Based on the Medicus Firm’s hundreds of job searches and placements across the US, the results are a case of good news and bad news. The bad? Elective procedures canceled, hiring slowed, and signing bonuses stalled. However, the good news is that those people canceling the elective procedures still need them, bringing about a necessary return to a high-demand healthcare environment.

This article from the American College of Physicians (ACP) provides a deeper dive into the pause of the J&J vaccine, which was recommended by the FDA and CDC on April 13, 2021, after six cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) among patients who had received the vaccine was reported. The pause is being done to determine whether the vaccine is associated with any other types of thrombosis and to develop more specific recommendations for its use, possibly based on age.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently published a report that suggested reverse causality – disease driving behavior – may account for some of the controversies surrounding studies related to coffee consumption. The results showed those who have higher blood pressure drink less coffee and those with low blood pressure drank more. But what role does genetics play?

This new indication marks the second FDA approval for sacituzumab govitecan (Trodelvy, Immunomedics) and was based on the phase 2, single-arm TROPHY-U-01 main efficacy endpoints in objective response rate (ORR) and duration of response (DOR). With a relative 5-year survival rate of 5.5%, this is a significant advancement for patients with metastatic urothelial cancer (mUC), the most common type of bladder cancer.

The ECOG-ACRIN E1412 study demonstrated a potential clinical benefit of adding lenalidomide to R-CHOP (rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) (R2CHOP) in newly diagnosed patients regardless of cell-of-origin (COO) and in patients with activated b-cell-like (ABC) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Although the results are not practice changing, they support further studies of lenalidomide and/or novel lenalidomide analogues in frontline therapy of DLBCL.

The first biologic was approved in 1982, and since then, have become one of the fastest-growing segments of the US pharmaceutical market. Biologics are complex therapies used to treat a wide variety of conditions – conditions that are often untreatable by any other drug – and physicians should be up to speed on these four classes of biologic agents, which are used to treat cancer or inflammatory disease.