Biotech, in brief

Argenx, a Dutch drug company worth about $50 billion, said on Thursday it is stopping a final-stage trial of its drug Vyvgart in Sjogren's disease. [1][3]

Sjogren's is a disease in which the immune system attacks the glands that make tears and saliva. It often brings tiredness, dry eyes and pain in the mouth and joints. [1][3]

An outside board of experts, who can see the results while a trial is still running, looked at them partway through. It found the trial could not meet its main goal and advised stopping. [3]

Results had not been expected until the second half of 2027. [1] Argenx said Vyvgart caused no new safety problems in the trial. [3]

Vyvgart blocks a receptor called FcRn, and that lowers the level of IgG antibodies in the blood. In Sjogren's and similar diseases, some of those antibodies attack the body's own tissue. [3]

Argenx shares fell 15% on Thursday. [1] Vyvgart and an under-the-skin version brought in $1.5 billion in the second quarter alone. [1]

Several analysts had left Sjogren's out of their sales forecasts because the trial was risky. A win could have added up to $1.4 billion a year in sales at its peak. [1]

It is not Vyvgart's first miss. Trials in a bleeding disorder and a skin disease failed in 2023, and argenx dropped thyroid eye disease in 2025. [1]

No approved medicine changes the course of Sjogren's. Novartis and Amgen have each reported a successful final-stage trial of their own drugs. [1]

The same morning, argenx said its newer drug FB102 passed a mid-stage trial in celiac disease, in which eating gluten damages the lining of the gut. [2][1]

The trial gave 126 adults with celiac disease gluten on purpose. Those on FB102 had less damage to the tiny folds of their gut lining at Day 78 than those on a dummy drug. [2]

Argenx has not yet said how big the protection was, only that it was unlikely to be chance. It bought FB102 this year by taking over Forte Biosciences for $2.2 billion, and plans a final-stage trial. [2]

Why it matters. Watch for the full Sjogren's data argenx has promised to analyse and share, and for the size of FB102's effect, which it has not yet published. [3][2]

Viatris, a maker of generic and branded medicines, agreed on Thursday to buy Pacira BioSciences for $1.65 billion in cash. [4][5][6] It will pay $36.50 a share, 45% more than Pacira's price the day before. [4] Pacira sells Exparel, for pain after surgery, and Zilretta, for knee pain from osteoarthritis. [4] Both are new forms of old painkillers that are not opioids, and together they sold $692 million in 2025. [4] The deal should close by the end of 2026. [4]

Why it matters. Cheaper copies of Exparel can start selling in early 2030 under patent deals Pacira made last year, and Zilretta's patents end in 2031. [4] Viatris says it knows how to keep a drug selling after copies arrive. [4]

Zealand Pharma, a Danish company, and its partner Roche reported a mid-stage trial of petrelintide in 220 people with obesity and type 2 diabetes. [7] Petrelintide is a weekly injection that copies amylin, a natural hormone. [7] The pancreas releases amylin along with insulin, and it helps people feel full. People lost up to 9.2% of their weight in 28 weeks, against 2% on a dummy shot. [7] But HbA1c, a blood test of average sugar over months, fell by only 0.65%, while rival drugs have cut it by 1.3% to 2.1%. [7]

Why it matters. Stomach side effects were about as common as on the dummy shot, so analysts at William Blair now expect it to be used mainly to keep weight off. [7] Roche has started three final-stage trials, one of them in 600 people with diabetes. [7]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US health secretary, opened a clinic at the National Institutes of Health, the US medical research agency, to study injuries blamed on vaccines. [8] He visited on Monday, and thousands of NIH staff were told to work from home that day. [8] An internal memo seen by NPR says the NIH will follow vaccinated people for possible complications. [8] Kennedy also plans a billing code that pays doctors for reporting serious vaccine side effects. [9]

Why it matters. Vaccine experts say systems already watch very large numbers of people for side effects. [8] Some fear the clinic is meant to back Kennedy's long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, while measles cases rise in the US. [8][9]

Life Biosciences released the first safety results from a human trial of cellular reprogramming, a method meant to return old cells to a younger state. [10] Three people with glaucoma, an eye disease that can cause blindness, got an eye injection plus eight weeks of daily antibiotics that switch the treatment on. [10] None reported major side effects, and two of the three improved on a standard eye exam. [10] The method had made mice and monkeys younger in tests, but had never been tried in people. [10]

Why it matters. James Tsai, a glaucoma specialist at Mount Sinai who was not involved, called it exciting but very preliminary. [10] New Limit, which raised $435 million, plans its own human trial in 2027. [10]

The FDA said its safety review of mifepristone, the main abortion pill in the US, will continue into next year. [11] It expects to finish a safety study by mid-December and report no later than March 2027, then decide on any new limits. [11] The update came in a court filing ordered in a case brought by Louisiana. [11] Mifepristone was approved in 2000, and the FDA has repeatedly found it safe and effective. [11]

Why it matters. Since 2021, doctors may prescribe it online and send it by post, which has weakened state abortion bans. [11] That rule is the one abortion opponents most want changed, and they criticised the new timeline. [11]

PhRMA, the trade group for brand-name drugmakers in the US, sued the Trump administration over GLOBE, a Medicare pilot. [12] GLOBE ties what Medicare pays for some drugs to the prices other rich countries pay. [12] It covers Part B, the part of Medicare that pays for drugs given in doctors' offices. PhRMA says the pilot goes beyond what the law allows Medicare to do. [12] The Trump administration had already exempted all but a handful of companies, in return for voluntary price deals. [12]

Why it matters. The pilot is not expected to change much, so the fight is about the example it would set. [12] PhRMA says voluntary deals are acceptable but a compulsory one is not. [12]

The Trump administration is drafting plans to allow the temporary sale of some peptides that are now restricted, the Washington Post reported. [12] These are sold as new treatments and wellness products. [12] Peptides are short chains of the building blocks that make up proteins. The plan would let some compounding pharmacies, which mix medicines to order, sell them while federal rules are written. [12]

Why it matters. The plan has not been announced and could still change. [12] If it goes ahead, pharmacies could sell these products before their claims are fully tested. [12]

Ono Pharmaceutical of Japan will pay Biohaven $80 million up front for rights to three experimental drugs in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. [13] Biohaven can also earn a $20 million payment and 20% of profits there. [13] The lead drug, BHV-1300, is in a final-stage trial for Graves' disease, in which antibodies push the thyroid to overwork. [13] It is a degrader: it clears some kinds of antibody out of the blood. [13]

Why it matters. Biohaven cut back its research in March and kept these drugs as one of three areas. [13] Ono, which helped develop the cancer drug Opdivo, wants more medicines for immune diseases. [13]

The European Commission said for the third time this week that Russia must share details of a suspected plague case in Siberia. [14] A 28-year-old worker at a plague research institute in Irkutsk died last week. [15] The EU's health security committee met with the WHO on Wednesday and took no decisions, because it lacked reliable information. [14] Russia says she died of pneumonia of unknown cause, and that it has checked 90% of her contacts and found no infections. [15]

Why it matters. The WHO asked Russia for details on 3 October and got an answer on 6 October. [15] Until the test results are shared, nobody outside Russia can judge the risk. [15][14]

Early lab tests on a 20-year-old man in Wajir, Kenya, who was suspected of having Ebola, came back negative, the county governor said on Thursday. [16] He had travelled from Congo through Uganda, the same route as a Kenyan man who died of Ebola in Nairobi this week. [16] Kenya is the fourth country with a case linked to Congo's outbreak, the second-largest on record. [16] It has killed at least 4,205 of more than 8,700 people reported ill. [16]

Why it matters. The result eased fears of a second case in Kenya. [16] The outbreak was declared in Congo in May and has since reached three other countries. [16]

The US Labor Department is investigating nine universities, including Harvard, MIT and Stanford, over J-1 visas, the main visa for foreign researchers just after their PhD. [17] Vice President JD Vance said the schools use the visas to bring in cheap labour. [17] He said they fill 61% of grant-funded research jobs with J-1 holders, against 38% nationally, and his office did not immediately say where the figures came from. [17] MIT and Harvard confirmed they had received subpoenas. [17]

Why it matters. Nearly 60% of US postdoctoral researchers in science, engineering and health hold temporary visas, government science data show. [17] The same week, the Trump administration proposed a $70,000 fee on a work programme used by foreign students. [17]

Yale researchers reported that lacosamide, an approved epilepsy drug, eased pain and protected cartilage in early tests for osteoarthritis, before any human trial. [18] The drug blocks Nav1.7, a channel that carries pain signals and, in arthritic joints, also pushes cartilage cells to break down. [18] Held in a gel injected into the knee, one dose every four weeks protected cartilage better than a daily pill. [18] The study was published in Bioactive Materials. [18]

Why it matters. No approved medicine stops both the pain and the cartilage loss of osteoarthritis. [18] Because lacosamide is already approved, human trials could start sooner, but it has not yet been tested in people with osteoarthritis. [18]

Two teams published maps of how every cell in a mouse embryo descends from the fertilised egg, in the journals Science and Cell. [19] One used DNA Typewriter, which writes a record of each cell division into the cell's own DNA, in order. [19] Of 100 edited eggs, ten embryos were examined, and one held a record clear enough to trace nearly every cell to one of the first two. [19] The other team traced 1.4 million cells from 16 embryos. [19]

Why it matters. Blood and eye cells settled their fate early and outer skin cells late, so cells do not choose their jobs all at once. [19] The researchers say such records could help study birth defects and cancer. [19]

A study of 894 pet dogs in the Dog Aging Project found that large dogs and male dogs age faster at the molecular level, in a study published in Science. [20] Researchers at Arizona State University read chemical tags on the dogs' DNA, which change with age and work as a clock. [20] Ageing on this clock was fastest early in a dog's life. [20] Small breeds can live nearly twice as long as large ones. [20]

Why it matters. Pet dogs share human homes, food and medical care, so researchers use them to study how genes and surroundings shape ageing in people. [20]

ARPA-H, a US health research agency, has named three teams in BoSS, a programme to store and ship cell-based medicines without refrigeration. [21] It has promised up to $87 million over four years. [21] A team led by Draper and Likarda got up to $7.3 million at first, and one led by UC Davis up to $6 million. [21] Cell treatments are living cells, and today they must be kept cold from factory to patient. [21]

Why it matters. The teams aim to cut the cost of storing, moving and delivering these treatments. [21] One test will check whether stored cancer-fighting immune cells still work once they are woken up. [21]

Researchers at Brazil's University of Campinas made mice obese with a high-fat diet, then had half of them climb a staircase carrying weights. [22] After seven sessions, the trained mice had less fat around their gut and smaller fat cells, though their body weight had not changed. [22] Proteins that break down stored fat had started working again. [22] The study was published in Life Sciences. [22]

Why it matters. Fat around the organs is more harmful than fat under the skin, and this suggests exercise starts to change it before the scales move. [22] It was done in male mice only. [22]

A study in a Nature journal reports how the virus behind Covid-19 may damage the cells that make insulin. [23] Two of the virus's proteins grab a hormone called IAPP and make it clump into deposits that disrupt insulin release. [23] In infected macaques, old animals had many deposits and dying insulin cells, while younger adults had few. [23] The work used monkeys, mouse cells and lab tests, not patients. [23]

Why it matters. Diabetes cases have risen since the pandemic, and this offers one possible reason, and a reason age matters. [23]

A French mid-stage trial gave isatuximab, an antibody drug for the blood cancer multiple myeloma, through a small device stuck to the body instead of a drip. [24] The 74 patients, median age 73, could not have a stem-cell transplant. [24] At eight months, 88% had a very good response, and about 93% had no worsening at 14 months. [24] Only 5% had reactions to the injection. [24]

Why it matters. The authors say the stick-on injector is a workable alternative to giving the drug by drip. [24] The trial was run by the University Hospital of Poitiers, not by a drug company. [24]

Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu, a Nigerian children's doctor, is president-elect of the Union for International Cancer Control, and the first African to lead it. [25] It has more than 1,100 member groups in over 170 countries. [25] The WHO's cancer agency counted 20.6 million new cancer cases and 9.8 million deaths in 2024. [25] It expects more than 34 million cases a year by 2050, with most of the extra deaths in poorer countries. [25]

Why it matters. She wants a global fund for cancer treatment, like the one that pays for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria care. [25] Only 14% of the 73 million people who need end-of-life pain care each year get it. [25]

The UK government and UK Research and Innovation, its research funder, are putting 54 million pounds into 18 projects against biological threats. [26] They include mRNA vaccines for farm animals and work on germs that no longer respond to drugs. [26] One in six lab-confirmed bacterial infections tested resistant to antibiotics in 2023, UKRI says. [26] Three government departments pay for it: health, farming and foreign affairs. [26]

Why it matters. The programme treats human, animal and plant disease as linked, so outbreaks on farms and in hospitals are studied together. [26]

Northwestern University researchers followed the fathers of all 130,267 babies born in the US state of Georgia in 2017, for five years. [27] 796 of the fathers died, and 60% of those deaths were from causes judged preventable. [27] They included 143 killings, 142 accidents, 102 suicides and 93 overdoses. [27] Overall, fathers died less often than other men: 120 against 231 per 100,000 at ages 30 to 34. [27]

Why it matters. Deaths of mothers around a birth are reviewed by official committees, and nothing like that exists for fathers. [27] The study was published in JAMA Pediatrics. [27]

Everlywell, a US digital health company, has launched Clairity Breast, which predicts a woman's five-year breast cancer risk from an uploaded mammogram for $249. [28] It is one of a growing number of AI tools for medical images sold straight to patients. [28] Many such tools have been slow to reach patients through doctors, who are often unsure how useful an early tool is before it has been studied in real use. [28]

Why it matters. Selling straight to patients means a woman can get an AI risk score without a doctor ordering it. [28]