RFK Jr. adviser Calley Means and Kennedy’s son Finn attended the Enhanced Games, the pro-doping athletic competition and biohacking extravaganza that took place over the weekend in Las Vegas, according to The Washington Post. Send news tips and personal bests to John.Wilkerson@statnews.com or John_Wilkerson.07 on Signal.

Ripple effects

For weeks, Republicans have been preoccupied with an immigration funding bill that they’re pushing through Congress, without support from Democrats. I’ve not been writing about that bill because it doesn’t include health care policies. But it’s now becoming relevant to health care, albeit indirectly.

Early last week, Republicans were expected to pass that budget reconciliation bill without much friction. By the end of the week, Senate Republicans adjourned for a week-long recess without voting on it due to an impasse over a new $1.8 billion settlement fund for Trump’s allies. They’d also butted heads with the president over his demands for $1 billion for a White House complex and ballroom.

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WASHINGTON — People in the food world didn’t know what to expect when the Trump administration appointed a little-known Florida attorney as the FDA’s top food official in 2025. 

They knew Kyle Diamantas worked at Jones Day representing food, beverage, and tobacco-industry clients. They saw the picture of him and Donald Trump Jr. holding giant, dead wild turkeys after a hunt. He had no experience in public health, in medicine or science, or in government.

The credentials didn’t scream qualified. And Diamantas was stepping into a center rocked by DOGE layoffs and a defiant resignation by former leader Jim Jones. 

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Sen. John Cornyn: How many patents do you [have?]
AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez: … A hundred and thirty-six patents.
Cornyn: A hundred and thirty-six patents on one drug?
Gonzalez: But, well, remember, Humira is like nine different drugs, or 10 different drugs. So —
Cornyn: I thought you said to Sen. [Debbie] Stabenow it was the same
molecule.
Gonzalez: It is the same molecule, but it treats different conditions. And if you look at that patent portfolio —
Cornyn: So you use the same molecule to treat different conditions and you can get a patent on that treatment?
Gonzalez: Certainly.

The above exchange comes from a 2019 congressional hearing. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, was asking AbbVie’s CEO, Richard Gonzalez, to explain to the Senate Committee on Finance how his company had amassed so many patents on this single drug called Humira. Gonzalez, who was no stranger to controversy, chose to respond by likening it to multiple drugs. After AbbVie had received the first regulatory approval for Humira to treat rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that causes inflammation of the joints, it thought the drug might also work on inflammatory bowel disease. In fact, AbbVie would eventually test, obtain patents for, and get FDA approval of the drug for several inflammation-related conditions. For Gonzalez, the 136 patents AbbVie had accumulated up until that point were justified. They were “innovations they had created,” he said. This would mean another 18 years of patent protection beyond the expiry of Humira’s original patent in 2016.

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Eli Lilly said Monday that a high dose of its gene-editing therapy reduced cholesterol levels by 62% in participants in a clinical trial, an early but encouraging test of whether a one-time treatment may one day help people seeking to lower their LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol.

Lilly acquired the therapy, VERVE-102, in its $1 billion buyout of Verve Therapeutics last year. Executives tout it as a potential treatment to broadly prevent heart disease, the world’s leading killer, as many patients struggle to stay on existing, more conventional medicines for reducing cholesterol levels.

There were no treatment-related serious adverse events in the Phase 1 study — a notable finding, given that Verve had to shelve its first candidate due to safety concerns. 

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Below is a lightly edited, AI-generated transcript of the “First Opinion Podcast” interview with Patricia Bencivenga and Adriane Fugh-Berman. Be sure to sign up for the weekly “First Opinion Podcast” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get alerts about each new episode by signing up for the “First Opinion Podcast” newsletter. And don’t forget to sign up for the First Opinion newsletter, delivered every Sunday.

Torie Bosch: Brain fog and weight gain and hair loss and insomnia — those are the calling cards of perimenopause. At least that’s what the new perimenopause awareness movement claims. But what’s real and what’s just social media misinformation?

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Retro Biosciences, the longevity startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has raised more money at a $1.8 billion valuation, it announced Friday. 

Retro has a big mission: Add 10 healthy years to the human lifespan. It is seeking to do that by using a variety of technologies, including in vivo gene therapies, cell replacement therapies, and other approaches to spur younger, healthier cells into aging tissues. 

The company is currently running its first clinical trial — testing a pill designed to enhance the body’s ability to better clear out protein aggregates in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Retro CEO Joe Betts-LaCroix told the audience at STAT’s Breakthrough Summit West on Tuesday that the trial is going “super good” and that researchers haven’t seen any dose-limiting toxicities. He said he anticipates releasing some data from the trial around August. 

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