Sanofi acquisition adds Alzheimer's drug to pipeline

From my colleague Adam Feuerstein: French drug maker Sanofi is acquiring the small biotech Vigil Neuroscience for $470 million, adding an experimental treatment for Alzheimer's disease to its neuroscience pipeline, the companies announced Wednesday evening.

The buyout values Vigil at $8 per share, or a 246% premium over the stock's Wednesday closing price. Sanofi has also offered an additional payment to Vigil shareholders equal to $2 per share, contingent on its lead drug securing approval and generating sales.

“This acquisition is fully supporting Sanofi’s strategic focus on neurology and on advancing science and leveraging our expertise in immunology to solve areas of critical unmet need," said Houman Ashrafian, Sanofi's R&D chief, in a statement.

The centerpiece of the Vigil acquisition is an experimental small-molecule drug called VG-3927 that is designed to target TREM2, a protein thought to boost the neuroprotective ability of microglial cells in the brain. Sanofi plans to conduct a Phase 2 study of VG-3927 in patients with Alzheimer's, the company said.

Last year, an antibody treatment that also targeted TREM2, developed by Alector and licensed to Abbvie, failed to slow the progression of Alzheimer's in a Phase 2 study.

cancer

AI tool enhances access to cancer guidelines

ASCO has partnered with Google Cloud to launch the ASCO Guidelines Assistant, an AI-powered tool designed to make the organization’s trusted but unwieldy cancer treatment guidelines more accessible to clinicians. The assistant, which is free to ASCO members, limits itself to the society’s official consensus-based documents — a “walled garden” approach that distinguishes it from broader tools like ChatGPT or Gemini.

“We’ve had this paradox where our content is really high-quality and trusted, but hard to approach and to use,” ASCO CEO Clifford Hudis told STAT. “And that was the problem we wanted to solve.”

The tool is meant for time-strapped oncologists managing a wide range of cancers. In a demonstration for two STAT reporters, the ASCO tool’s performance was mixed — accurately prescribing treatments for one prostate cancer patient while offering none for another with lung cancer. (It did better in a do-over.) None of what the tool learns is meant to be fed back into Google’s Gemini tool or its Vertex AI platform.

covid-19

What to know about the FDA's Covid-19 vaccine pivot

The FDA’s abrupt pivot on Covid-19 vaccine approvals — announced via a commentary by Commissioner Marty Makary and top regulator Vinay Prasad — has created a whirl of questions. While the new framework restricts vaccine use to older adults and high-risk groups unless further trials are done, it bypassed the usual regulatory process and blindsided stakeholders.

STAT digs into five burning questions about the implications of this change — such as what it means for the existing market, whether companies will keep making the shots if they don’t want to conduct more trials, and more. The sudden change, after all, lacks public input and a consensus from career staff — injecting tremendous uncertainty into the equation. The murky details on trial requirement worries some experts:

“I would be concerned that such a requirement could slow down vaccine access after a strain change, if needed … by 2-3 months,” Jesse Goodman, who headed FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research from 2003 to 2009, and was the agency’s chief scientist till 2014, told STAT in an email.

drug prices

Nonprofit drugmaker shows transparent pricing works

Five years after its launch, nonprofit CivicaScript has unveiled data showing that its low-cost, transparent approach to distributing generic drugs — starting with a version of prostate cancer drug Zytiga — led to dramatic savings: patients cut costs by up to 98%, and payers by an average of 92%.

Backed by Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, STAT’s Ed Silverman writes, CivicaScript aims to reshape the generics market by prioritizing affordability over profit. The company is now expanding its offerings and gearing up to manufacture its own drugs, staking its claim as a sustainable antidote to price-gouging in the U.S. pharmaceutical system.

rebranding

Why the safety and efficacy mRNA vaccine data holds

Once considered a pandemic hero, mRNA vaccines are now under fire. As a Senate subcommittee launches a hearing that probes alleged cover-ups of vaccine side effects like myocarditis, state legislatures weigh bans and the Trump administration questions NIH-funded research. But mRNA vaccines remain among the most rigorously studied medical products in history. Large-scale trials involving more than 70,000 people showed initial efficacy above 90%, and subsequent real-world studies confirm strong protection against severe Covid-19.

With billions of doses administered globally, safety has been closely monitored via large databases. These tools flagged rare cases of mild myocarditis in young men, but data show the risk is far higher after Covid infection itself. Notably, mRNA cannot alter DNA, making the vaccines biologically safe.

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