FDA Postpones Advisory Committee Meeting for OTC Birth Control

Two PBMs, True Rx Health Strategies and Capital Rx, are using pharmacogenomics — how a person’s DNA affects their response to medications — to reduce the trial-and-error of prescribing medications, saving employers and patients time and money.

In this episode of the "Meet the Board" podcast series, Briana Contreras, Managed Healthcare Executive editor, speaks with Ateev Mehrotra, a member of the MHE editorial advisory board and a professor of healthcare policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Mehtrotra is also a hospitalist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In the discussion, Contreras gets to know Mehrotra more on a personal level and picks his brain on some of his research interests including telehealth, alternative payment models and price transparency.

Health policy researcher Geoffrey Joyce argues that only delinking compensation from the list price of a drug will lower drug spending.

Last week, an FDA advisory committee against the risk-benefit profile of Blenrep in combination with other therapies. Regulators and reviewers were concerned about the ocular side effects and dosing and tolerability. The new action date is Oct. 23, 2025.

Sarepta officials said the temporary halt in shipments was done to maintain a productive working relationship with regulators while they address a safety labeling update about the risk of acute liver disease related to Elevidys.

Icotrokinra is a first-in-class targeted oral peptide that blocks interleukin (IL) 23 and its receptor, which plays a key role in the inflammatory response in plaque psoriasis.