Healthcare & Laboratory News

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The Washington Post (6/5, Gilbert, Dwoskin) reports 23andMe’s bankruptcy proceedings are in flux as the company seeks court approval to consider a new bid from its co-founder, Anne Wojcicki, and TTAM Research Institute. The company previously accepted a $256 million offer from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. However, Wojcicki’s group claims “the bankruptcy auction was closed prematurely” and proposes a $305 million bid, potentially reopening the auction. 23andMe is proposing a compromise that would allow TTAM to “make a final bid and give Regeneron the opportunity to make a counteroffer. Should TTAM prevail, 23andMe would pay Regeneron a $10 million breakup fee.” While Regeneron “has said in court filings that it is being treated unfairly,” the company “said it would not object to the compromise proposed by 23andMe to entertain a final offer from Wojcicki’s group.” As of Tuesday, TTAM and Wojcicki “had opposed the compromise and wanted another round of open-ended bidding, not just final offers.”

Reuters (6/5, Jones, Acharya, Singh) reports Ontario’s chief medical officer of health confirmed Thursday that an infant infected with measles has died. Kieran Moore said, “An infant, born prematurely and infected with measles, has tragically passed away in southwestern Ontario. The infant contracted the virus before birth from their mother, who had not received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.” Government data indicate Canada reported a total of 146 measles cases last year; this marks the country’s first measles death of 2025.

Fierce Pharma (6/5, Dunleavy) reports that Amneal Pharmaceuticals “is recalling three lots of sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim tablets because of microbial contamination that caused black spots to appear on the medication.” The recalls relate to the presence of Aspergillus, “a fungus that can cause life-threatening infections, especially for those with underlying immunosuppressive conditions, the FDA said.” The recall specifically affects three lots of the 400-mg/80-mg tablets with expiration dates of June 2027, shipped to distributors and wholesalers between December 2024 and May 2025.

The New York Times (6/5, Mandavilli) reports a study suggests that mRNA, the “technology that powered Covid vaccines,” may also help researchers find a cure for HIV. A significant hurdle to treating HIV “is that the virus lies dormant in a particular type of immune cell, called a resting CD4 cell,” that tend to be unresponsive to drugs. The study, published in Nature Communications, “describes the use of mRNA as a tool to flush H.I.V. out of its hiding places. Other uses could involve providing proteins missing from those with certain diseases or correcting genetic errors.” The research “is still preliminary,” and it remains to be seen if “the new approach can successfully awaken all of the dormant H.I.V. in the body, and what side effects it might produce.”

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The New York Times (6/4, Mandavilli) reports the Trump Administration’s proposed budget, “submitted to Congress last week, proposes to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global health unit, effectively shutting down its $230 million immunization program: $180 million for polio eradication and the rest for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.” The budget “proposes to cut funding for the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, a program to fight the disease around the world, by 47 percent.” The plan also “withdraws financial support for Gavi, the international vaccine alliance that purchases vaccines for children in developing countries,” and halves funding to the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to just under $3 billion. Although the budget request “explicitly follows President Trump’s America First policy, slashing funds for global health programs,” many public health experts “said that such thinking is flawed because infectious diseases routinely breach borders.”

Reuters (6/4, Brittain) reports that Moderna successfully convinced a US appeals court Wednesday to uphold a Delaware federal court ruling that “undercut patent infringement claims by biotech company Alnylam Pharmaceuticals over Moderna’s blockbuster COVID-19 vaccine Spikevax.” Alnylam, which lost a similar dispute in a related Moderna case last year, “has filed separate, ongoing patent lawsuits over Pfizer’s COVID shots.” Alnylam sued both companies “for patent infringement in 2022 for allegedly using its lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology in their vaccines to deliver genetic material into the body.”