One of the hottest areas of the pharmaceutical industry today is immunology, in which drugmakers develop treatments for immune-based conditions—like Lupus or Celiac disease—which affect approximately 50 million people in the US, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Pharma companies and investors have heavily funded the immunology space in recent years. Biopharmaceutical company Biogen, for example, announced in May it would drop a max total of $1.2 billion to acquire immunology drugmaker Human Immunology Biosciences, also known as HI-Bio. Also in mid-May, private equity firm Blackstone Life Sciences invested roughly $300 million in immunology and inflammation drug startup Uniquity Bio.

And the immunology field is expected to only get more popular: Market research firm Fortune Business Insights projected that the global immunology market will grow to $257 billion by 2032, compared to $98 billion in 2023, which was roughly 6% of the overall global pharmaceutical market that year, according to Statista estimates.

So, why immunology? There are a few factors that can explain why the medicines are so popular right now, Kiran Reddy, senior managing director at Blackstone Life Sciences, told Healthcare Brew.

A big one is how much money they’ve made for pharma companies.

Keep reading here.—MA

Is it okay to ask your co-worker how much they make? Is Gen Z set up for failure in the workplace? Should you really bring your whole self to work? Each week on Per My Last Email, Morning Brew’s resident career experts, Kaila and Kyle—whose careers have collectively spanned the corporate, government, nonprofit, and startup sectors—debate the trickiest challenges in work life and share insightful (and sometimes hilarious) tactics on how to overcome them.

Listen now.

LGBTQ+ patients have long experienced inequities in health, and research shows they are more likely to experience substance use, sexually transmitted diseases, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, bullying, isolation, rejection, anxiety, depression, and suicide.

A new study from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston found that LGBTQ+ patients are still experiencing disparities in cancer care.

The study, which surveyed 817 LGBTQ+ cancer patients and 115 oncology professionals around the US, found that only 24% of LGBTQ+ cancer patients feel comfortable sharing their gender identity with their provider. Only 4% of patients feel like their care team treated their partner with respect, and only 34% of their partners/caregivers felt welcome at appointments.

About 7% of people in the US identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and 1.6% of adults are transgender or nonbinary, and according to Dana-Farber, LGBTQ+ patients have a higher risk of developing certain cancers, including Kaposi sarcoma, cervical, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, lung, liver, and anal. The institute’s new research suggests that there’s still a way to go to address health disparities affecting LGBTQ+ patients.

“When you want to take quality care of somebody, you have to know who they are,” Shail Maingi, the lead author of the study, told Healthcare Brew.

Keep reading here.—CM

As US healthcare costs accelerate toward a familiar position of outpacing overall inflation, no one is coming to save employers, said Marybeth Gray, an executive in health benefits consulting for Trion, a Marsh McLennan HR agency. But being alone doesn’t mean having no power to change things.

At the CFO Leadership Council conference in June, Gray said the benefits and finance teams can lower costs with insurance carriers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBM)—no matter how big they are—with more engaged and informed negotiating.

But first… A company can’t make an informed decision on benefits without the CFO, Gray said. “We need to know the aggregate business temperature to know what to do on the benefits side,” she told CFOs, and for that “we need you at the table.”

Hello, Goliath. Yes, three PBMs over 80% of the market, Gray said. But they still want and need your business, she told CFO Brew, so you can negotiate better deals if you know how they design their formularies. One example: Some PBMs have tried to charge the name-brand drug price for a generic medication because it was the only one in a certain class of drugs. Gray said that her agency’s contract doesn’t accept that. “We said, ‘That is absolute nonsense,’” she said. “If it’s a generic, it’s priced as a generic.”

Read the whole story here on CFO Brew.—GD

Safety first. Zoro is participating in Safety Month. This week, it’s all about hand + eye protection awareness, and what better way to take care of both than with Zoro’s quality selection of PPE and workplace equipment? Keep business running smoothly and safely with the right products on hand and in sight. Shop now on Zoro.com.