| The health industry's biggest, noisiest annual celebration of itself, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, is all but wrapped up in San Francisco. We're all one week older. What did we learn?
For one, that the biggest drugmakers aren't in a hurry to do splashy M&A deals. Past conferences have seen headline-snatching mergers like last year's takeover of Celgene by Bristol-Myers Squibb. This year, though, seismic deals that force everyone else to make a cold, hard appraisal of their own plans were absent. Sure, 2020 has just begun, and companies are awash in cash. But with valuations parked at high levels and some big buyers on the sidelines as they digest recent takeovers, modest deals seem more likely—take for example Eli Lilly's $1.1 billion pact last week for skin-drug maker Dermira. The week's unlikeliest newsmaker may have been Patrick Soon-Shiong. Shares of his NantKwest surged 91% Monday after he told Bloomberg Television an experimental cancer therapy had a promising early result in treating a single patient with pancreatic cancer. Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times and a part-owner of the NBA's L.A. Lakers, has made sweeping claims before, and has his skeptics. They came out and sold in force on Tuesday, sending NantKwest down 28%. (Today, it's up 40%. Try to keep up!) Ultimately, the one thing nearly everyone present seemed to agree on is just how exhausted they are by the conference itself. With hotel rooms going for nightly rates that in most other cities are monthly rents, with even a table for a meeting costing $150 an hour—and some business meetings happening in bathrooms when even those pricey slots vanish—frustration was palpable. "It's not that bad," JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon sought to assure. But the pocket-draining costs inside and at times squalid conditions outside reflect a growing divide that's increasingly shaping U.S. politics—and by extension, health care itself.—Tim Annett Here's what else we're watching: Alzheimer's bet. Biogen said this week it paid $75 million for a Pfizer drug that could be a treatment for sundowning in Alzheimer's patients. The deal extends Biogen's big wager on therapies for the harrowing disease. When you're smiling. SmileDirectClub will sell its teeth-straighteners to dentists and orthodontists (though some have tut-tutted at the company's approach). That helped the stock reclaim some of its post-IPO losses. Vaping's effects. Juul received roughly 2,600 complaints about adverse health effects related to its e-cigarette in its first three years in operation, a rate the company says is very low. Juul is reviewing its strategy in Asia. Listen up. This season on the Prognosis podcast, we tell how the $4 trillion American health-care system became so expensive and inefficient, and what some people are trying to do about it. This week, hear how one doctors' group bet that competing with their old employers would better serve patients. Download it here on Apple devices, and here on Android.  Got this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it every Thursday by clicking here.
We want to hear from you. If you have feedback, questions or potential story ideas, reach out to me at tannett@bloomberg.net | 
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