where pol­i­cy). We’re adding to our edit­ing ranks, and plan to hire writ­ers and re­porters to boost our sci­ence, ven­ture cap­i­tal and reg­u­la­to­ry cov­er­age.

We want peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate about cov­er­ing med­ical in­no­va­tion and busi­ness, but al­so who see the jour­nal­ism world the way we do: who be­lieve that fo­cus cre­ates great­ness, and that the next thriv­ing news­rooms will be built by be­ing smarter and break­ing more news than any­one else on your beat.

The amaz­ing writ­ers and ed­i­tors in this news­room have made End­points in­to the first read for de­ci­sion-mak­ers in the bio­phar­ma world. As we ex­pand, we’re go­ing to de­liv­er more scoops, more ex­clu­sive news, more smart per­spec­tive, and more ideas and re­port­ing that you can’t get any­where else.

As found­ing ed­i­tor John Car­roll men­tioned in his note in No­vem­ber, this will al­so al­low him to spend more time writ­ing, in­ter­view­ing and grow­ing our busi­ness. You can ex­pect to hear more from John over the com­ing months, as well as from the new voic­es that we’re ex­cit­ed to add.

Since I start­ed ex­plor­ing this job ear­ly in 2022, I’ve al­so been able to talk to many of you about what you read and how you read it. There are more changes ahead as we think about how to de­liv­er news that makes the best use of our read­ers’ time, with the depth, analy­sis and se­ri­ous­ness they need.

As we make those changes, we want to hear from you. If you’ll be at JP Mor­gan next month, please stop in at our End­points event and say hel­lo.

Thank you for read­ing, sub­scrib­ing, and sup­port­ing us – I can’t wait to start show­ing you what this great news­room has com­ing!

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.