Biotech, in brief

The FDA, the US agency that decides which medicines can be sold, approved Tecentriq for one kind of colon cancer on Thursday 8 October. [1]

Tecentriq is an immune drug made by Genentech, a US drug company. It is added to standard chemotherapy after surgery has removed the tumour. [1]

The approval covers stage 3 cancer only, where the cancer had reached nearby lymph nodes, and only after all of it was cut out. [1]

It covers only tumours that are 'mismatch repair deficient': their cells have lost the system that fixes copying mistakes in DNA. [1]

About 10% to 15% of stage 2 or 3 bowel cancers are this kind, UK researchers say. [3]

Immune drugs work unusually well in these tumours, a separate UK trial found. [3] Their many unfixed DNA mistakes make odd proteins that immune cells can spot.

The ATOMIC trial split 712 patients at random: half got chemotherapy alone, half got chemotherapy plus Tecentriq. [1]

Adding Tecentriq halved the risk of the cancer coming back or the patient dying. [1]

Neither group has yet reached the point where half its patients relapsed, so the trial cannot yet say how many years the drug adds. [1]

Patients get Tecentriq with chemotherapy for six months, then alone for six more months. [1]

It can be given into a vein, or as Tecentriq Hybreza, a shot under the skin, for patients aged 12 or older who weigh at least 40kg. [1]

The label warns that it can turn the immune system against healthy organs, and that it can harm an unborn baby. [1]

It is the third cancer drug the FDA approved in a week, after Jaypirca on 2 October and Tukysa on 7 October. [2]

Why it matters. The next thing to watch is whether ATOMIC shows patients on Tecentriq living longer, a figure the FDA notice does not give. [1]

Teva, an Israeli drugmaker, said on Friday that the FDA had approved Weltruza, a once-a-month injection for adults with schizophrenia. [4] Schizophrenia is a lasting illness that can bring hallucinations and confused thinking. Weltruza is a slow-release form of olanzapine, an older antipsychotic medicine. [4][5] It uses a release method from Medincell, a French biotech company, and is their second approved product after Uzedy in 2023. [4] Teva plans to start selling it in the US within weeks. [4]

Why it matters. Analysts expect long-acting shots to help people who struggle to keep taking their medicine for an illness that lasts for years. [5] Medincell's shares rose 16.9% in Paris, and it may earn up to $112 million more from Teva, plus a share of sales. [4][5]

The FDA approved Hovilpri, a pill also called pritelivir, for adults with weak immune systems. [6] It is for herpes sores that did not heal on acyclovir, valacyclovir or famciclovir, the usual drugs. [6] Herpes simplex is a common virus that causes painful blisters on the lips, nose, eyes or genitals, and it stays in the body for life. [6] In a trial of 101 such adults, all sores healed within 28 days in 63% of those on Hovilpri, against 34% on other drugs. [6]

Why it matters. People whose immune systems are weakened, for example by blood cancers, transplants or HIV, get herpes more often and more severely. [6] Until now their doctors could only switch between drugs the virus resisted, or that patients could not bear. [6]

Wellcome, a British charity that funds research, published its Global Monitor survey of more than 140,000 adults in 140 countries. [7] It found that 52% of Americans trust science 'a lot', against 26% across the world. [7] Worldwide, the share who say science helps most people in their country fell from 42% in 2018 to 37% in 2025. [7] In the US it rose from 48% to 57%. [7] The survey was run as part of the Gallup World Poll. [7]

Why it matters. STAT, a US health news site, found that the US gap between religious and non-religious people on whether science helps was 24 points, against 5 in other rich countries. [7] The gap is growing because graduates and non-religious Americans are warming to science faster, not because others are turning against it. [7]

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that it still does not know what killed a 28-year-old worker at a plague research institute in Irkutsk, Siberia. [8] She died of pneumonia on 2 October, and about 200 people were quarantined. [8] Russia told the WHO that tests on her and her contacts were negative for the dangerous germs they checked for. [8] The WHO said no plague case has been registered, and it has found no sign that anything is spreading. [8]

Why it matters. The WHO called the missing diagnosis the key uncertainty that remains. [8] Health officials watch closely for deadly pneumonia with no known cause, because the Covid pandemic began with a cluster of exactly that. [8]

Ebola has reached Alimbongo, a health area in Congo's North Kivu province, which had four confirmed cases and two deaths by 6 October, the WHO said. [9] Cases have now been found in 64 health areas across seven provinces. [9] This outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo, a kind of Ebola with no approved vaccine or treatment. [9] By 6 October Congo had 8,728 confirmed cases and 4,205 confirmed deaths, and 2,269 people had recovered. [9]

Why it matters. Doctors Without Borders, a medical charity, says a third of confirmed patients are treated in ordinary clinics, partly because the special centres lack beds. [9] That risks passing the virus to other patients and to staff, while teams are following 80.4% of known contacts against a target of 85%. [9]

Researchers in Ghana tested two new quick blood tests for river blindness on 1,700 people in seven communities, in a study published on Sunday. [11] River blindness is caused by a worm, Onchocerca volvulus, and can take away sight. [11] Some of the communities had been given drugs against it for many years. [11] Both new tests agreed with the existing quick test more than 92% of the time. [11] Against a lab test on skin samples, they caught about 69% to 77% of the 26 infections found. [11]

Why it matters. The tests met the WHO's standard for mapping where the worm still lives, but not for deciding when a country can stop handing out the drugs. [11] The work was funded through USAID, the US government's aid agency. [11]

Researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland recorded brain activity in 263 people with depression and 75 people without it. [12] They used MEG, a scanner that picks up the faint magnetic fields made when brain cells fire. [12] The people with depression fell into five groups. In some, brain regions were more tightly linked than normal, and in others less. [12] One group had more trauma symptoms, and another had more problems with drugs or alcohol. [12]

Why it matters. Studying a mix of these groups may explain why earlier brain studies of depression disagreed with each other. [12] The researchers say the scans cannot yet be used to choose a patient's treatment. [12]

Researchers at Tulane University in the US followed 277,489 adults aged 40 to 69 who began without any of seven major illnesses, including diabetes, heart disease, cancer and depression. [13] At age 50, men who were both lonely and isolated could expect about 5.8 fewer years free of mental illness. [13] For women it was about 3.7 years. [13] For physical illness the losses were 2.4 years for women and 1.7 for men. [13] The study shows a link, not proof of cause. [13]

Why it matters. A healthier lifestyle reduced the loss linked to having few contacts, but not the loss linked to feeling lonely. [13] That suggests the two problems need different kinds of help. [13]

Researchers at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, pressed on the shin bones of mice with brain injuries for 2.5 minutes a day for five days. [14] The treated mice moved and remembered better than untreated mice one week and eight weeks later. [14] Bone cells that sense pressure released three substances into the blood, including BDNF, which helps nerve cells survive. [14] Pigs given a similar treatment lost fewer brain cells. [14]

Why it matters. No approved drug restores lost brain function after a brain injury. [14] All the animals were male, and an outside scientist says the work must be repeated in females, because oestrogen changes how bone responds to pressure. [14]

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto in Canada found a drainage route at the back of the eye in mice. [15] They named it the POLO pathway. [15] Tiny vessels under the retina, the light-sensing layer of the eye, carried fluid to nearby lymph nodes within minutes. [15] For more than 100 years scientists had thought the eye had no drains like this. [15]

Why it matters. Glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, two big causes of blindness, involve fluid and waste building up in the eye. [15] Nobody yet knows whether people have the same route, or whether it can be made to work harder. [15]

Engineers at NYU Abu Dhabi and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi built a nerve stimulator the size of a small seed that is put in place through a needle. [16] It has no battery and no wires. [16] Power comes wirelessly from outside the body, and doctors can adjust its electrical pulses. [16] In early tests, reported in the journal Science Advances, it switched on nerves inside a living body. [16]

Why it matters. Treating long-term pain by stimulating a nerve today often means surgery to place a device. [16] The new device has not yet been shown to ease pain in people. [16]

Researchers at Texas A&M University in the US studied tiny bits of polyethylene, the most widely made plastic, in the laboratory. [17] It is used in food wrap, containers and the linings of drink cups. [17] Exposure raised signs of fatty liver disease, in which fat builds up inside liver cells. The signs were worse with a fatty, sugary diet. [17] The plastic switched on PPAR-alpha, a protein that controls how the liver handles fat. [17]

Why it matters. About a quarter of people worldwide have fatty liver disease. [17] The researchers say more work is needed to know whether this happens at the amounts people actually take in. [17]

Researchers led by Daisuke Yabe of Kyoto University in Japan gave mice olive oil 15 minutes before or after a dose of sugar. [18] When the oil came first, blood sugar rose less and the stomach emptied more slowly. [18] The oil-first mice also released more of several gut and pancreas hormones, including GLP-1, the hormone that weight-loss drugs like Ozempic copy. [18] The effect held in mice with type 2 diabetes. [18]

Why it matters. Blocking either glucagon or GLP-1 alone did not stop the effect, but blocking both weakened it, so several signals work together. [18] Earlier studies in people found that eating fat or vegetables before carbohydrates helps, and these mouse results suggest why. [18]