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Two co-founders of a Taiwan biotechnology company were sentenced Tuesday for plotting to steal trade secrets from Genentech in a $101 million scheme...Racho Jordanov, former CEO of JHL Biotech Inc., and former chief operating officer Rose Lin were sentenced in San Francisco federal court to a year and a day each in federal prison...They pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit trade secret theft and wire fraud...JHL Biotech, now known as Eden Biologics, Inc., is a biopharmaceutical startup based in Taiwan. According to plea agreements, between 2011 and 2019, Jordanov used confidential Genentech information from ex-Genentech workers he hired to speed up and reduce costs for producing generic versions of products made by the South San Francisco-based company...READ MORE

More than 400 executives and investors, including the heads of Alnylam, SeaGen and Sarepta, signed onto a letter calling for biotech companies to stop working with Russian companies...Hundreds of biotech leaders are pledging to stop working with Russian companies and to reject investment from Russian funds in response to the country's invasion of Ukraine...In an open letter, more than 400 drugmaker CEOs, executives and investors condemned Russia's actions and called for "immediate and complete economic disengagement," including cessation of new investment within Russian borders and any trade in goods and services beyond food and medicine...READ MORE

Hospitals throughout Nevada are facing twin challenges as beds fill with COVID-19 patients and staff falls ill from the highly contagious omicron variant...“Nevada is experiencing an abrupt increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations, predominantly in the southern region following the holidays. People are flocking to hospital emergency departments seeking COVID-19 testing, compounding the staffing problem,” they said, describing the second week of January...“Hospitals are not over-run by a COVID-19 surge as much as being understaffed as employees in all fields report being sick and unable to work. This is also further compounded by a significant increase in people coming to the emergency department solely for testing. Hospitals are not testing sites,” the Nevada Hospital Association said...READ MORE

A federal judge overturned a roughly $4.5 billion settlement that legally shielded members of the Sackler family who stand accused of helping fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic, a decision that threatened to upend the bankruptcy reorganization of their company, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP...U.S. District Judge...said...the New York bankruptcy court that approved the settlement did not have authority to grant the Sacklers the legal protection from future opioid litigation that formed the linchpin of Purdue’s reorganization...READ MORE

Nevadans will soon be able to save big on prescription drugs after the state joined a coalition that negotiates lower drug costs, according to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services...Last month, Gov. Steve Sisolak announced that Nevada will join Oregon and Washington in the Northwest Prescription Drug Consortium, a partnership that allows residents to use drug discount cards to purchase prescription drugs at lower costs. The consortium rebranded to ArrayRx in 2021...It is expected that the drug discount card program could cut the cost of generic drugs by 80 percent and by up to 20 percent on name-brand drugs...READ MORE

Once again, government-run healthcare crashed and burned in California...Yes, it died with a whimper, failing to be voted on before a deadline, which for any other policy wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. But for single-payer — the Holy Grail of bad progressive ideas — it was epic...The buildup was extraordinary. After Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, killed single-payer unceremoniously without a vote in 2017, calling that measure “woefully incomplete,” which it was, expectations were high this time around...READ MORE

Attorney General Aaron Ford announced Thursday that Nevada would join a multi-state opiod settlement with drugmakers and distributors...Ford said that the state would receive around $285 million through a pair of settlements...Last year, Ford announced a $45 million settlement against one company involved in the opioid litigation. The lawsuit is being handled on a contingency fee basis for the state by Eglet Prince, the law firm where Ford worked as a private attorney before being elected attorney general in 2018. Ford, however, recused himself from the selection process...Ford in August announced that Nevada would opt out of a $26 billion multi-state settlement...READ MORE

Pfizer Inc and Bayer said on...they would maintain humanitarian supply of medicines to Russia, but would pull back from other non-essential spending in the country...Global companies have decided to step back from Russia as pressure mounts from consumers in the West to take a stand against its invasion of Ukraine..."Ending delivery of medicines, including cancer or cardiovascular therapies, would cause significant patient suffering and potential loss of life, particularly among children and elderly people," Pfizer said...READ MORE

GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology are rushing to speed up production of their COVID-19 therapy, now that they're the only companies with an antibody that appears to be truly effective against omicron...The FDA...cleared a Samsung Biologics site as a second manufacturing facility to make GSK and Vir’s Xevudy (sotrovimab)...Along with adding the new facility, GSK and Vir worked with external partners to secure additional batches of drug substance to support supply this year...READ MORE

Drugs like AbbVie's Lupron, used to treat children with a condition that triggers premature puberty, have also gained use by transgender kids and their parents to forestall the development of sexual features...Hormone blockers, used to treat children with a condition that triggers premature puberty, have also gained use by transgender kids and their parents to forestall the development of sexual features. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking issue with that trend...Texas...is investigating makers of the drugs, Endo and AbbVie, for allegedly promoting them outside of their FDA approved use without disclosing their risks...In Texas, Paxton is employing the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act to launch the investigation. The probe centers on AbbVie's Lupron Depot plus Endo's Supprelin LA and Vantas...The drugs are "being used to treat gender dysphoria even though they are not approved for such use," Paxton's office said in a statement...READ MORE