Bayer plans a $2.2 billion medicine plant in Ohio, days after the US began taxing some imported medicines at 100%

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16 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   Roche wants AI behind most research choices

   Roche, the Swiss drugmaker, told investors on Monday 28 September that it has started building research labs run largely by AI. [4] It wants its AI tool, Target Nexus, to help shape 80% of decisions on which research to pursue by the end of 2026. [4] From late 2025 to mid-2026, 40% of its drug-pipeline decisions already had a recorded AI or computing contribution. [4] Its US arm Genentech has tested AI agents from Anthropic running a protein test in the lab. [3]

   202565%

   2026 so far (over)80%

   Why it matters — Roche also said more than 80% of its final-stage trials have succeeded so far in 2026, against 65% in 2025. [4] Genentech's chief says the tools add to scientists rather than replace them, while several senior Genentech scientists have left in a research shake-up. [3]

2. 03

   FDA lists what it will make public next

   The FDA, the US medicines regulator, has published a transparency roadmap listing what it plans to make public over the next year. [6] It plans a rule to announce every major application to sell a drug when it is filed. [6] It also plans to publish companies' trial reports for approved drugs, with trade secrets removed. [6] In 2025 it began publishing its rejection letters, starting with more than 200 from 2020 to 2024. [6]

   Why it matters — An FDA review in 2015 found companies left out 85% of the agency's safety and efficacy concerns when they announced a rejection. [6] In August the FDA also agreed to share non-public information with the SEC, the US stock-market regulator, so companies cannot describe FDA decisions selectively. [6]

3. 04

   Vitamin C trial: no effect on the disease, fewer deaths

   A trial called EVITA gave 109 people in Denmark and the US either 1,000mg of vitamin C a day or a dummy pill for a year. [7] All had a blood disorder that can turn into cancer, or an early, low-risk blood cancer. [7] Vitamin C did not slow the growth of the abnormal blood cells, which was the trial's main question. [7] But after nearly three years, 11 people on vitamin C had died, against 24 on the dummy pill. [7]

   11 deathsVitamin C

   vsvs

   24 deathsDummy pill

   Why it matters — The death count was an extra finding the trial was not built to test, so its leaders say a larger final-stage trial must confirm it. [7] They say it is too soon to recommend anything, and the vitamin C group had more stomach and gut problems. [7]

4. 05

   Earlier chemotherapy drives a cancer pill's blood risk

   PARP inhibitors are cancer pills used in ovarian, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancer, and they come with a raised risk of a later blood cancer. [12] Researchers studied blood samples from 10,156 patients tested at Memorial Sloan Kettering, a New York cancer hospital. [12] They found the risky blood-cell changes after PARP pills were largely explained by earlier carboplatin, a chemotherapy drug. [12] The changes grew less in patients born with faults in a DNA-repair system. [12]

   Why it matters — These later blood cancers are deadly: fewer than one patient in ten survives five years. [12] PARP pills are now given earlier in treatment, so knowing who is most at risk matters to more patients; the study was published in Nature Genetics. [12]

5. 06

   Most high blood pressure in England goes unnoticed

   Researchers at Oxford Population Health checked clinic readings from Our Future Health, the UK's largest health research programme. [9] They found 37% of adults who joined between 2022 and 2025 had high blood pressure. [9] Of those, 59% did not know it and were taking no medicine for it. [9] Half of the people already on blood-pressure pills still had readings of 140/90 or higher. [9]

   59 of 100

   of every 100 people with high blood pressure did not know they had it

   Why it matters — High blood pressure is linked to around half of UK heart attacks and strokes, the British Heart Foundation says. [9] The authors argue that England's treatment rules, which ask for several readings before a diagnosis, leave many people untreated. [9]

6. 07

   Biotech layoffs stay low; hiring picks up

   Fierce Biotech, a drug-industry news site, counted 21 layoff announcements from drug and biotech companies between July and September. [10] That compares with 17 in the spring, 33 in the first three months of 2026 and 62 in the same months of 2025. [10] The biggest was Novo Nordisk, the Danish maker of Wegovy, which said 4,000 more staff had gone. [10] A recruiter at the staffing firm Kelly says she sees signs of recovery. [10]

   Jul-Sep 202562

   Jan-Mar 202633

   Apr-Jun 202617

   Jul-Sep 202621

   Why it matters — Massachusetts, a biotech centre, lost about 3,600 drug-research jobs in 2025, its first yearly fall in more than two decades, a trade group says. [10] A recruiter at Kelly says hiring centres are growing in Texas, North Carolina and the Midwest. [10]

7. 08

   An AI research agent's confident wrong answer

   BioPharma Dive, a drug-industry news site, has reported how a chemistry AI agent called ChemAgent went wrong in a 2025 test. [5] Asked whether a molecule harms the liver, it twice fed a tool a badly written chemical formula and got errors. [5] Instead of stopping, it switched to a general AI tool and gave a confident answer. [5] The answer, that the molecule carried a liver risk, was wrong. [5]

   Why it matters — Drug companies are giving AI agents more steps in a row, so one wrong answer can steer which experiment comes next. [5] Srijit Seal, a scientist at a chemical-safety AI company, says wrongly calling a compound safe would be far worse, because tests get skipped. [5]

8. 09

   Vitamin B6 stopped a Parkinson's patient's seizures

   Ed Patrick, an anaesthetist in England, used Google's Gemini AI to search medical papers when his mother Ann had non-stop seizures in May. [8] He suspected a lack of vitamin B6, possibly caused by carbidopa-levodopa, the common Parkinson's drug she had taken for years. [8] Doctors in Nottingham gave her B6 through a drip, and the seizures stopped within minutes. [8] Her neurologist says only 14 similar cases have ever been reported. [8]

   Why it matters — Her hospital team has changed its own practice, and Parkinson's UK, a charity, supports trials to test the link. [8] Doctors quoted by the BBC warn patients not to change medicines or supplements without medical advice. [8]

9. 10

   A gut-bacteria molecule linked to Alzheimer's

   Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied imidazole propionate, a molecule some gut bacteria make from histidine, a building block of protein in food. [11] In mice, the molecule reaching the brain increased the build-up of amyloid and tau, the two proteins that clump in Alzheimer's disease. [11] In blood from almost 1,200 volunteers, people with the highest levels lost memory and thinking skills much faster. [11] A gene variant carried by about 43% of them goes with higher levels. [11]

   Why it matters — The human data show a link, not proof that the molecule causes the decline. [11] The team hopes for a drug that lowers it in the blood, the way statins lower cholesterol, but none exists yet. [11]

10. 11

    Switching an embryo gene back on for a blood disease

    Alpha-thalassaemia is an inherited disease in which the body makes too little of one part of haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in blood. [14] Its most severe form usually kills a baby before birth. [14] Researchers writing in Nature Genetics found the DNA switches that silence zeta-globin, a stand-in part used only in the early embryo. [14] Gene edits that turned it back on kept mice with the severe form alive until late in pregnancy, and worked in patients' blood cells in the lab. [14]

    Why it matters — Today the only lasting cure is a stem-cell transplant, which needs a matched donor most patients do not have. [14] The faulty genes are common, carried by up to 70% of people in some regions because they protect against malaria; the edits have not been tried in people. [14]

11. 12

    Blood-cancer stem cells hooked on one energy molecule

    Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz studied high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, or MDS, blood cancers in which the bone marrow stops making healthy blood. [13] They found the stem cells driving the disease lean heavily on NAD, a molecule cells need to make energy. [13] Blocking NAMPT, an enzyme that recycles NAD, weakened those stem cells in patient cells and animals, while healthy stem cells coped. [13] Between 10,000 and 20,000 people in the US are diagnosed with MDS each year. [13]

    Why it matters — High-risk MDS can turn into acute myeloid leukaemia, an aggressive blood cancer that is hard to treat. [13] The team plans studies in people of drugs that block NAMPT; so far the work is in the lab. [13]

12. 13

    An enzyme that may protect a fatty liver

    About 100 million people in the US have fatty liver disease, and 20% to 25% of them go on to a worse, scarring form called MASH, the American Liver Foundation estimates. [15] Researchers co-led by Cedars-Sinai, a Los Angeles hospital, found an enzyme called UBE2N falls in liver cells as the disease worsens. [15] It helps clear out damaged mitochondria, the parts of a cell that make energy. [15] Restoring it in mice cut liver fat, inflammation and scarring. [15]

    Why it matters — MASH has no cure, and care rests mainly on changes to diet and exercise plus a few medicines. [15] The work is in mice, published in Nature Metabolism, and no treatment built on it exists yet. [15]

13. 14

    A virus protein makes self-copying RNA work harder

    Self-amplifying RNA vaccines carry instructions that copy themselves inside cells, so a smaller dose can make more of the target protein. [17] But the cell's own antiviral defences often shut them down. [17] Researchers reported in Nature Communications that adding B2, a protein from the Nodamura virus, hides the RNA from those defences. [17] It raised how much protein the RNA made without blocking the immune signals a vaccine needs. [17]

    Why it matters — That clash has held back these vaccines, which can protect at lower doses than ordinary mRNA shots. [17] The tests were in cells; no vaccine built this way has been tried in people. [17]

14. 15

    Leucine helps cells make more energy

    Leucine is an amino acid, a building block of protein, found in milk, meat, beans and lentils. [16] Researchers at the University of Cologne in Germany found it stops cells breaking down certain proteins on the outside of mitochondria, the cell's energy makers. [16] Keeping those proteins lets mitochondria make more energy. [16] Leucine does it by slowing SEL1L, a protein that marks faulty proteins for disposal, the team reported in Nature Cell Biology. [16]

    Why it matters — The team warns that SEL1L also clears damaged proteins, so changing it could backfire. [16] Some lung cancer cells with changes in how they handle leucine survived better, which ties the finding to cancer research too. [16]

15. 16

    A hip joint built from titanium and gel

    Researchers at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, working with Brigham and Women's Hospital and MIT in the US, bonded a tough water-based gel to titanium. [18] The gel behaves like cartilage, the smooth tissue lining joints, and the titanium anchors into bone. [18] A hip joint made this way kept moving smoothly through 500,000 loading cycles at 3,000 newtons. [18] An artificial spinal disc made the same way absorbed more than 80% of the energy of an impact. [18]

    Why it matters — Gels like this have rarely reached patients, because they would not stay fixed to the hard parts of an implant. [18] So far it has been tested in the lab, not in people, and three of the authors have filed a patent. [18]

16. 17

    Lab-grown blood for patients who react to donors

    Some people who need many blood transfusions make antibodies against donor blood, so a safe match gets hard to find. [19] Researchers in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain modelled a bank of red blood cells grown from stem cells for such patients. [19] Using records from 3,719 patients, they found three donor cell lines could match 134 of the 153 patients they could analyse. [19] Most of the rest carried antibodies to one blood marker, called c. [19]

    Why it matters — Red blood cells grown from stem cells are still experimental, so this is a plan for how few lines a bank might need. [19] The authors say gene editing could close the gap left by the c marker. [19]