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Independent drugstores are opening up a new front in their battle against pharmacy benefit managers. The National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents more than 19,400 pharmacies, has formed a limited liability company that aims to recover direct and indirect remuneration fees from PBMs. (Berryman, 10/16)

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed banning hair-straightening products that contain or emit formaldehyde, more than a decade after the cosmetic industry’s own experts declared the products unsafe. Frequent use of chemical hair straighteners has been linked to a possible increase in the risk of developing cancer of the uterus, which is also called endometrial cancer. Women who use the products often face more than twice the risk of those who do not. (Rabin and Jewett, 10/16)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the expanded use of Merck & Co's blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda in early-stage patients with non-small cell lung cancer who can get their tumors removed surgically. The U.S. health regulator's approval extends Keytruda's use in combination with chemotherapy as a treatment given before surgery to shrink the size of the tumor in patients. (10/16)

The Food and Drug Administration is following through on its promise to regulate more health software tools, starting with a public reprimand of Johnson & Johnson’s heart pump company, Abiomed. (Lawrence, 10/16)

Here at ObesityWeek, one of the largest conferences on obesity, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are displaying more than a dozen studies that together carry the message: Our blockbuster weight loss treatments will be worth it for society. (Chen, 10/17)

People with obesity often go underrepresented in drug development trials, a critical gap that researchers say leaves drugmakers and doctors unsure of efficacy or risks in that patient population. (Nayak, 10/16)

Lotte Bjerre Knudsen was still getting used to all the empty benches in her lab when she ran into a tall man with black wide-framed glasses in the hallway: Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, the new head of research at the Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, and her new boss. He was just one of many changes she had found upon returning from maternity leave earlier that week — along with the departures of nearly every colleague with whom she had spent the last three years struggling to create a potential blockbuster medicine. (Molteni, 10/17)