Biotech & Longevity · Saturday, 19 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

One brain implant let two paralysed men speak and gesture at the same time, through an avatar. A wireless one let a Michigan woman phone her grandchildren.

Biotech & Longevity 22 sources

A team at UCSF read words and hand movements from the same brain implant in two men who cannot move or speak, and a company, Paradromics, said its wireless implant gave a 68-year-old woman back conversation.

84%

of his attempted phrases read correctly, for the man paralysed by a stroke

pure guessing would be right about 9% of the time [1]

253 vs 400+

electrodes on UCSF's wired implant and on Paradromics' wireless one

UCSF's sits on the brain's surface over the strip that controls speech and movement [3][2]

patients planned for Paradromics' trial

the first, a 68-year-old woman, was implanted in June at University of Michigan Health [2]

The lead story — what happened

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) showed that one brain implant let two paralysed men speak and gesture at the same time. [3][4]
The words appeared on a screen and the gestures were acted out by an avatar, a moving on-screen figure made to look like each man. [1][4]
The study was published in Nature Neuroscience, a scientific journal, on 14 September, and was paid for by the US National Institutes of Health. [4][5]
One man was paralysed by a stroke in his brainstem, the part of the brain that joins it to the spinal cord. [3] The other has ALS, a disease that kills the nerves that move the muscles. [1]
Both had lost almost all movement in their arms and legs, and neither could speak more than unclear sounds. [1]
The implant is a sheet of 253 electrodes laid on the surface of the brain, over the strip that controls speech and body movement. [3]
The men tried to say set phrases such as hello and to wave, nod or clap, and computer programs learned which brain signals went with each attempt. [1]
For the man who had the stroke, the programs read his intended gestures correctly 88% of the time and his phrases 84% of the time. [1]
For the man with ALS the figures were 66% and 70%, against about 9% for pure guessing. [1]
Speaking and gesturing together made brain signals that were not simply the two added up. [4] Programs trained on both at once decoded them better. [4][5]
Henri Lorach, a researcher at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, called the work robust but said the set of phrases and gestures is small and daily use needs higher accuracy. [1]
The UCSF system is wired to computers outside the head. [4] Edward Chang, the UCSF brain surgeon who led it, said a fully implanted wireless version will be tried soon. [4]
Separately, the company Paradromics said a 68-year-old Michigan woman who lost most of her speech held conversations through its wireless implant, including phone calls with her grandchildren. [2]
Its Connexus implant carries more than 400 electrodes and was put in during June at University of Michigan Health. [2] The company says it also produced speech when she only imagined the words. [2]
Paradromics' result came from the company's own announcement, and its trial is planned to include 10 patients with stroke, ALS and similar conditions. [2]
For people paralysed like this, the usual tool today is typing with eye-tracking, which the NIH calls slow, limited and tiring. [4]

Who is involved

Edward Chang

a brain surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco; led the speech-and-gesture study [4]
Samantha Brosler

a bioengineering PhD student at UCSF and the study's first author; said most implants restore one function at a time [3]
Paradromics

a US company making a wireless brain implant; announced its first patient's conversations [2]
Henri Lorach

a researcher at the University of Lausanne; said daily use needs higher accuracy [1]

How it unfolded

June Paradromics implants its first patient at University of Michigan Health [2]
14 Sep UCSF's speech-and-gesture study is published in Nature Neuroscience [4]
14 Sep Paradromics announces that the woman held phone conversations [2]
Next UCSF plans to try a fully implanted wireless version [4]

Where this points

The next thing to watch is whether UCSF's wireless version and the rest of Paradromics' 10-patient trial work for more people, outside a lab and for longer. [4][2]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Computers reading the body Building↑

At UCSF, computer programs learned each paralysed man's brain signals for words and gestures. [1] In a Cell study, small AI programs trained on ageing data matched far larger general ones at reading it. [11] A program called Delphy builds the family tree of an outbreak virus up to 1,000 times faster than the careful method used before. [14]

Drugs falling short High↑

Xenon stopped taking new patients into two depression trials after a few cases of psychosis. [7] Bristol Myers Squibb dropped a leukaemia drug after seeing early trial data. [9] A study of 50 leukaemia patients found a drug given after transplant did not help them live longer. [16]

Old drugs, new uses Building↑

A new chemical let ciprofloxacin, an old antibiotic, kill resistant bacteria again in the lab and in animals. [10] A pill AstraZeneca made for pain and dropped cut the weight of obese mice by about a fifth. [15] US doctors give women small parts of testosterone doses made for men. [8]

Regulators deciding on medicines Steady→

A committee advising the EU drug regulator backed glepaglutide for people who have lost most of their gut. [6] The US Food and Drug Administration held a public meeting on testosterone for women, which it has never approved. [8]

The rest of the day

17 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
EU committee backs a drug for a lost gut

The committee that advises the European Medicines Agency, the EU's drug regulator, recommended approval of glepaglutide on 18 September, its maker Zealand Pharma said. [6] It is for adults with short bowel syndrome, a rare illness in which so much gut is lost or damaged that people must be fed through a vein. [6] The drug copies GLP-2, a gut hormone, to help the remaining intestine absorb more. [6] In a trial of 106 patients it cut weekly vein feeding by 5.13 litres, against 2.85 litres on a dummy drug. [6]

Glepaglutide5.13 litres a week
Dummy drug2.85 litres a week
How much less vein feeding patients needed each week. The drug cut it by more than the dummy drug did.

Why it matters — Feeding through a vein can cause blood infections, clots and liver damage, so each litre less matters to the people on it. [6] The European Commission is expected to decide within about 67 days, and the US still needs another trial, EASE-5, which is recruiting. [6]
03
Xenon pauses two depression trials

The drug company Xenon stopped taking new patients into two late-stage trials of azetukalner for depression and bipolar depression, it told investors on 17 September. [7] A small share of patients had confusion, trouble finding words or unsteadiness. [7] A very small number had psychosis, a break from reality. [7] The drug opens a potassium channel in nerve cells, and Xenon has just asked the US regulator to approve it for epilepsy. [7] It plans to change the dose before starting again. [7]

Why it matters — Xenon's shares fell 26% before trading opened on Friday. [7] A week earlier Biohaven paused new enrolment in epilepsy trials of a drug that works on the same channel, and Xenon and analysts at William Blair said nothing links the two. [7]
04
US regulator hears the case for testosterone for women

The US Food and Drug Administration held a public meeting on testosterone for women past menopause, Reuters reported on 17 September. [8] No testosterone product is approved for women in the US, while the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have approved or licensed one. [8] US doctors often give women small parts of doses made for men, such as AbbVie's AndroGel. [8] The FDA has refused it before, citing too little long-term safety data and worries about heart disease and breast cancer. [8]

Why it matters — Rajita Patil, who runs UCLA's menopause programme, said the evidence is strong only for low sexual desire after menopause, not for mood, memory or energy. [8] Public comments close on 19 October. [8]
05
Bristol Myers Squibb drops a leukaemia drug

Bristol Myers Squibb, one of the biggest US drugmakers, stopped developing ORM-6151 after reviewing early trial data, its original developer Orum revealed in a financial filing. [9] The drug is an antibody that carries a protein-destroying chemical to cells flagged with CD33, a marker found on many acute myeloid leukaemia cells. [9] BMS bought it in 2023 and started a first human trial in 2024. [9] Orum loses the chance to earn up to $80m. [9]

Why it matters — AbbVie stopped a similar CD33 drug of its own last year. [9] BMS has cut many projects agreed before Christopher Boerner became its chief executive in 2023. [9]
06
A chemical makes an old antibiotic work again

Scientists described IMP-2380 in Nature Chemical Biology, a chemical that blocks NorA, a pump that Staphylococcus aureus bacteria use to throw antibiotics back out. [10] With the pump jammed, ciprofloxacin, an old antibiotic, worked again against MRSA, the drug-resistant form of the germ. [10] It worked in lab dishes and in an animal infection. [10] Detailed images showed the chemical jams the pump while it is open to the outside of the cell. [10]

Why it matters — Drug-resistant infections killed 1.27 million people in 2019, the authors note, and few truly new antibiotics are coming. [10] A helper of this kind, clavulanic acid, is already used to protect antibiotics from bacteria, but IMP-2380 has not been tried in people. [10]
07
Small AI programs read ageing data better

A team writing in Cell built LongevityBench, 17 tasks that check whether AI programs can read data on how the body ages, such as chemical marks on DNA. [11] They tried 18 leading AI systems from six developers, and none was best at everything. [11] Guessing a person's age from their molecular data was the hardest task for every model. [11] Five small models trained on ageing data matched or beat far larger general ones. [11]

Why it matters — The team has released the tasks and models free, so other ageing researchers can check their own tools against them. [11] It also shows a lab without giant computers can build a useful model for this work. [11]
08
Donated livers turn younger on machines

Livers kept on machines after donation appear to become younger at a molecular level, MIT Technology Review reported on 15 September. [12] Most donated organs are flushed, bagged and kept on ice, where they begin to break down and must reach a patient within hours. [12] The machines instead pump the organ with nutrients and remove its waste, as a body would. [12]

Why it matters — The finding may explain why organs kept on these machines tend to do better after transplant. [12] It could also lead to ways of checking or repairing livers that would otherwise be thrown away. [12]
09
An older cousin of CRISPR found

Scientists reported in Science on 17 September a bacterial defence called VIPR, built around a protein older than the Cas proteins that CRISPR gene editing uses. [13] Like CRISPR, it uses a guide made of RNA to find a virus's DNA. [13] But it reads the DNA with gaps, skipping every third letter, and silences the virus's genes. [13] The authors say CRISPR-like defences may have begun in fights between rival viruses. [13]

Why it matters — CRISPR came from studying how bacteria fight viruses, and VIPR offers scientists a new way to switch chosen genes off. [13]
10
Outbreak family trees in a day

A program called Delphy, described in Nature, builds the family trees that show how an outbreak virus spread and changed. [14] It matches the most careful existing method for accuracy while running up to 100 to 1,000 times faster. [14] It repeated key analyses of past Ebola, Zika, COVID-19 and mpox outbreaks, and handled a made-up set of 100,000 virus genomes within a day. [14] It runs as a web app on the user's own computer. [14]

Why it matters — The careful method needed specialist groups and heavy computing, so most public health bodies have used rougher shortcuts during outbreaks. [14]
11
A cannabis-like pill slims obese mice

Artelo Biosciences said on 16 September that its pill ART27.13 cut body weight by about 20% in four weeks in obese mice, similar to semaglutide, the drug in Ozempic. [15] Mice given both lost about 40%. [15] Lean mice given the pill did not lose weight. [15] It acts on cannabinoid receptors, which THC in cannabis also acts on, but is designed to stay out of the brain. [15]

The pill alone20%
Pill plus semaglutide40%
About how much body weight obese mice lost in four weeks. These are the company's own results, and only in mice.

Why it matters — AstraZeneca first made the drug for pain and dropped it. [15] Artelo is testing it in people with cancer-related wasting, and these weight results are the company's own and only in mice. [15]
12
A leukaemia follow-on drug did not lengthen life

A study in Bone Marrow Transplantation looked back at azacitidine, a drug given after a stem-cell transplant for high-risk acute myeloid leukaemia to keep the cancer away. [16] It compared 29 patients at one hospital who got it with 21 who did not. [16] After two years, survival and the time free of cancer were no different. [16] Almost one in three treated patients relapsed. [16]

Why it matters — It agrees with an earlier randomised trial that found no survival gain. [16] The authors say the drug was safe to give, and that a small study looking back at records can miss a real effect. [16]
13
Snake venom yields weak germ-killers

Researchers searched cobra venom proteins for fragments that might kill bacteria, using computer programs to pick 14 candidates, in npj Drug Discovery. [17] Most showed limited activity. [17] The best, called CTX-p5, killed bacteria by breaking their outer skin. [17] Trimming or changing it did not make it stronger. [17]

Why it matters — The authors say the computer tools that picked the candidates need to get more accurate before this way of finding drug leads pays off. [17]
14
Shorter radiotherapy reaches Devon

Torbay Hospital in south-west England said Stephen Dwyer-Lapthorne is the first man in its area to get SABR, a high-precision radiotherapy, for prostate cancer. [18] SABR gives the treatment in five sessions instead of the usual 20. [18] NHS England announced a national rollout in June. [18] About 17,500 of the 55,000 men found to have prostate cancer in the UK each year are at the low or intermediate risk it is meant for. [18]

SABR radiotherapyfive sessions
20 sessionsUsual radiotherapy
The new treatment needs a quarter of the sessions, so fewer trips to hospital.

Why it matters — Fewer sessions means fewer trips to hospital, which the hospital said lets patients be treated closer to home. [18]
15
Counting mass fainting as a vaccine reaction

Researchers argued in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, a Nature journal, that group outbreaks of symptoms after vaccination with no physical cause should be counted as real vaccine reactions. [19] These outbreaks are called mass psychogenic illness. [19] The paper looks mostly at HPV vaccine programmes, which usually vaccinate girls around puberty. [19] The authors say calling them imaginary leaves sufferers dismissed and untreated. [19]

Why it matters — They argue that taking these reactions seriously could protect trust in vaccines. [19] Measles is rising where vaccination has fallen, including in Bangladesh. [19]
16
Tracking the germs that kill Cameroon's newborns

A Cameroonian microbiologist described in Nature Africa how her team tracks the bacteria that infect newborns in Cameroon's hospitals. [20] They find babies already carrying dangerous bacteria at birth, many of them resistant to several drugs. [20] The germs spread partly from health workers and hospital surroundings. [20] With the Wellcome Sanger Institute they are building genetic tracking that reports in three to four days, at about $10 a sample. [20] In 2024 about 2.3 million babies worldwide died in their first 28 days. [20]

Why it matters — Resistance is closing off cheap first-choice antibiotics for babies and pregnant women, so knowing the germ decides which drug a sick child gets. [20]
17
A book on sickle cell's long wait

A new book on sickle cell disease, Curved Air by Kevin Davies, is published this month by Harvard University Press, GEN reported. [21] The disease comes from one faulty letter in the gene for adult haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in blood. [21] It was first described in 1910. [21] Casgevy, a CRISPR treatment approved in December 2023, does not fix the fault; it switches the baby form of haemoglobin back on. [21]

Why it matters — About 100,000 people in the US have the disease, and Casgevy costs $2.2 million. [21] Before gene editing the only effective drug was hydroxyurea, an old chemotherapy. [21]
18
How ageing cells lose their proteins

A study in Nature Communications followed the proteins inside human cells as they became senescent, the state in which old cells stop dividing but do not die. [22] Proteins were lost from the material that packs DNA, and the cell's protein-making machinery shrank. [22] The systems that clear away damaged proteins also weakened. [22]

Why it matters — Senescent cells build up with age and feed inflammation, and drugs are being sought to remove them. [22] This map gives those efforts a list of changes to aim at. [22]

02 Lesson why it matters

When the broken part cannot be mended, medicine goes around it

A man with ALS still forms words in his brain, so an implant can pick them up there and carry them past the nerves the disease destroyed.

The twist

A man with ALS still forms words in his brain. The disease has cut the nerves between the brain and the mouth, so the implant reads the words in the brain and sends them to a screen instead.

The picture

Pure guessing9%

Stroke: phrases84%

Stroke: gestures88%

ALS: phrases70%

ALS: gestures66%

How often the implant read each man's attempts correctly, beside pure guessing at about 9%. The brain was still making clear signals even though the body could not act on them.

How it works

One link in a chain breaks: the nerves to the mouth, most of the gut, or one letter in a gene
The parts before the break still work: the brain still plans the words
Mending the broken link is not possible yet
So a device or a drug picks up what the working part makes and delivers it another way
The person gets the job back, and the illness stays

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

EU committee backs a drug for a lost gut

Glepaglutide does not regrow the missing gut; it makes the gut that is left absorb more, so less food has to go in through a vein.
A chemical makes an old antibiotic work again

The bacteria's pump was the broken link; blocking it lets the old antibiotic stay inside the germ and work.
A book on sickle cell's long wait

Casgevy leaves the faulty adult haemoglobin gene alone and switches the baby form back on to carry oxygen instead.
Donated livers turn younger on machines

With no body around the liver, a machine does the body's job of feeding it and taking its waste away.

Where you've seen this

Glasses

they bend light before it reaches the eye and leave the eye's own shape as it is

Subtitles

they put the words on screen for someone whose ears cannot carry them

A ramp beside stairs

it gets a wheelchair to the door without asking the legs to climb

A detour sign

traffic still reaches the town while the broken bridge waits for repair

The catch

Going around the break leaves the disease in place. ALS keeps killing nerves, and bacteria can evolve another way to push a drug out.

And the whole of it

Many people already live with a way around a broken part, such as glasses, a daily pill or a hearing aid. From inside one, it is hard to tell which part of the body is being mended and which is only being carried by a machine or a drug.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Much of what the public learned about medicines this week came from the companies themselves. Paradromics told a newspaper about its first patient's phone calls, Xenon described its psychosis cases on a call with investors, and Orum revealed in a financial filing that Bristol Myers Squibb had dropped its drug. [2][7][9] The one brain-implant result with a published paper behind it, from UCSF, drove an avatar for two men using a small set of phrases. [1][5]

Why it works on us — A grandmother talking to her grandchildren on the phone is a picture anyone can hold, and one vivid patient makes a 10-person trial feel further along than it is. [2]

Who gains

Paradromics — A newspaper story about one patient's phone calls drew attention to its 10-patient trial, on the company's own account of the results. [2]
Zealand Pharma — It is in talks to find a partner to sell glepaglutide worldwide, and the committee's backing arrives during those talks. [6]
Bristol Myers Squibb — Dropping ORM-6151 ends spending on a deal made in the first days of its current chief executive, and it no longer owes Orum up to $80m in payments. [9]
Makers of testosterone products for men, such as AbbVie — With no product approved for women in the US, doctors divide men's doses of products like AndroGel to treat them. [8]

Who pays

Orum — It loses the chance to earn up to $80m in payments tied to ORM-6151's development. [9]
Xenon's shareholders — The share price fell 26% before trading opened on Friday after the enrolment pause. [7]
Women in the US seeking testosterone — They get doses divided from men's products or mixed by pharmacies, not a product tested and dosed for them. [8]
People in the US with short bowel syndrome — They wait on another trial while the EU moves toward approval. [6]
Newborns in Cameroon's hospitals — Resistant bacteria are closing off the cheap first-choice antibiotics used to treat them. [20]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

How many phrases the UCSF implant was really checked on.

New Scientist says the men attempted 10 phrases and 10 gestures. [1] Nature's news report says the man who had the stroke was asked to silently speak five phrases. [3] We could not read the full paper to settle it.
02

Whether Paradromics' result holds up outside the company's own account.

It was announced by the company about one patient, and the trial is planned to reach 10. [2] No accuracy figures for her speech were given in what we could read.
03

Whether these implants keep working for years.

UCSF's system is wired to outside computers, and its wireless version has not yet been tried. [4] Lorach said daily use needs higher accuracy than either man reached. [1]
04

How many Xenon patients had psychosis.

Xenon said only that it was a very small number, and it has not published the count or the doses involved. [7]
05

What Bristol Myers Squibb saw in ORM-6151's early data.

The decision reached the public through Orum's filing, which gives no results. [9]
06

Whether testosterone is safe for women over many years.

The FDA has cited too little long-term safety data, and worries about heart disease and breast cancer, each time it has refused it. [8]
07

Whether glepaglutide will reach US patients.

The EU decision is expected in about 67 days, but the US needs results from a further trial, EASE-5, which is still recruiting. [6]
08

Whether the NorA blocker or Artelo's weight pill work in people.

The NorA blocker has been shown only in lab dishes and an animal infection, and Artelo's weight results are its own and in mice. [10][15]

04 Hope carry this

A 68-year-old woman in Michigan who had lost most of her speech talked on the phone with her grandchildren through a wireless implant in her brain.

Also true today

A committee advising the EU drug regulator recommended approval of glepaglutide for people who have lost most of their gut. In its main trial, the drug cut the food they needed through a vein by 5.13 litres a week, against 2.85 litres on a dummy drug.
A man in Torbay, in south-west England, is finishing his prostate cancer radiotherapy in five sessions instead of 20, as the shorter treatment spreads across England's health service.