The deal with China’s Rona Therapeutics, worth up to about $1 billion, gives Roche a gene-silencing drug aimed at ALK7, a switch in fat cells. It is a bet on what comes after GLP-1s — and it is still early.
Immunotherapy helps the immune system fight cancer, and for some patients it produces remissions that last years. A plain-language guide to checkpoint inhibitors and other types, who benefits, and the side effects that can appear months later.
Adding BNT113 to Keytruda did not delay the cancer’s progression at an interim check. The trial continues to see whether patients live longer — but the result is another reminder of how hard it is to improve on Keytruda.
In its first global guideline on childhood obesity, the WHO says medicines such as GLP-1 drugs should be considered only for adolescents, and only after a supervised lifestyle program has not worked. No drugs or surgery for children nine and under.
Lupus can affect almost any organ, looks different in every patient, and is often diagnosed late. A plain-language guide to the disease, the kidney complication doctors watch for, today’s treatments and why some are so expensive.
For stage III colon cancers with a DNA-repair defect, adding the immunotherapy to standard chemotherapy halved the risk of the cancer returning. It is the first immunotherapy combination approved for use after surgery in this setting.
Gene therapy adds a working gene; gene editing rewrites the one you have. A plain-language guide to how each works, what is already approved, what they cost, and the risks that still limit them.
Adding paricalcitol, a prescription vitamin D analog, to standard chemotherapy raised the tumor response rate from 9% to 42% in 36 patients. It works not on the cancer cells but on the scar-like shield around them.
ai3Bio, formed from two startups and backed with $48 million, is developing an mRNA treatment that tells inflammatory Th17 cells to self-destruct. It is early — animal data only — but it targets a different culprit from most “immune reset” efforts.
It is one of the most common autoimmune diseases, and one of the slowest to be diagnosed. A plain-language guide to what Sjögren’s is, how it is found, how it is managed today, and the new drugs in late-stage trials.
People with higher blood levels of imidazole propionate, which gut microbes make from a common amino acid, showed more Alzheimer’s-related brain changes and faster cognitive decline. In mice, the molecule worsened the disease directly.
The Swiss drugmaker is paying China’s Abogen $575 million upfront for an injected mRNA that makes a B-cell-killing T-cell engager inside the patient — a possible simpler route to the “immune reset” that CAR-T promised for autoimmune disease.