💊 10 things to read this weekend

Google's Verily to release 20 million infected mosquitoes and other interesting reads for the weekend.

To prop up the patient’s crippled immune system, an injection of immune-boosting immunoglobulin is needed every three to four weeks as long as the altered cells remain in the body, Novartis said in a statement. Those treatments can cost as much as $10,000 a dose and may be needed for life.

A little-known private equity investor, Royalty Pharma, has built an unusual investment portfolio valued at $15 billion — it buys up the rights to royalties on future drug sales — while largely avoiding public controversy. By its own count, Royalty Pharma owns partial rights to seven of the 30 top-selling drugs in the United States, including giants like Humira, the arthritis treatment that is the single biggest-selling medication in America. And its deals have been getting larger.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the 31-year-old who has set out on an audacious biotech project with his umbrella corporation Roivant Sciences, has snagged another biopharma veteran to head one of his company's member firms. This time, it's former Celgene president and COO Dr. Jacqualyn "Jackie" Fouse, who will be helming Dermavant— focusing on dermatology drugs. There are now five different spawned biotechs, some public, some private, which are tackling everything from women's health to rare diseases to Alzheimer's. 

Food conglomerate Nestle is continuing to expand its health care ambitions with a new venture into microbiome-based diagnostics. There isn't a whole lot of available detail on Nestle's new venture with Enterome, but it will reportedly focus on inflammatory bowel and liver disease diagnostics.

The company, an arm of Alphabet, is using mosquitoes infected with a sterilizing bacteria to fight dengue and Zika. Alphabet’s life sciences arm, Verily, says it has built a robot that can raise a million mosquitoes a week and has used it to produce infertile male insects. The company has started releasing the first batches of what will total 20 million sterilized mosquitoes in Fresno County, California.

Harvard professor John Brownstein has worked with tech companies ranging from Uber to Google as they plot their first steps into the health sector. He's passionate about how to derive health-related insights from the digital exhaust.

Using smartphones to study public health requires reliable data—and researchers, even at well-connected universities like Stanford, still have a hard time getting their hands on the truly good stuff.

Non-communicable diseases should be renamed socially transmitted conditions to underline the fact that their prevalence is driven by urbanization, industrialization, and poverty.

A mass meningitis vaccination campaign in New Zealand had an unexpected benefit — it helped protect people against gonorrhea too.

Contrary to the hopes of its supporters, indication-based drug pricing will result in higher prices for patients who benefit the most from a given drug, higher utilization by patients who benefit least, higher overall spending, and higher manufacturer profits.

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If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’d love to hear which specific topics or sections you would like to know more about and in general, if you have any suggestions, please do write to me at: [email protected]