Researchers in Pittsburgh plan to give weekly semaglutide to adults with alcohol or opioid use disorder and track not just drinking and drug use, but employment, housing and arrests. It is one of the most ambitious tests yet of GLP-1 drugs beyond weight loss.
French biotech Enodia targets Sec61, the gateway cells use to export many proteins. Pfizer will fund discovery of small-molecule drugs that shut that gate for specific disease-causing proteins.
Several blood tests are now FDA-cleared to help detect the brain changes of Alzheimer’s, replacing many PET scans and spinal taps. A plain-language guide to what they measure, what results mean, who they are for and what they cost.
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.