Gilead sets blockbuster bar for Yeztugo’s first full year on the market

 

With initial patients coming back for their second dose of Gilead’s twice-yearly PrEP injection, the pharma thinks the shot will hit $1 billion in sales this year, serving as “a cornerstone in Gilead’s revenue growth story.”

Gilead has set a high revenue bar for its twice-yearly PrEP injection Yeztugo, predicting that the drug will hit $1 billion in sales this year as access to and confidence in the prophylactic improve.

“Yeztugo continues to show an unprecedented launch trajectory for a new long-acting PrEP product,” Chief Commercial Officer Johanna Mercier told investors during the company’s Q1 earnings call on Thursday afternoon. The PrEP product made $166 million in the quarter, up 72% from its $96 million revenue in the previous quarter.

Yeztugo was approved in June 2025 and launched shortly after. While this timing precludes a year-on-year comparison of its sales, Gilead is now seeing patients return for their second yearly shots, and the feedback has been good so far.

“HCPs [healthcare professionals] are starting the second injection and thinking it’s a lot easier, access is easier,” she told investors on the call, noting that “approximately 95% of individuals” are covered in the U.S., allowing them to access Yeztugo with $0 co-pay.

Aside from accessibility, Mercier noted that “the confidence in the injection and the experience for the people getting the injection is also better.”

“We’re in a really good situation,” she continued. Yeztugo is now the leading long-acting injectable in the switch market—capturing those who transfer from one type of PrEP to Yeztugo—but Gilead is also seeing “higher-than-expected” uptake among patients naive to HIV prophylaxis, Mercier said on the call.

These trends, along with what Mercier called Yeztugo’s “incredibly strong performance,” drove the pharma’s confidence in raising its 2026 sales target for the product to $1 billion. Gilead had previously forecasted roughly $800 million for Yeztugo’s revenue this year, while investors were expecting around $900 million, according to BMO Capital Markets.

“Yeztugo growth/guidance raise validate our expectation that the product will be a cornerstone in Gilead’s revenue growth story,” the analysts told investors in a note on Thursday evening.

Aside from Yeztugo, analysts on Gilead’s call also expressed interest in the upcoming potential approval for anito-cel, the pharma’s CAR T therapy for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. The drug is currently under FDA review, with a target action date of Dec. 23.

On Thursday, Gilead said that the pharma is focused on laying the groundwork for a potential launch early next year, but that the team is also looking ahead to what could come after.

“We’re really excited about the potential for anito-cel going into earlier lines, whether it’s newly diagnosed multiple myeloma or even in smoldering where patients aren’t technically diagnosed with the disease,” Cindy Perettie, executive vice president of Kite, said on the call, adding that the company is currently working on program designs for these settings. “We think it’s going to be a really important option for patients in earlier lines.”

In the first quarter, Gilead clocked total revenues of $7 billion, a 4% year-on-year growth. HIV remained the pharma’s bread-and-butter, with sales hitting $5.03 billion worldwide. Biktarvy, the HIV-1 antiretroviral pill, brought in $3.36 billion and reigned as Gilead’s top-selling product.

https://www.biospace.com/business/gilead-sets-blockbuster-bar-for-yeztugos-first-full-year-on-the-market

Virginia’s gerrymander flop leaves Democrats frustrated — and dangerous

 “Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander did not age well.

On Friday, the House minority leader found out that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not quite as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to virtually eliminate Republican representation in the purple state. 

The court just cooked the party’s infamous lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority in the House of Representatives.

It also cooked the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic establishment, which tossed aside any pretense of principle in a raw political gambit.

The resulting faceplant is nothing short of legendary: Spanberger’s Democrats have succeeded in alienating half of the state. 

For the governor, the court’s decision was particularly embarrassing.

Before assuming power, Spanberger denounced gerrymandering as “detrimental to our democracy and weakens the individual voices that form our electorates.”

She ran as a moderate, but Spanberger immediately turned sharply left once in office and called for the most extreme gerrymander in the nation.

The court found that effort was not only unconstitutional, but “wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”

It characterized the state’s position as “a story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail.”

While some of us had previously expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to circumvent the state constitution, the media almost exclusively relied on liberal experts who predicted the new districts would be upheld.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger speaks during a “Virginians For Fair Elections” canvassing event in Woodbridge, Virginia, US, on Saturday, April 18, 2026.Bloomberg via Getty Images

It was a calculated risk for Democrats, who have now burned their bridges with Virginia conservative and Republican voters.

As Winston Churchill said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” 

Exhilarating and unforgettable: In a purple state where politicians often require crossover votes to prevail, the redistricting push was not just partisan but personal for voters.

National Democrats will soon “find out” whether Jeffries was right to prematurely celebrate a victory that seemed to secure his anticipated elevation to Speaker of the House. 

The party is facing a potentially catastrophic reversal of fortune. 

When Democrats declared a gerrymandering war, some of us warned that the party, with its already heavily gerrymandered blue states, had far more to lose than the GOP did.

It was particularly comical when Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey pledged to join the redistricting fray, even though her state is so badly gerrymandered that it’s elected zero Republicans to the House since the 1990s.

Virginia, a state long opposed to gerrymandering, has been considered the fairest state in the country, with a distribution of congressional seats that closely matches its partisan divide.

Once Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican representation, total war broke out — and now red states like Florida and Tennessee have moved forward with their own redistricting.

On top of the fact that GOP states have more room for partisan gerrymandering, the Virginia Supreme Court decision comes on the heels of the US Supreme Court’s ban on racial gerrymandering.

That means a dozen or more Democratic districts could now be deemed unconstitutional — and Louisiana and Mississippi are moving to redistrict in line with the Supreme Court’s decision.

The result could be a dramatic shift in districts favoring the GOP.

To make matters worse for the Democratic Party, a new census in 2030 will correct the mistakes that erroneously awarded them multiple districts after the 2020 census.

Those corrections, and the ongoing exodus from high-tax blue states to booming red ones, could translate into even more congressional gains for the GOP.

That prospect of a political apocalypse has Democratic strategists pushing for radical changes in Washington before it’s too late.

Top priority: packing the Supreme Court as soon as they retake power.

As Virginia has shown, an independent court can unravel the best-laid plans. 

Democratic politicians, pundits and professors have been openly pushing for expanding the high court to 13 members with four new liberal additions, in order to rubber-stamp the radical changes needed to keep the party in power. 

James Carville recently told Democratic politicians that they have no choice but to pack the court, declaring “F–k it . . . Just do it.”

He suggested, however, that they might not want to tell the voters.

“Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it,” he said. “Just do it.”

Last week, Jeffries declared the Supreme Court “illegitimate” as he blasted its ban on racial gerrymandering.

After the Virginia court’s ruling, the frustrated Democratic establishment is ever more likely to echo him — and to go beyond. 

Many Democrats are now “all in” with this radical agenda.

With the courts declaring their redistricting efforts unconstitutional, it is the constitutional system itself that will now have to go.  

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

https://nypost.com/2026/05/08/opinion/virginias-gerrymander-flop-makes-democrats-more-dangerous/

Murders up 300% in NYC subway system, robberies surge: NYPD data

 Violence is up in the Big Apple’s transit system — with robberies and murders surging — even as overall crime underground is down, according to NYPD data.

A maniac repeat-offender pushed an elderly man to his death on Manhattan subway stairs Thursday, cops said — the fourth subway homicide this year, a 300% spike from the one murder at the same time last year.

Cops brought Rhamell Burke, described as an “emotionally disturbed person,” to Bellevue Hospital’s psych ward at 3:30 p.m. Thursday. He was released an hour later and at 9:30 p.m. allegedly shoved Ross Falzone, a 76-year-old retired teacher, down the stairs of a Chelsea subway station.  

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Rhamell Burke allegedly pushed a man to his death in the subway.Robert Mecea for New York Post

Robbery has also shot up by 18% so far in 2026 over the same span last year, to 156 from 132, according to NYPD data. 

Felony assault is down 6% so far this year, to 209 from 221, but has increased 16% over the same period in 2024 and 60% from seven years ago.

Misdemeanor assault — typically the charge for a punch — is up 15% so far this year from 500 to 573, and 68% from seven years ago.

Major crimes in transit overall, which include murder, rape, robbery, felony assault and grand larceny, are down less than a percentage point from 733 to 732, according to NYPD data.

Tickets for fare beating have dropped 8% so far this year, from 40,036 to 36,659, and 14% over the same span two years ago, according to the data. 

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Three elderly people were slashed on April 11 by a man with a machete at Grand Central Station.Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post

“What’s not surprising is that there seems to be a significant increase in certain offenses that is coupled with a decrease in enforcement,” said Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute.

Outside of transit the Big Apple has been seeing historic lows in crime, including the lowest monthly murder count in recorded history with 19 in April 2026, following the safest first quarter for shootings and murders, which was driven by precision policing and increased officer hiring, according to officials.

“Last year was the safest year on New York City’s subway since 2009, excluding the pandemic years,” an NYPD spokesperson said.

So far this year, grand larcenies in transit have dropped 2.7% from 368 to 358.

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Major crimes in transit overall, which include murder, rape, robbery, felony assault and grand larceny, are down less than a percentage point from 733 to 732.

The felony assaults include a large number of assaults against police officers in transit — 28% or 58 so far this year, compared to 29% or 64 in the same period last year, the spokesperson said.

Out of the 157 robbery reports this year, 103 have resulted in an arrest, the spokesperson said, adding that some of the robberies happened after people fell asleep on the train.

“But there is always more we can do to ensure people feel safe, and that is why we’ve recently added more than 175 officers to the subway every day, in addition to the normal cops who are always within the transit system,” the spokesperson said.

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Out of the 157 robbery reports this year, 103 have resulted in an arrest.Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post

“Their focus is on preventing violence and responding immediately when something happens. They work to ensure that the millions of people who ride our subways each day can do so safely.”

The subway murders included a beloved 83-year-old veteran who was randomly pushed onto the tracks by a stranger on March 8 and a 41-year-old man was shot dead on a Bronx subway platform when an argument between the victim and the gunman turned deadly.

A 55-year-old man died after he was punched on the northbound C/E platform at Penn Station around 7 p.m. March 14. Nassadir Tate, 21, was arrested and charged with assault but was later released pending an autopsy report.

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Shooting incidents are up so far this year — 2 to 3 — over the same period last year.AP

In one recent violent incident, a machete-wielding man slashed three elderly people in the subway at Grand Central Station on April 11, causing terrified straphangers to flee. A detective working at the Manhattan transit hub shot and killed the slasher.

Terrifying incidents like those can make people feel less safe, Mangual said.

He cited the NYPD’s Citywide Quality of Life stat, which shows total calls about complaints in the subway are up 34%, to 30,417, so far this year from 22,787 during the same period last year.

“I would say that’s a canary in the coal mine,” he said. “When you have these quality of life complaints, you know, going up like that, that tends to signal that something else is wrong in the system, signals that there’s less enforcement, that signals that there’s less oversight.”

Subway riders said they were keeping their heads on a swivel.

“I’ve witnessed hostile violent behavior, there needs to be more police on the subways,” Upper East Side teacher Abel Navaro, 45, said Friday.

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Straphangers said they’d like to see more police in the system.Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Bri Soekoe, a 42-year-old Broadway producer, said she feels like things have gone downhill in her 25 years taking the subway.

“I do feel like crime is up in the subway,” she said. “I’ve experienced a lot more turnstile hopping and a lot more harassing on subway cars.”

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Subway shove suspect Bairon Hernandez seen on the platform in a red hood in a video filmed by one of the victims.Obtained by NYPost

Harlem engineer Susie Gonzales, 50, said she worries about her safety.

“As a mature single female, it’s dangerous,” she said. “I saw someone pull out a machete on the 1 line.””

Peter Schepper, 61, works at an Upper East Side frame shop his friend was pushed on the tracks.

“They pulled him out before the train came,” he said. “It was a crazy homeless person who pushed him.”

https://nypost.com/2026/05/09/us-news/murders-robberies-surge-in-nyc-subway-nypd-data-shows/