381: The future of American science and a dispatch from ASH
Episode
33 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Fundraising & VC, Leadership, Sales & Revenue
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓CML Drug Development: Terns Pharmaceuticals presents data for a chronic myeloid leukemia drug that appears superior to Novartis's Semblyx, a three to four billion dollar peak sales drug. This represents the latest evolution in targeted therapies since Gleevec transformed CML into a chronic disease in 2000, with patients cycling through generations of treatments as older drugs lose efficacy or cause intolerable side effects.
- ✓Multiple Myeloma Treatment Progress: Johnson and Johnson's two-antibody combination shows an eighty-three percent reduction in tumor progression compared to standard multi-drug treatment in second-line multiple myeloma patients. The dramatic efficacy gap between treatment and control arms prompted audible reactions from researchers, though high infection rates required mitigation procedures and raise questions about positioning against CAR-T therapy in treatment sequencing.
- ✓Obesity Drug Tolerability Concerns: Eli Lilly's triple-hormone GGG drug achieves 28.7% weight loss in patients who complete treatment, but high discontinuation rates from nausea, vomiting, and perceived excessive weight loss drop overall efficacy to 23.7%. This pattern of substantial weight loss paired with poor tolerability appears across multiple next-generation obesity candidates, raising questions about whether pushing for rapid, extreme weight loss serves patient needs.
- ✓NIH Research Ecosystem Disruption: Forty percent of US scientists surveyed in November 2025 consider moving abroad within two years, primarily seeking freedom to pursue their research without political interference. The broken trust between researchers and federal funding agencies threatens US scientific leadership as China and Europe increase competition, with PhD enrollment in life sciences flatlined after years of steady growth following administration uncertainty.
- ✓FDA Evidence Standard Changes: The FDA plans to require only one clinical trial for new drug approvals instead of two, though regulators maintain discretion to require additional studies. Agency sources and external experts express confusion given existing flexibility policies for impractical situations, worrying the blanket change unnecessarily lowers evidence standards for efficacy and safety without addressing specific problems requiring reform.
What It Covers
The Readout Loud examines disruptions to American biomedical research under the Trump administration, including NIH funding cuts and scientist layoffs. The episode also covers breakthrough data from the American Society of Hematology conference, featuring Terns Pharmaceuticals' chronic myeloid leukemia drug and new obesity treatments showing unprecedented weight loss with significant side effects.
Key Questions Answered
- •CML Drug Development: Terns Pharmaceuticals presents data for a chronic myeloid leukemia drug that appears superior to Novartis's Semblyx, a three to four billion dollar peak sales drug. This represents the latest evolution in targeted therapies since Gleevec transformed CML into a chronic disease in 2000, with patients cycling through generations of treatments as older drugs lose efficacy or cause intolerable side effects.
- •Multiple Myeloma Treatment Progress: Johnson and Johnson's two-antibody combination shows an eighty-three percent reduction in tumor progression compared to standard multi-drug treatment in second-line multiple myeloma patients. The dramatic efficacy gap between treatment and control arms prompted audible reactions from researchers, though high infection rates required mitigation procedures and raise questions about positioning against CAR-T therapy in treatment sequencing.
- •Obesity Drug Tolerability Concerns: Eli Lilly's triple-hormone GGG drug achieves 28.7% weight loss in patients who complete treatment, but high discontinuation rates from nausea, vomiting, and perceived excessive weight loss drop overall efficacy to 23.7%. This pattern of substantial weight loss paired with poor tolerability appears across multiple next-generation obesity candidates, raising questions about whether pushing for rapid, extreme weight loss serves patient needs.
- •NIH Research Ecosystem Disruption: Forty percent of US scientists surveyed in November 2025 consider moving abroad within two years, primarily seeking freedom to pursue their research without political interference. The broken trust between researchers and federal funding agencies threatens US scientific leadership as China and Europe increase competition, with PhD enrollment in life sciences flatlined after years of steady growth following administration uncertainty.
- •FDA Evidence Standard Changes: The FDA plans to require only one clinical trial for new drug approvals instead of two, though regulators maintain discretion to require additional studies. Agency sources and external experts express confusion given existing flexibility policies for impractical situations, worrying the blanket change unnecessarily lowers evidence standards for efficacy and safety without addressing specific problems requiring reform.
Notable Moment
Former NIH directors and science policy leaders describe how researchers now question whether funding will exist in one or four years, fundamentally undermining long-term studies. The concern centers on who would commit to twenty-year longitudinal research when presidential elections every four years create uncertainty about whether their work aligns with the next administration's priorities.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to this week's episode of The Read Out Loud, a weekly biotech podcast from STAT. I'm Allison DeAngelis. I'm Adam Forrester. And I'm Elaine Chen. It's Thursday, December 11. And on this week's show, we're going to hear Adam's dispatches from the American Society of Hematology Conference in sunny Orlando, plus a roundup of this week's biotech news. We'll also speak with our colleagues, Megan Molteni and Anil Oza, about a new series at STAT detailing the wreckage left behind at the NIH and other federal institutions and what that means for the future of American science. But first, a word from our sponsor. Hey, Read Out Loud listeners. Bob Herman here, STATS business of health care reporter and the writer behind the newsletter, HealthCare Inc. HealthCare Inc is a weekly newsletter devoted to unpacking the business and secret inner workings of The US health care industry. If you're someone who has ever received a medical bill or craves in-depth policy explainers or loves a playful meme now and again, I highly recommend you check this newsletter out. Learn more at the link in this episode's description. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Thanks. Okay. Adam, you just got back from Orlando where scores of drug companies flocked to present new data at the annual ASH meeting, American Society of Hematology. Let's talk about it. What were the presentations that had people on the ground chattering? Well, let me just say first, it wasn't so sunny. Sunny the first day, then kinda cloudy and rainy all weekend. So that was a little bit of a downer. You know, you go to Probably still better than Boston. Yeah. I think from what I understand, both in Chicago and in Boston, it was quite cold. Oh, it's been frigid. You guys were dealing dealing with the polar vortex among other things. So I shouldn't complain too much because it was. I was walking around in t shirts, you know, short sleeve shirts. Oh, no. Poor Adam. That wasn't too bad. Oh. But, you know, not a lot of sun. But anyway, yeah. Let's, you know, I did go down there for work, in the American Society of Hematology. This is the, you know, the largest research meeting that is dedicated to, blood cancers and blood diseases. And I would say, you know, probably from kind of the biotech perspective, probably the biggest news out of the conference was this new drug for, chronic myeloid leukemia from a company called Terns Pharmaceuticals. They had some pretty spectacular data. This is interesting because this is a a disease that has really turned into kind of a chronic disease because of, some targeted therapies. Everyone probably here knows of the drug Gleevec, which was approved back in, I think, 2000. And it really kinda helped transform this this type of blood cancer into a chronic disease. It was one one of the first targeted therapies for for blood cancers. And so, you …
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“Terns Pharmaceuticals presents data for a chronic myeloid leukemia drug that appears superior to Novartis's Semblyx, a three to four billion dollar peak sales drug.”
“Johnson and Johnson's two-antibody combination shows an eighty-three percent reduction in tumor progression compared to standard multi-drug treatment in second-line multiple myeloma patients.”
“Forty percent of US scientists surveyed in November 2025 consider moving abroad within two years, primarily seeking freedom to pursue their research without political interference. The broken trust between researchers and federal funding agencies threatens US scientific leadership.”
“Eli Lilly's triple-hormone GGG drug achieves 28.7% weight loss in patients who complete treatment, but high discontinuation rates from nausea, vomiting, and perceived excessive weight loss drop overall efficacy to 23.7%.”
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