Kenya confirms a second Ebola case, a relative of its first patient who was already in quarantine, as Congo's outbreak passes 9,000 cases

The rest of the day

28 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   First drug approved for one kind of bladder cancer

   The FDA, the US medicines regulator, on 14 October approved Anktiva for adults with high-grade papillary bladder cancer that BCG did not stop. [8] Papillary tumours grow like small fingers from the bladder lining, and BCG is a treatment put into the bladder to rouse the immune system against the cancer. [8] The FDA ran no new trial for this group. [8] It used Anktiva's earlier trial in a flat kind of tumour, where no high-grade cancer could be found afterwards in 62% of 77 patients, and judged the two cancers alike. [8]

   Why it matters — These patients had no approved treatment made for them after BCG failed. [8] The FDA says it may judge future bladder cancer drugs the same way, and the label warns that delaying bladder surgery can let the cancer spread. [8]

2. 03

   US regulator promises new rules for rare diseases

   The FDA launched a Rare Disease Framework Initiative on 14 October to rethink how rare-disease drugs are tested and approved. [9] A rare disease often has too few patients for a large trial. [9] The FDA says only about 5% of rare conditions have an approved treatment. [9] It promises rules fitted to each disease and to the evidence a small group can give, and will hear patients and companies at a public meeting on 28 October. [9]

   Why it matters — US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the aim is to remove unnecessary barriers. [9] What changes in practice is not yet written: the FDA lists new guidance, changed regulations and staff training as possibilities. [9]

3. 04

   Guinea-Bissau denies approving a baby vaccine trial

   Guinea-Bissau's health minister, Quinhin Nantote, said on 13 October that his ministry never approved a trial in 14,000 newborns that the US government would help fund. [36] Half would get the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, and half would wait six weeks. [36] US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed the study. [36] A Danish ethics committee voted last week to let it go ahead after members were told Guinea-Bissau had approved it, and at least four members resigned. [36]

   Why it matters — Hepatitis B is widespread in Guinea-Bissau, and catching it as a child can cause lifelong harm. [36] The US health department told Reuters the study has not been approved. [36]

4. 05

   CVS pays $315 million over opioid prescriptions

   CVS Pharmacy agreed to pay the US government $315 million to settle claims that it filled unnecessary prescriptions for opioids, which are addictive painkillers, the US Justice Department said on 13 October. [20] Prosecutors said CVS also billed Medicare, the US health plan for older people, for those prescriptions. [20] CVS admitted no wrongdoing and says it strongly disagrees. [20] It must set up a hotline for reporting suspicious dispensing and watch its pharmacies' patterns. [20]

   Why it matters — Prosecutors said CVS tied staff pay to targets that put profit before patient safety. [20] Opioids killed nearly 80,000 people in the US in 2023. [20]

5. 06

   A shot under the skin lowers a brain protein

   Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals said on 14 October that its experimental drug ARO-MAPT cut tau by 73% on average after 105 days at the highest dose. [11] Tau is a protein that clumps in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. [11] The drug silences the gene that makes tau, and it reached the brain from an injection under the skin. [11] The trial was in about 64 healthy volunteers and mainly tested safety. [11]

   Low dose40%

   Middle dose69%

   High dose73%

   Why it matters — Lowering tau has not yet been shown to slow Alzheimer's, an analyst at the bank Stifel cautioned. [11] The next part of the trial adds people with mild Alzheimer's. [11]

6. 07

   A pancreatic cancer pill shrinks tumours in a small study

   Verastem Oncology's shares rose 18% on 14 October after early results for its pill VS-7375. [12] It targets G12D, the most common change in KRAS, a gene that can get stuck telling cells to grow. [13] Tumours shrank in four of eight pancreatic cancer patients on their second treatment, and in 43% of 23 lung cancer patients. [13] The study is early and small, and Verastem plans three final-stage trials. [12]

   Why it matters — FDA papers suggest Revolution Medicines' approved pill Rasonque works less well against G12D, which leaves room for a rival. [12] Verastem also sold $250 million of new shares the same day. [12]

7. 08

   US research agency's comment box closes early

   Scientists say a website taking public comments on a change to how the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) scores grant applications shut hours before its 13 October deadline. [23] The NIH is the US government's main funder of medical research. [23] The change would sort applications into three broad groups and keep each one's exact score secret. [23] Some researchers say that could let politics shape which projects get money. [23]

   Why it matters — The US Congress already stopped an earlier plan to let political appointees pick grant winners, which is on hold until at least December. [23] The NIH did not immediately answer Scientific American's questions. [23]

8. 09

   Former FDA chiefs criticise the staff cuts

   Three former heads of the FDA criticised the Trump administration's staff cuts at a STAT conference in Boston on 14 October. [24] Robert Califf said DOGE, Elon Musk's cost-cutting team, "will go down as one of the biggest disasters in American history". [24] DOGE cut 3,500 FDA workers, and more left under Marty Makary, the FDA head who resigned in May. [24] Ned Sharpless said companies now meet more junior, less experienced drug reviewers. [24]

   Why it matters — Scott Gottlieb, FDA head in Trump's first term, joined the criticism but praised the agency's current acting leaders. [24] The agency still has no confirmed commissioner. [24]

9. 10

   Britain orders a review of brain cancer care

   Britain's prime minister, Andy Burnham, announced a brain cancer review and a new national clinical lead after meeting swimmer Archie Goodburn, 25. [10] Goodburn has three brain tumours that surgeons cannot remove, and had appealed on TV for more research. [10] Prof Anthony Chalmers of the University of Glasgow will review progress since 2018. [10] Burnham also asked the MHRA, Britain's medicines regulator, to finish reviewing rare-condition medicine rules in two years, not three. [10]

   Why it matters — Goodburn says trials run in other countries are not reaching UK patients. [10] Health Secretary Yvette Cooper will lead a drive to get more people onto clinical trials. [10]

10. 11

    Gilead pays Vir for three masked cancer drugs

    Gilead Sciences, a large US drugmaker, will pay Vir Biotechnology $90 million up front to design three T-cell engagers, drugs that direct immune cells to destroy cancer cells. [14] Vir's versions carry masks that keep them switched off until they reach a tumour, to cut side effects. [14] All three will aim at solid tumours whose targets have not been named. [15] Vir can also get $45 million in early payments and up to $1.74 billion more if the drugs pass tests and sell. [14]

    Why it matters — Most of the $1.9 billion headline is paid only if the drugs succeed. [14] Vir's chief executive says deals like this pay for its own drugs without selling more shares. [14]

11. 12

    Zealand Pharma buys AI-designed protein work

    Zealand Pharma, a Danish company developing weight-loss drugs, will pay Generate Biomedicines $30 million up front to design protein drugs for obesity and related diseases. [16] Generate uses AI to design proteins that act on more than one target. [16] It could earn up to $35 million in early payments and nearly $1.2 billion more if products are made and sold. [16] Zealand's two lead weight-loss drugs, partnered with Roche and Boehringer Ingelheim, are in final-stage trials. [16]

    Why it matters — Neither of those two drugs has impressed analysts so far, Fierce Biotech reports. [16] Zealand added small-molecule drugs in December and now adds proteins, beyond the peptides it has always made. [16]

12. 13

    AI drug designer Iambic raises $150 million

    Iambic Therapeutics, a US company that uses AI to find medicines, raised $150 million by selling shares at $16 each, and starts trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday. [17] Private investors have put $462 million into it since 2019. [17] Its leading drug, a cancer pill for tumours driven by a protein called HER2, is in early human tests, and a larger trial could start in 2027. [17] It is the 25th biotech to list its shares this year, BioPharma Dive counts. [17]

    Why it matters — Several drug companies built on AI have struggled after going public. [17] Iambic's filing says its approach can disrupt how drugs are found, a claim its trials have not yet tested. [17]

13. 14

    Biomea's weight-loss pill disappoints investors

    Biomea Fusion's shares fell 30% to 87 cents on 14 October after early results for BMF-650, a pill that copies GLP-1, a gut hormone that makes people feel full. [18] In four groups, people lost 1.5% to 3.2% of their weight after 29 days. [18] In a fifth group the drug brought 6.1%, but the two people on dummy pills lost about as much. [18] Forty people took part in all. [18]

    Why it matters — Eli Lilly's GLP-1 pill Foundayo was approved in April, so Biomea is late. [18] It argues that gentler weight loss with fewer stomach problems could still sell, and it is looking for a partner. [18]

14. 15

    Verdiva stops a weight-loss switching trial

    Verdiva Bio, a British company that raised $410 million last year, has ended a trial of its weekly weight-loss pill VRB-101 after signing up 8 of the 120 people it wanted. [19] The trial tested whether people who lost weight on injections could switch to the pill and keep it off. [19] Verdiva said it changed plans because the market has moved. [19] It still tests the pill on its own, and a 206-person trial ended in July. [19]

    8 of 120

    people enrolled, out of 120 wanted

    Why it matters — Eli Lilly reported its own trial of switching people to its daily pill in December. [19] Verdiva has not yet said what the 206-person trial found. [19]

15. 16

    Lung drug patent fight settled for $381 million

    Liquidia will pay United Therapeutics about $380.7 million through 2027 to end six lawsuits over Yutrepia, Liquidia's inhaled lung drug. [21] Yutrepia treats high blood pressure in the lungs and competes with United Therapeutics' drug Tyvaso. [21] Liquidia will stop promoting it for lung pressure linked to scarred lungs, but keeps selling it for the main form of the disease. [21] Its shares jumped nearly 37% before the market opened on 14 October. [21]

    Why it matters — Tyvaso now faces less competition among patients with scarred lungs. [21] Liquidia says it will pay from Yutrepia sales and the cash it holds. [21]

16. 17

    A copy of a breast cancer drug gets launch dates

    Genentech, part of the Swiss drugmaker Roche, settled its US patent lawsuit against India's Biocon over a copy of Perjeta, a breast cancer drug, Biocon said on 14 October. [22] A biosimilar is a close copy of a drug made from living cells, which cannot be copied exactly. [22] Perjeta earned Roche nearly 2.97 billion Swiss francs last year. [22] Biocon can launch its copy, Pebrilzo, in the UK and EU in early 2027, and in the US in the third quarter of 2028. [22]

    Why it matters — US patients will wait about 18 months longer than European ones for this copy. [22] The other terms are secret. [22]

17. 18

    MIT takes 500 fewer graduate students

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) enrolled nearly 500 fewer graduate students this autumn, a 20% drop from 2024, its president Sally Kornbluth said. [25] She blamed a $100 million cut in federal research awards to MIT. [25] Most graduate students are paid from such grants, so MIT admits fewer when it cannot be sure the money will last. [25] Other US universities have also cut graduate places. [25]

    Why it matters — Kornbluth said she does not know when funding will recover. [25] A plan to give political appointees more control over NIH grants adds to the doubt. [25]

18. 19

    Only 705 Scots got weight-loss jabs from the NHS

    Only 705 people in Scotland had received weight-loss injections from the NHS by September 2026, a BBC freedom of information request found. [35] Mounjaro was approved there for weight loss in 2023 and Wegovy in 2024. [35] Fewer than half of Scotland's health boards offer them, and only in small pilot schemes. [35] At least 300,000 people are thought to buy them privately. [35]

    705Jabs from the NHS

    vsvs

    300,000+Bought privately

    Why it matters — Doctors call the gap discriminatory, because people who can pay get the drugs first. [35] A third of Scots are obese. [35]

19. 20

    UK patches for menopause run short

    Two hormone replacement therapy (HRT) patches used for menopause symptoms, Estradot and FemSeven Conti, are short across the UK, Northern Ireland's Department of Health told the BBC. [34] A special rule lets pharmacists hand over an alternative with the same active ingredient and dose, without a new prescription, until 8 January 2027. [34] A Belfast pharmacist warned women not to treat themselves. [34] Some women who switched report itchy skin or patches falling off. [34]

    Why it matters — Women who found a patch that works must change brands mid-treatment. [34] A menopause charity says these shortages have gone on for years. [34]

20. 21

    Antibodies linked to babies born too early

    Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco found antibodies that may set off early labour, they report in Nature Immunology. [30] They tested blood from more than 2,000 pregnant women. [30] Women who gave birth before 37 weeks had more antibody changes, and earlier. [30] One antibody blocks IL1RA, the body's brake on inflammation that can trigger contractions, and it damaged the placenta when injected into pregnant mice. [30]

    Why it matters — About one in 10 babies is born too early, and being born early is the leading cause of newborn deaths worldwide. [30] The team says its blood test could lead to new ways to screen for the risk. [30]

21. 22

    Personal cancer vaccines tried in ovarian cancer

    A small first trial gave ten women with ovarian cancer a vaccine made for each one's own tumour, Nature Medicine reports. [32] The vaccines target neoantigens, changed proteins found only on that person's cancer cells. [32] They were given after chemotherapy, with an immune drug that blocks PD-1, a brake on immune cells. [32] There were no unexpected safety problems, and blood tests suggested the vaccine was working in six of the ten. [32]

    Why it matters — Some tumours escaped by hiding the very targets the vaccine trained the body on. [32] The trial tested safety and whether the vaccines could be made and given, in ten women. [32]

22. 23

    An Alzheimer's pill passes a first safety test

    A pill called VG-3927 was safe in a first human trial with 115 people, a paper in Science Translational Medicine reports. [29] It acts on TREM2, a switch on the brain's clean-up immune cells that helps them clear amyloid, a protein that clumps in Alzheimer's. [29] The pill reached the brain and changed a TREM2 marker in patients' spinal fluid. [29] In mice, a sister compound helped these cells clear amyloid. [29]

    Why it matters — The approved Alzheimer's antibody drugs that clear amyloid help only modestly, so researchers are trying the brain's own immune cells instead. [29] This first human trial mainly tested safety, at doses up to 140 milligrams. [29]

23. 24

    A protein that lets worn-out cells hide

    Researchers at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles found that worn-out zombie cells, which stop dividing but do not die, carry a protein called PD-L2 that may hide them from the immune system. [28] These cells build up with age and release substances that cause inflammation. [28] In mice, blocking PD-L2 cut the number of these cells, and the mice handled sugar better and gripped harder. [28] Ageing human cells also made more PD-L2. [28]

    Why it matters — This is a mouse result. [28] Whether blocking PD-L2 is safe or helps people has not been tested. [28]

24. 25

    Why tiny bits of plastic may inflame the body

    A study in Nature found that water touching microplastics, tiny bits of plastic, turns chemically active and makes highly reactive molecules. [31] These can change nearby proteins and cell walls. [31] Breaking plastic up multiplies its surface: a credit card ground into 10-micron bits has over 200 times the surface area, said Columbia University chemist Wei Min. [31] Microplastics have been linked to heart attacks, strokes and dementia, without a known cause. [31]

    Why it matters — This offers one possible reason for that harm. [31] Min says how it plays out in living human tissue is still unclear. [31]

25. 26

    A pill for a rare eye cancer in an early test

    iOnctura, a company spun out of the German drugmaker Merck KGaA, reported early results for its pill roginolisib in 44 patients with advanced cancers. [33] Twenty had uveal melanoma, a rare cancer at the back of the eye that often spreads to the liver. [33] Patients lived a median of 20.8 months, against about seven for past patients on immune drugs as a second treatment. [33] No patient had to stop or cut the dose. [33]

    Why it matters — The comparison is with past patients, not a control group in the same trial. [33] Serious side effects hit three of the 44 patients. [33]

26. 27

    Weight-loss drug to be tested against addiction's toll

    A trial announced on 13 October will give weekly semaglutide injections, the drug in Wegovy, to up to 1,200 people with alcohol or opioid addiction. [27] It will track whether they have fewer run-ins with police and courts, and whether they keep jobs and homes. [27] A non-profit studying these drugs for addiction runs it with Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, using the county's own records. [27] It starts in early 2027. [27]

    Why it matters — Earlier trials found some promise against addiction. [27] A clear result could be used to argue for public money for the drug. [27]

27. 28

    Fitness band Whoop offered free to older Americans

    Whoop, a company that sells wrist bands that record the body's signals, is one of the first consumer wearables accepted into Medicare's ACCESS programme. [26] That makes it free for many people aged 65 and over in traditional Medicare, the US health plan for older people. [26] ACCESS is a 10-year pilot with 55 companies that help manage long-term illness. [26] Whoop's new chief medical officer said a simpler app comes first. [26]

    Why it matters — Its customers have mostly been young athletes, so it still has to show results for older patients. [26] Whoop recently raised $575 million, including from the Mayo Clinic. [26]

28. 29

    US military funds blood that keeps on a shelf

    DARPA, the US military's research agency, is starting a $73 million programme called RAPIID to make plasma, platelets and red blood cells that keep on a shelf. [37] Whole blood lasts only 35 days in a fridge, and platelets a week or less. [37] Bleeding causes about 90% of preventable battlefield deaths. [37] The aim is dried blood products in use in the field by 2029. [37]

    Why it matters — In the US, a 2025 study found that only 1% of 1.2 million injured people who might have needed blood before hospital received it. [37] Bleeding is also the leading cause of death in childbirth worldwide. [37]