• California/Indiana: Eli Lilly and Nvidia are planning to launch a new co-innovation AI lab to accelerate drug discovery. According to Becker's Hospital Review, the companies will jointly invest up to $1 billion to support the lab over a five-year period. The new lab will operate on Nvidia's BioNeMo platform and Vera Rubin architecture and aims to build a continuous learning system that connects Lilly's wet labs with computational dry labs for round-the-clock AI-assisted experiments. Other goals of the lab include using robotics to scale medicine production, creating digital twins of manufacturing lines, and implementing agentic and multimodal AI in clinical development, manufacturing, and commercial operations. The companies are expected to start working on the lab, which will be based in the Bay Area, this year. (Jeffries, Becker's Hospital Review, 1/12)
• Georgia: According to new CDC data, U.S. overdose deaths have fallen for more than two years, marking the longest drop in deaths in decades. Overdose deaths peaked at almost 110,000 in 2022, but they have continued to fall since then. Between August 2024 and August 2025, there were an estimated 73,000 drug overdose deaths, a 21% decrease from the 92,000 deaths reported in the 12 months before. Overdose deaths decreased in all U.S. states except for Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas, New Mexico, and North Dakota. However, since the data is still preliminary, researchers say these numbers may change as additional data is reported. Although it's not clear why overdose deaths are decreasing, some potential explanations include increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, expanded addiction treatment, changes in how people use drugs, and the impact of billions of dollars in settlements from opioid lawsuits. "Overall I think this continues to be encouraging, especially since we're seeing declines almost across the nation," said Brandon Marshall, a researcher at Brown University who studies overdose trends. (Associated Press/MedPage Today, 1/14)
• New York: New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) has filed an insider trading lawsuit against Robert Kramer, former CEO of Emergent BioSolutions. The lawsuit accuses Kramer of turning a $7.6 million profit from the sale of Emergent's stock before negative information about the company was known to the public. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government awarded Emergent a $628 million contract to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and AstraZeneca. However, Emergent soon discovered millions of doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine had been contaminated, with cross-contamination later impacting J&J's doses as well. According to the lawsuit, Kramer set up a plan to sell company stock after learning about the contamination but before the information became known to the public. The stock sales occurred in January and February 2021 while the contamination issue went public in March and April 2021. Aside from the lawsuit against Kramer, James said Emergent would be required to pay $900,000 as part of a settlement in connection with the insider trading case. This is not the first time Emergent and its leaders have been accused of insider trading. In 2024, investors received a $40 million settlement after filing a class action lawsuit against company executives over insider trading. (Vigdor/Hamby, New York Times, 1/15)

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