Biotech, in brief

A new analysis says the case for giving Prozac to depressed children and teenagers leans heavily on one trial that may not be trustworthy. [1]

That trial had 40 children, was run in Iran and was published in 2006. [1] It compared Prozac with nortriptyline, an older antidepressant. [1]

It reported a benefit so large that Martin Ploderl, one of the new analysis's authors, says it is unheard of in medical research. [1]

Many national prescribing guidelines recommend Prozac for depressed young people, on the basis of a 2016 review in The Lancet that pooled many trials. [1] A 2020 review agreed. [1]

A 2021 review by Cochrane, a network that checks medical evidence, found Prozac only slightly better than a dummy pill. [1] It had left the 2006 trial out, for an unrelated reason. [1]

The new team re-ran the 2016 and 2020 reviews without the 2006 trial, and Prozac's large advantage disappeared. [1]

They point to warning signs. In each group of the 2006 trial, every child's depression score changed by about the same amount, which is rare in real trials. [1] The paper also never described an ethics approval. [1]

The 2006 trial's authors did not answer the team or Nature. [1] MedKnow, the journal's publisher, has asked the editors to look into it and expects delays because of the situation in Iran. [1]

Andrea Cipriani of the University of Oxford, who co-wrote the 2016 and 2020 reviews, told Nature he agrees the 2006 data are problematic. [1]

Cipriani said his teams had no rule at the time for leaving such a trial out. [1] They rated their confidence in the Prozac result as very low, in an appendix. [1]

Cochrane has since brought in a set of rules for judging whether a trial is untrustworthy, so that reviewers can leave it out. [1]

The authors do not ask doctors to stop prescribing Prozac to young people. [1] They ask guideline committees to weigh the evidence again. [1]

Why it matters. The next step is with guideline committees: whether any of them reviews its advice on Prozac for children, as the authors ask, and whether the 2006 journal finishes its own check. [1]

Congo's Ebola outbreak, the fastest-growing on record, has killed 4,018 people among 8,300 cases since it was declared on 15 May, the health ministry said on Thursday. [3] A senior UN official said soldiers hunting for weapons burned a camp near Bunia with an Ebola transit centre this week, and 19,000 people fled. [3] Some health workers in Bunia protested that they were unpaid for August and September. [3] A Doctors Without Borders aid worker who caught Ebola was flown to the Netherlands on Thursday. [3] In Butembo, mobile laboratories now return test results in six hours instead of 72. [3]

Why it matters. Losing a centre means losing capacity and money, and starting again, said Julien Harneis, the UN's senior Ebola coordinator. [3] The WHO has said the outbreak is on track to pass West Africa's of 2014 to 2016, which killed 11,000 people. [3]

Novartis, the Swiss drugmaker, will pay Abogen Biosciences of China $575 million up front for an experimental drug called ABO2203, Abogen said on Friday. [4][5] Novartis could pay up to $7.2 billion more if the drug reaches set goals, so the deal is worth up to $7.8 billion. [4][5] The drug is mRNA, a set of genetic instructions that makes the patient's own cells build the medicine. [4][5] That medicine is meant to wipe out B cells, the immune cells behind diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. [4][6]

Why it matters. Weeks ago Novartis paused its own autoimmune cell therapy after three deaths, and this drug aims at the same B cells by a different route. [4] The autoimmune results published so far come from three patients with a bleeding disorder, ITP. [4]

Pennsylvania had confirmed 943 measles cases as of Wednesday, about a quarter of the US total for 2026, and has now reported a fifth measles death. [7] Only confirmed cases are counted. [7] Several Pennsylvania counties have large Amish communities, where measles vaccination rates are low and families are large. [7] People there may not see a doctor unless the illness becomes severe. [7]

Why it matters. Paul Offit, who runs the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, says the outbreak is much worse than the count. [7] Researchers will need computer models to estimate its real size. [7]

A study published on Friday in JAMA Network Open followed nearly 230,000 Americans aged 13 to 25 diagnosed with opioid addiction between 2016 and 2023. [8] About half saw a clinician for it, and about a third had two visits in the first month. [8] Of those in care, about one in six got a medicine such as buprenorphine or methadone. [8] Just one in 32 stayed on it for six months. [8]

Why it matters. US federal law makes minors fail twice without medicine before they may start methadone, and fewer than 10 minors in the study got it. [8] Poisonings, including overdoses, are now the third-leading cause of death for Americans aged 19 and under. [8]

The NIH, the US government's medical research agency, spent all of its roughly $34 billion grants budget in the year that ended on Wednesday, a STAT analysis found. [9] But the money went to 58,000 projects, against an average of 63,700 a year before the second Trump administration. [7] The agency again cut awards for research on health disparities, race and ethnicity. [9] About 50 researchers surveyed by STAT said slow, unclear grant decisions are delaying their work. [7]

Why it matters. The analysis found little progress on two of the Trump administration's own goals: spreading money more evenly across the country, and backing early-career scientists. [9]

A survey of 524 US disability care providers, published on Wednesday by an advocacy group called ANCOR, found 85% had moderate or severe staff shortages in the past year. [7] More than half, 55%, had turned away people who needed care. [7] Care quality fell while reported incidents rose. [7] ANCOR campaigns for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. [7]

Why it matters. States have already started cutting caregivers' pay ahead of cuts next year to Medicaid, the US government health plan for people on low incomes. [7] STAT reports the numbers are unlikely to improve. [7]

In northern Nigeria, clinics that handed out a monthly food supplement after routine vaccinations got more young children vaccinated against measles, a trial in Nature Medicine reports. [10] The supplement is a small daily sachet of nutrient-rich food for children aged 6 to 23 months. [10] Twenty areas were split into two groups, and 1,604 children were surveyed after a year. [10] Coverage of the first measles dose rose about 20 percentage points more in the supplement areas. [10]

Why it matters. Stopping measles needs about 95% of children to get two doses on time, a target many places miss. [10] Measles vaccination has prevented an estimated 92 million deaths of young children. [10]

Pfizer said on Thursday that tilrekimig, its experimental eczema antibody, met its main goal in a mid-stage trial. [11] The antibody blocks three immune signals at once. [11] In one part of the trial, 63% of patients on the highest dose saw their eczema score improve by at least three-quarters, against 20% on a dummy injection. [11] In a second part, with a dose every four weeks, 48% to 61% reached that mark, against 9%. [11]

Why it matters. Pfizer is now testing it head to head against Dupixent, the best-selling eczema drug, whose key patents expire in 2031. [11] An RBC analyst called the results impressive but said they barely stand out from rivals, and final-stage results are due in 2028. [11]

The FDA, the US drug regulator, told Wave Life Sciences it can seek accelerated approval for WVE-006, its RNA-editing treatment, Wave said on Thursday. [12] The drug is for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a disease in which the body does not make one protein it needs. [12] In May, Wave reported that the drug helped patients make useful levels of that protein. [12] The route follows a two-year trial. [12]

Why it matters. Wave's medical chief said the design is an efficient path to full approval, with no separate confirming trial needed afterwards. [12] It is still in mid-stage testing, with more data due by the end of 2026. [12]

Foghorn Therapeutics, a US biotech, is cutting 40% of its staff after a cancer drug it was developing with Eli Lilly failed to meet the bar for further testing. [12] It is stopping that drug, FHD-909, and a second experimental medicine, and ending its partnership with Lilly, which began in 2021. [12] Foghorn's shares fell 22% on Thursday. [12] In 2022, regulators paused a study of its leukaemia drug after patients died. [12]

Why it matters. FHD-909 was the company's most advanced programme, said Michael Schmidt, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities. [12] Foghorn's shares are now worth a fraction of their value when it listed on the stock market six years ago. [12]

AbbVie, a large US drugmaker, said on Friday it will join a US government pilot that tests a new rebate system for discounted medicines. [13] It sits inside 340B, a US programme that lets hospitals and clinics serving low-income patients buy medicines at a discount. [13] From 1 January 2027, providers will claim that discount through a platform called Beacon for three AbbVie drugs. [13] AbbVie says this stops the same sale being discounted twice once Medicare's negotiated prices start. [13]

Why it matters. The pilot covers Imbruvica, a cancer drug, Linzess, for irritable bowel syndrome, and Vraylar, an antipsychotic. [13] AbbVie says it will give providers the system free, with help for those that struggle to use it. [13]

Steven Kozlowski, the FDA's chief scientist, told a longevity meeting at Harvard that ageing will be among the topics in the agency's next list of science priorities. [14] The list is due early in the US government year that began on 1 October. [14] Kozlowski said it would help to have one agreed, measurable sign of ageing that every trial could use. [14] Jeffrey Siegel, another FDA official, said a drug might show it slows several age-linked diseases, or slows frailty and the decline in thinking that comes with age. [14]

Why it matters. The first trials will count age-linked diseases or deaths, Siegel said. [14] ARPA-H, a US research agency, already runs a $144 million programme on new ways to measure and treat ageing. [14]

A urine test that reads RNA, the working copies cells make of their genes, picked up 95% of early bladder cancers, a study in Nature Medicine reports. [15] It wrongly flagged about one in 10 people without cancer. [15] The team tested 683 urine samples from people with and without cancer. [15] In 114 patients, the test also predicted who would respond to BCG, a standard bladder cancer treatment. [15]

Why it matters. Bladder cancer needs frequent, costly check-ups after treatment, the authors note. [15] They say studies that follow patients forward in time are needed before doctors can rely on it. [15]

MYC, a gene that runs too hot in 70% of cancers, has resisted drugmakers for decades. [16] Scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia studied one way it goes into overdrive: cells piling up extra copies of it. [16] In Molecular Cell on Friday, they reported two switches, in the machinery that adds and removes chemical tags on DNA, that decide whether the copies build up. [16] Hitting a switch might be easier than hitting MYC itself, they suggest. [16]

Why it matters. It is basic lab science, far from any trial in people with cancer. [16] Marc Mansour, a cancer researcher at University College London, said every route in cancer biology seems to lead back to MYC. [16]

The FDA has approved 28 drugs that block kinases, enzymes that drive some lung cancers, writes Alice Shaw of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Nature. [17] Those pills can hold the cancer back for years, but many cancers return because the kinase changes where the drug attaches. [17] A study by Conery and colleagues in Nature reports drugs that remove the kinase entirely instead of blocking it. [17]

Why it matters. Shaw calls it a potentially powerful new route for the lung cancers that stop responding to today's pills. [17]

Researchers gave mice from four different inbred strains one dose of the same DNA-damaging chemical at 15 days old, a study in Nature reports. [18] Tumours appeared by 25 weeks in one strain, but only by 78 weeks in another. [18] The strains whose tumours carried more mutations were not the ones that got cancer fastest. [18] All four strains' tumours used the same growth pathway, but each favoured different genes within it. [18]

Why it matters. The genes an animal is born with changed what the same cancer mutation did, so one mutation may not mean the same thing in every patient. [18] This was shown in mice, not people. [18]

Talus Bio, a drug discovery company, released Ptarmigan-1 this week, an AI model meant to predict where small drug molecules can attach to proteins. [19] It is aimed at the roughly 40% of human proteins that have no stable shape, which standard tools cannot model. [19] The model learns from Talus's own measurements of proteins inside living cells. [19] Its most advanced drug targets brachyury, a protein that drives chordoma, a rare bone cancer. [19]

Why it matters. Many of these shapeless proteins switch genes on and off and are clearly linked to disease, but drugging them has proven very hard, GEN reports. [19] The accuracy claims are the company's own. [19]

Researchers at the Broad Institute and MIT made tiny particles, laced with rare-earth metals, that glow without fading. [20] They used them to follow single EGFR, HER2 and HER3 molecules, receptors on the surface of cells that are linked to cancer, for over 16 minutes. [20] Ordinary dyes fade within seconds. [20] Normal HER3 formed unexpectedly stable pairs, and cancer mutations broke those pairs apart, they report in Cell. [20]

Why it matters. Seeing how these receptors pair up, and how cancer changes it, could help shape new cancer treatments, the team says. [20]

Northwestern University scientists found a small group of brain cells in mice that drives anxiety after a cannabis-like drug, in Nature Communications. [21] Mice given a synthetic cannabinoid froze more when they smelled fox urine and spent less time exploring it. [21] The cells sit in the amygdala, a part of the brain that handles fear. [21] When the researchers silenced those cells, the drug no longer made the mice as anxious. [21]

Why it matters. It may help explain why cannabis sometimes brings panic instead of calm, especially in stressful settings, said Sachin Patel, the senior author. [21] The work was done in mice. [21]

Researchers at the Morgridge Institute in Wisconsin listed 1,122 proteins inside the mitochondria, the energy-making parts, of Acanthamoeba, in a paper in Cell. [22] This single-celled organism lives in water and soil and can infect the cornea, threatening sight. [22] Starved of oxygen, its mitochondria switch to making hydrogen gas. [22] Of the proteins found, 381 have no clear match in human or yeast mitochondria. [22]

Why it matters. Today's drugs for these eye infections are untargeted and toxic, said Jon Stefely, one of the researchers. [22] Proteins that people lack could become targets for drugs that spare human cells. [22]

High salt levels help kidney tubes grown in the lab to mature, researchers report in Nature Communications. [23] They studied collecting ducts, the kidney tubes that set how concentrated urine is. [23] Salt worked mainly through a protein called NFAT5. [23] With it, the team grew mature human ducts in the lab and used them to copy diabetes insipidus, a condition in which the kidneys cannot hold on to water. [23]

Why it matters. Getting lab-grown organ tissue to mature is a major hurdle for using it in medicine, the authors write. [23]

About 500 people have signed up for Younger, a six-month contest to lower their biological age, an estimate of how old the body seems. [24] It was set up by Christin Glorioso, head of NeuroAge Therapeutics, a company that sells brain-age tests. [24] Entrants are scored on several ageing clocks, including blood tests of chemical marks on DNA, a brain test, grip strength and face photos. [24] More than 100 such clocks exist. [24]

Why it matters. These clocks help scientists study ageing but are not yet good enough to judge one person's age, MIT Technology Review reports. [24] Glorioso hopes the contest builds the largest set of clock results yet. [24]

Pioneer Labs, a nonprofit start-up, said last month it had engineered the first microbe for Mars, a modified bacterium. [25] Its chief executive, Erika DeBenedictis, called it a first step towards making Mars more like Earth, in a post seen over two million times. [25] Chris McKay, a NASA planetary scientist, told Scientific American the microbe can only grow inside a bioreactor, a sealed tank for growing microbes. [25] It is meant to turn Martian dirt, water and carbon dioxide into plastic for 3D-printed houses. [25]

Why it matters. DeBenedictis has said it is only the first of five organisms needed. [25] Paul Race, who studies industrial biotechnology at Newcastle University, called the announcement rather over the top. [25]

Varda Space Industries raised $251 million on Wednesday, in a round led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital. [12] Varda argues that without gravity, drug ingredients can form crystals that cannot be made on Earth. [12] It plans more than a dozen launches and returns to Earth in the next two years. [12] It has said little about which medicines it is working on. [12]

Why it matters. The company says such crystals could give new forms of medicines that help patients. [12]

The NIH will unveil a new website on Monday that sorts its information into eight topics, such as clinical studies, rare diseases and grants, instead of by institute. [26] Over the decades its online presence grew to more than 700 separate websites. [26] A Biden-era plan to merge them was dropped when the Trump administration fired hundreds of communications staff. [26] Many sites then sat frozen for about 18 months. [26]

Why it matters. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communication scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, said finding anything on the old sites took the skills of an Egyptologist. [26] The old sites will close one by one as their content is checked and redirected. [26]

Scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi found that one cancer-causing gene, UHRF1, can push liver cells in zebrafish into different kinds of senescence, a state in which damaged cells stop dividing. [27] Some of those cells stopped for good and could not form tumours. [27] Others could start dividing again. [27] A common drug that kills senescent cells worked on only some of them, they report in EMBO Reports. [27]

Why it matters. Chemotherapy often pushes cancer cells into this state without killing them, so drugs meant to clear such cells may need to tell the kinds apart. [27] The work was done in fish. [27]