Buzz Newsletter 04/30/2026

Welcome to the April 30 edition of the GPhA Buzz Newsletter.

 

This weekly round up of pharmacy news and information is a member benefit, and if you are having difficulty receiving all GPhA emails, please whitelist our domain as well as glueup.com. You can find instructions for that on our website here.

After years of court cases and settlements, the maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, was sentenced in the US Department of Justice federal investigation. The company as we know it will be dissolved by the end of the week and replaced with an organization focused on the public good. 

 

The sentence was handed down only to the company itself, not its owners or any of its employees. However, the Sackler family is responsible for contributing $7 billion over 15 years as part of the opioid settlement agreement. GPhA is working with UGA on a project to distribute naloxone to rural pharmacies at no cost as part of the settlement grants in Georgia. 

AstraZeneca announced this week that their new lupus medication, SAPHNELO, has been approved by the FDA. SAPHNELO is a weekly self-administered injection that negates the need for a physician administered IV infusions, therefore making the medication available to more patients. 

 

The Lupus Foundation of America wholeheartedly supports the approval, with President and CEO Louis Vetter saying "“The FDA approval of a subcutaneous administration option for anifrolumab is an exciting milestone for the lupus community because it offers people with systemic lupus erythematosus more convenience and choice of where and how they want to receive treatment.”

Brazilian researchers found that daily Vitamin D supplementation may improve the efficacy of chemotherapy. If true, a low-dose, inexpensive supplement could replace some of the high cost medications currently used to boost chemotherapy response. 

 

Though the sample studied was small, the differences in effectiveness were not, with 43% of the patients taking Vitamin D experiencing a disappearance of their cancer, versus 24% of patients in the placebo group. 

Boehringer Ingleheim has been putting a new dual-acting obesity drug through its paces and Phase 3 trial results look promising, with patients on the treatment losing 17% of their body fat versus the placebo group, which lost only 3%. In addition to the weight loss success, the drug (survodutide) may also help prevent significant muscle loss, which is a side effect of some GLP-1s on the market. 

 

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer recently reached deals with several generic manufacturers to extend the patent on their rare disease med Vyndamax (tafamidis) through the end of this decade and into the next. 

The FDA has been making noise about employing methods to review clinical trial data in real time, thus speeding up approval processes for new drugs. It appears the time has finally come to make that happen, with Amgen and AstraZeneca stepping up to be the first companies to participate. 

 

In fact both have drugs in trials now that are reporting safety and efficacy information back to the FDA before the end of the trial, and before the data has been analyzed fully. Both companies have expressed their desires to cut back on the administrative timelines and get medications to market faster. 

A massive prehistoric snake fossil was found in India recently, and it has us thinking about the (admittedly terrible) horror movie, Anaconda, where a giant snake chased people through the jungles and rivers. 

 

That could have been reality, had we lived 47 million years ago in India, where the remains of the 49 foot long snake were discovered. The fossil find suggests the large and powerful snake was rather slow moving and hunted by ambush, much like anacondas do today. 

Join 300+ of your colleagues and friends for a week full of insightful CE courses, lunches, and networking on beautiful Amelia Island. We are working hard to build the full schedule now, and can't wait to see you all June 18-21! 

 

Our 2026 Spring Region Meetings have been a big success, and we've seen good turnout across the state. We've enjoyed presentations from sponsors, and Region 5 & 7 held a joint meeting with axe throwing! 

 

We've got two more scheduled. Register today for the Region 11 Spring Meeting, sponsored by Wegovy, on Thursday, May 7 at 6:30pm at Cucina 503 in Augusta, or the Region 12 Spring Meeting on May 21 at 6:30pm at Saltwater Fishery in Dublin.