Top Story

Morning Read: Valeant slashes sales staff for women’s libido pill Addyi

Also, Gilead made a deal worth up to $1.2 billion to acquire drugs that treat NASH and liver cancer.

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TOP STORIES

Valeant is cutting the job of dozens of sales reps who market Addyi, the much-hyped female libido pill that gained regulatory approval last year. Indeed, the troubled Valeant is firing the 140-strong contract sales team that markets Addyi, as well as another 143 reps that sell dermatology products. — STAT

For a cool $400 million upfront, Gilead Sciences just acquired a subsidiary of Cambridge-based Nimbus Therapeutics for its drugs that treat NASH, or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. The deal also includes up to $800 million in development milestones. — Forbes

LIFE SCIENCES

A new set of rules by the U.S. Treasury Department are designed to make it harder for companies to do tax inversions — moving their tax addresses offshore. The move could threaten Pfizer and Allergan’s $160 billion deal. — The Wall Street Journal

FDA has approved a new HIV medication from Gilead Sciences called Descovy, which is a combination of existing drug emtricitabine and new drug tenofovir alafenamide. It works by interfering with the proteins that the HIV virus needs to multiply. — Business Insider

Boston-based AstraZeneca spinout Entasis just raised a $50 million Series B round to develop a new line of therapies for drug-resistant bacteria. Its lead drug candidate is meant to treat uncomplicated gonorrhea. — Xconomy

The National Cancer Institute just named 28 members to a panel that will guide Vice President Joe Biden’s National Cancer Moonshot Initiative. NantWorks CEO Patrick Soon-Shiong will be one of these members, of course. — BioCentury

Israeli startup Metabomed just raised $18 million in a Series A round for a small molecule drug that targets the metabolics of cancer. The startup is part of Merck’s incubator in Israel. — Globes

About two dozen Harvard Medical School and Tufts University students — along health activist groups — protested in front of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, saying that its report that it costs nearly $3 billion to bring drugs to market is “biased.” — FierceBiotech

PAYERS-PROVIDERS

Mount Sinai Health System has launched a Joint Replacement Bundled Payment Program for hip and knee procedures with 32BJ Health Fund, the health fund for the largest property service workers union in the United States. The program partners include the health system, Mount Sinai Hospital, 32BJ and Empire BlueCross BlueShield. — PRWeb

As a reflection of stabilizing medical costs, the U.S. government will pay the insurers that provide Medicare Advantage plans to elderly and disabled Americans about 0.85 percent more on average next year than this year. — Reuters

Sentara Healthcare has become the first health system to make aggregate patient survey ratings of its urgent care centers accessible to the public. — Becker’s Hospital Review

TECHNOLOGY

Intel just roped in Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Ontario Institute for Cancer Research as part of its Collaborative Cancer Cloud. The idea of this platform is to help ensure large scale patient data sharing, without compromising security or privacy. — FierceBiotechIT

About 42 percent of insured consumers using mobile health apps or devices said their primary motivator to use such digital health tools is knowing their numbers. MobiHealthNews

Ransomware: The buzzword that could be healthcare’s downfall, if headlines over the past few weeks mean anything. — HISTalk

Health IT vendor Drchrono added four new application partners: Health Gorilla, Inuvio, Medisafe and Wink Health. — Healthcare IT News

POLITICS

Climate change will likely exacerbate a slew of public health issues, a new White House report concludes. As the Earth warms, more pollutants and allergens will fill the air, leading to worsening health globally. — The Hill

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is building out a national evaluation system to more efficiently conduct medical device review and regulatory decision-making. — FDA

A LITTLE BIT EXTRA

Ever wonder what’s the key to attractiveness? Science has the answer: It’s about understanding where the partner is coming from, emotionally. –Time

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