Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional information on Pear’s financial state. The assets of prescription digital therapeutics maker Pear Therapeutics have been broken up and sold at auction for $6.05 million after the company filed for bankruptcy in April. According to the court filing, Pear’s assets were split between four bidders: Digital therapeutics company Click Therapeutics, Harvest BIO, sleep tech company Nox Health Group and health technology company Welt. The largest bid of the group came from Nox Health, which will obtain Pear’s assets related to Somryst, a prescription digital therapeutic that uses cognitive behavioral therapy for…
Author: Abhay Panchal
Having tasted blockbuster success with its irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) drug Linzess, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals is willing to pay $1 billion for the chance to make lightning strike twice. The all-cash transaction will see Ironwood put up $17 per share of VectaBio to acquire the Swiss biotech at an 80% premium on the company’s average trading price over the last 90 days. To foot the bill, Ironwood will draw on its cash on hand as well as a four-year $500 million credit facility set up specifically for this purpose.
Want to know what’s going on across the length of your gastrointestinal tract? Swallowing a smart capsule device developed by Envivo Bio could give you the answer, according to a new study. Current medical procedures like endoscopy and testing of stool samples can provide important information on the environment in the gut—the microbes, proteins and metabolites that are within it—but are limited to certain areas such as the stomach and lower intestines.
Novo Nordisk A/S’s weight-loss drug semaglutide, sold as the once-weekly Wegovy shot, was effective as a daily pill in a study. People with obesity or who were overweight and had another health problem lost an average of 15.1% of their body weight when assigned to take the pill, compared with a 2.4% loss in a group given a placebo, the Danish drugmaker said. Both groups also made lifestyle changes. About 85% of the semaglutide group lost 5% or more of their body weight, compared with about 26% on placebo. Gastrointestinal side effects were the most common.
A study published this month in Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network shows telehealth visits consistently outperformed in-person visits in cancer care when both were available. Here, Sam Holliday, co-founder and CEO of Oshi Health, explains the most important takeaways from this study and how these findings translate to gastroenterology care.
Two weeks ago, I saw my 39-year-old patient with long-standing ulcerative colitis in clinic for new onset bleeding per rectum. She mentioned needing to attend an upcoming conference, and was eager to get to the source of the problem and start treatment right away. Given her new symptoms, we decided on an urgent colonoscopy the following week, so we could diagnose the underlying cause and begin treatment. Prior to this episode, her ulcerative colitis had been in remission, and given her increased risk of colon cancer from long-standing disease, she has been undergoing surveillance colonoscopy to look for dysplasia or…
In this podcast episode, Douglas Rex, MD, discusses the importance of intent-to-treat for colorectal screenings, how screening technology has transformed gastroenterology practice and more.
For physicians overall, intriguing trends showed up this year — an improvement in gender-based pay disparity in primary care; a growing disillusionment with Medicare payments, as a somewhat larger share of physicians declined to take new patients on Medicare; and a general increase in pay. More than 10,000 physicians in over 29 specialties, including gastroenterology, told us how much they earn, how hard they work, and how they feel about their income.
ChatGPT-3 and ChatGPT-4, OpenAI’s language processing models, flunked the 2021 and 2022 American College of Gastroenterology Self-Assessment Tests, according to a study published earlier this week in The American Journal of Gastroenterology. ChatGPT is a large language model that generates human-like text in response to users’ questions or statements. Researchers at The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research asked the two versions of ChatGPT to answer questions on the tests to evaluate its abilities and accuracy. Each test includes 300 multiple-choice questions. Researchers copied and pasted each multiple-choice question and answer, excluding those with image requirements, into the AI-powered platform.
CHICAGO — A cell-free DNA blood-based test displayed 83% sensitivity for colorectal cancer detection and 90% specificity in an average-risk population, similar to the performance of current noninvasive screening options. “Colorectal cancer screening is recommended for everyone in the United States,” Daniel C. Chung, MD, director of the High-Risk GI Cancer Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, told attendees at Digestive Disease Week. “But, despite the widespread availability of many screening options, there remain persistent and significant barriers, and unfortunately, screening rates remain suboptimal. In fact, only 59% of eligible individuals aged 45 and over…