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The U.S. Supreme Court...rejected bids by Insys Therapeutics Inc founder John Kapoor and another former executive of the drugmaker to overturn their convictions for conspiring to bribe doctors to prescribe addictive opioids and defraud insurers into paying for them...Kapoor, 78, is serving a prison sentence of 5-1/2 years and is the highest-level corporate executive convicted at trial of crimes related to the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in the past two decades...READ MORE

San Francisco's district attorney's office...announced the conviction and sentencing in a high-profile Walgreens theft from last May...Jean Lugo Romero, who pled guilty to felony grand theft and misdemeanor petty theft, was sentenced to 16 months in prison and one-year probation, according to District Attorney Chesa Boudin's office...The brazen incident was caught on video and became an early flash point in examples of viral videos touting crime running rampant in the city. Lugo Romero is seen grabbing items off the shelf from a now-permanently-closed Hayes Valley Walgreens store, placing them into a garbage bag and then riding a bicycle through the store, past an employee and a security guard, to make an escape through the front door...These types of videos have been used as ammunition against Boudin, who critics say is too lenient on crime. Boudin faces a recall election this summer. A recent poll suggests that recall effort has strong support...READ MORE

Attorney General Aaron Ford joined representatives from the state health department and several local governments...to announce that Nevada will soon receive its first installment of money from a pair of major opioid settlements and to highlight the urgency of using those dollars to address the opioid crisis...the state will receive $50 million from two settlements announced by the attorney general’s office earlier this year. The settlements include one with opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson that will bring Nevada $53.5 million and another with three of the nation’s largest drug distributors — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — that will bring the state $231.7 million. Those funds add to the $45 million the state won last year through a settlement with consulting firm McKinsey & Company...READ MORE

Multiple sources confirmed with This Is Reno there are numerous allegations facing Renown and the hospital’s now former-CEO Tony Slonim. Slonim was fired for cause...as part of an investigation...Allegations range from sexual harassment, unethical behavior by top executives, financial mismanagement and an organizational culture rife with dysfunction and employee mistreatment. The investigation has not concluded, two sources said...READ MORE

Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was released from prison on Wednesday after serving most of his seven-year sentence for lying to hedge fund investors and defrauding drug company investors...Shkreli, 39, was released from a prison in Allenwood, Pa., and moved “community confinement,” or a halfway house overseen by the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ New York Residential Reentry Management Office, the AP reported. The bureau said his projected release date is Sept. 14...READ MORE

The specter of particulates has forced another recall—this time on Moderna’s massively successful COVID-19 vaccine Spikevax—and the latest pull isn’t contract manufacturer Rovi’s first brush with contamination, either...Moderna...said it was recalling one Spikevax lot in Europe...The batch contains 764,900 doses made by CDMO Rovi that were deployed across Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden between Jan. 13 and Jan. 14. Moderna yanked the shots because of a “foreign body” found in one vial of the batch made at Rovi’s site in Spain...READ MORE

With several efforts to resurrect American drug manufacturing already underway, congressional members on both sides of the aisle are setting their sights on one of the nation’s chief economic rivals...The Senate has signed off on innovation and competition legislation designed to boost American competitiveness, restore the country’s manufacturing base and curb its reliance on China for critical supplies—especially drugs and medical devices...The bill encourages the U.S., the EU and other European countries to work together on “joint strategies to diversify reliance on supply chains away from the People’s Republic of China,” and “especially” so in the medical and pharmaceutical fields...READ MORE

In its COVID-19 vaccine patent kerfuffle with Arbutus Biopharma and Roivant’s Genevant Sciences, mRNA hot shot Moderna aims to shield itself with its government contract...Plaintiffs Arbutus and Genevant sued Moderna back in February, seeking damages tied to six patents they claim Moderna infringed with the production and sale of its COVID-19 vaccine Spikevax...the plaintiffs should have sued the U.S. government instead, Moderna said in a filing at the U.S. District Court for Delaware. To back up its argument, Moderna cited a federal law once used to “’prevent patent infringement suits from interfering with the supply of war materials during World War 1.'”...Moderna explained that it supplied its COVID-19 vaccine to the feds as part of the nation’s emergency response to the pandemic. It's "difficult to conceive of a situation more within the heart" of the wartime law than the pandemic, the company argued...READ MORE

Most of the defendants in Florida’s lawsuit over the opioid epidemic have settled for more than $870 million, according to the state attorney general. One remains: Walgreens Co. is not giving up...A jury has been seated in Pasco County, Florida, just north of Tampa, to hear the state’s case against Walgreens, a huge drug store chain with more than 9,000 outlets on streetcorners throughout the country. Opening statements are set for early next week...The Deerfield, Illinois-based company says it will not settle...“We are prepared for trial,” said Walgreens spokesman Fraser Engerman in an email...READ MORE

Sister hospital to Northern Nevada Medical Center is the first new full-service hospital to open in the city of Reno in more than a century...Nearly two-and-a-half years since breaking ground, Reno’s newest full-service hospital is on track for a spring opening...Northern Nevada Sierra Medical Center received its certificate of occupancy on Friday, which means it can now start moving equipment into the hospital...The facility...will add 170 hospital beds to an area that has seen strong growth...To commemorate the latest milestone in the project, the center is holding a pre-opening event this Monday for select guests...READ MORE