In 2003, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) launched the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (@dndi.org) to create affordable treatments for neglected illnesses. It's a remarkable story of do-gooders becoming drug makers.

If you're in the Triangle area and curious about the human microbiome, the science behind taste, or how benign parasites might impact medicine, join us at @fuqua.duke.edu on March 20 at 12:45 in the Kirby Reading Room for a talk by Rob Dunn, biologist and author of "Delicious" and other books.

If a drugmaker increases its commercial price over time, it must pay a rebate to the US government. This somewhat dampens price increases and lowers the net price paid by the government. But what if the drugmaker resets its price by launching a new version? @warren.senate.gov wants an investigation.

Less is often more, according to Shelley Hwang, MD, MBA, of @DukeU. In @JAMA_current, she and coauthors demonstrated that monitoring is a safe, less invasive approach for low-risk ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS).
Video: youtu.be/_fuC8cFlsXU
Article: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

In 2024, @US_FDA approved 50 novel drugs, including:
• 34 first approved in the US
• 26 orphan drugs (<200K Americans affected)
• 7 accelerated approvals (conditional approval on surrogate endpoints)
• 28 priority reviews (6-month FDA review)

Cancer drug Bizengri was all 4.