Elaine Chen

Job update: Starting next week, I’ll be moving onto the biotech team at STAT. As a national biotech reporter, I’ll still be covering obesity, diabetes and heart drugs, but also many other drugs and the biopharma industry as a whole. Send ideas, tips to [email protected]

China has one of the lowest rates of obesity in the developed world. So why has it emerged as one of the top locations for testing the scores of new weight loss drugs cropping up every month? I dig into this for @statnews! statnews.com/2025/06/17/wei…

SCOOP from @adamfeuerstein, @Jasonmmast: Sarepta’s Duchenne therapy faces an "arduous" path back to market, a senior FDA official says, suggesting the treatment’s license could be revoked statnews.com/2025/07/22/fda…

Latest: A race to develop a new class of narcolepsy drugs could not only transform treatment for patients with the rare sleep disorder, but also many people with common health conditions like Alzheimer's and depression who struggle to stay awake. statnews.com/2025/07/22/nar…

BREAKING: In surprise reversal, Sarepta $SRPT says it will pause shipments of Duchenne gene therapy statnews.com/2025/07/21/sar… via @Jasonmmast and me

Peter Marks, the FDA official who overruled his own staff to approve Sarepta's Duchenne gene therapy, told STAT he agreed with the decision to pause shipments after recent deaths. “It does seem like it makes a fair amount of sense to get a better handle on the issues before…

Exclusive: I spoke with 15 employees at the FDA to get a sense of how the agency is functioning since the April 1 layoffs. They described tanking morale and an intensifying staff exodus. Read more here: statnews.com/2025/07/07/fda…

#Breaking: The Senate passed a $4.5 trillion tax cut bill after last-minute changes to its health care provisions, as Republicans scrambled to get their party on board. trib.al/seVM5yZ

.@elaineywchen reported earlier this month that fmr employees feel Novo Nordisk has been overly cautious in the obesity race. Now, Elaine has a great follow-up, where execs acknowledge their past conservative approach and map out the future. statnews.com/2025/06/25/nov…

HHS Secretary RFK Jr.’s reshuffling of a CDC advisory panel may ultimately mean some Americans can no longer count on their insurers to cover the cost of certain vaccines. Via @bobjherman statnews.com/2025/06/24/cdc…

Interesting tidbit, for the times we're in: Vaccine developer Centivax has raised $45 million for a Series A round. The company plans to begin its first clinical trial of a universal flu vaccine early next year.

EXCLUSIVE: STAT takes you inside the FDA to explain the ouster of Nicole Verdun, the agency's chief regulator of cell and gene therapies. Centered around disagreements over Capricor $CAPR Duchenne therapy and Verdun's management style statnews.com/2025/06/20/fda…

BREAKING: Top gene therapy regulator forced out at FDA Nicole Verdun and her deputy placed on leave. statnews.com/2025/06/18/top… via @Jasonmmast and me.

BREAKING: What could be a seminal moment in the decades-long fight against HIV. New from @Jasonmmast @pharmalot statnews.com/2025/06/18/fda…

NEW FROM STAT: The death of a second teenage boy from liver failure caused by a gene therapy from Sarepta $SRPT has left the #Duchenne community angry, fearful and divided over whether to maintain hope in the therapy. Essential new reporting on Elevidys and the consequences of…

Overnight, a team of @statnews reporters examines the new members of the CDC vaccine advisory panel statnews.com/2025/06/11/rfk… via @statnews

This is the big one: Kennedy is firing the entire #ACIP in a move he says is needed to restore confidence in vaccines. "It scares me to think of what’s ahead,” Mike Osterholm of CIDRAP told me. statnews.com/2025/06/09/rfk…

Several hundred NIH employees are coming together to protest many of the agency's moves in the last several months Modeled after Jay Bhattacharya's Great Barrington Declaration, they're asking him to hold true to his promise to embrace dissent statnews.com/2025/06/09/nih…

UnitedHealth Group mistakenly sent us confidential talking points that were prepared for the company's shareholder meeting this week. Casey Ross, @TaraBannow, and I wrote about the document and how executives prepared to assuage investors. statnews.com/2025/06/04/uni…