regulation

The FTC is going after Martin Shkreli again

Since Martin Shrekli was released from prison in 2022, he's become a prolific trader in pharmaceutical stocks. The FTC has taken notice.

Yesterday, the agency asked a federal court to hold Shkreli in contempt for “flagrantly and repeatedly” violating a court order banning him from working in the pharmaceutical industry. It further asked the court to demand Shkreli divest his current holdings, pay a fine equal to his profits from trading on pharma stocks, and face consequences for any future violations, “including financial penalties and potential incarceration.”

Shkreli became infamous as the “pharma bro” in the 2010s for defending his decision to raise the price of an anti-parasitic drug called daraprim by 5,000%. In 2018, he was sentenced to prison for defrauding investors.

Read more from STAT's Jason Mast.

pharma

Adcomm members' ties to industry under scrutiny

While the FDA has well-established conflict-of-interest policies for its scientific advisory committee members, it lacks clear policies for patients and consumer reps who vote in advisory meetings, a new report says.

The analysis, from researchers at the University of Southern California, found that nearly 40% of FDA advisory meetings held over a recent 20-year period included either a patient or consumer rep with active ties to an advocacy group funded by pharma companies. In addition, more than one in 10 meetings included a rep who was affiliated with an organization that received funding from the drugmaker whose medicine was being reviewed by the committees. Yet most of these organizational ties were not disclosed.

“These findings highlight a gap in FDA conflict-of-interest policy that could be a source of undue industry influence on these committees,” one of the researchers said.

Read more from STAT's Ed Silverman.