White House Reviews FDA Commissioner Finalists
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- White House is reviewing a shortlist of FDA commissioner contenders: White House adviser Heidi Overton, oncologist and health system executive Jeffrey Vacirca, and Defense Department health affairs official Stephen Ferrara.
- FDA has been operating under acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas since Marty Makary resigned earlier this year, per STAT.
- Wainua, a closely watched heart failure drug from AstraZeneca and Ionis, failed a pivotal trial, sending both companies' stocks tumbling.
- AstraZeneca had pegged Wainua as a core piece of its plan to reach $80 billion in annual sales.
- Analysts partly attributed the trial failure to recent approvals of competing ATTR-cardiomyopathy drugs from Alnylam and BridgeBio, which already had many patients on alternative treatment.
Why it matters: The FDA has run on acting leadership since Marty Makary's earlier resignation while the White House narrows candidates; the Wainua failure knocks a leg out of AstraZeneca's $80 billion sales target and underscores crowding in the ATTR-cardiomyopathy field after Alnylam and BridgeBio approvals.
