Good morning, everyone. STAT reporter Rebecca Robbins here, filling in to serve up your breakfast buffet of headlines from the world of pharma. Another week has nearly come and gone, which means it’s time to daydream about the weekend and its assorted respites. Do be certain to relax, and try to have fun, and stay safe, whatever it is you end up doing. Until then, send us a note if you hear anything that warrants a spot in these digital pages.
Lawmakers have some questions for Merck (MRK) about how a cyberattack in June roiled its operations, including whether it hit the company’s supplies of the hepatitis B vaccine, Endpoints tells us. In a letter to Merck sent this week, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce requested a formal briefing from the company by October 4.
The chief medical officer of Express Scripts (ESRX) weighed in on the $475,000 price tag set by Novartis (NVS) for its newly approved CAR-T cancer therapy Kymriah, by way of a blog post on the website of the big pharmacy benefit manager. Dr. Steve Miller called the cost “dramatically higher than other specialty drugs” and said that the health care system isn’t set up to handle such costs, calling for a new payment model to solve the problem.
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