Biotech, in brief

The CDC, the US public health agency, counted 4,080 measles cases this year as of 8 October, 193 more than a week earlier. [1]

That is the most since 1989 to 1991, when 55,000 people in the US caught measles and 123 died. [3]

This year 414 people have been taken to hospital with measles, against 244 in the whole of 2025. [1]

Children and teenagers aged 5 to 19 make up 42% of cases, and adults 40%. [1]

The CDC lists two measles deaths this year and does not say which states they were in. [1] Pennsylvania alone reports five, all in people who were not vaccinated. [3]

The Guardian reports that Pennsylvania's deaths are left out of the CDC's count because its governor, Josh Shapiro, and the US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., disagree on how to classify them. [4]

Last month the CDC began taking measles deaths from the National Center for Health Statistics, which collects death records, instead of from state health departments. [1] The change has drawn scrutiny. [1]

Two of Pennsylvania's deaths are thought to have come from infections at birth, which had been extremely rare in the US. [2]

Pennsylvania now has 1,136 cases and 219 hospital stays, its biggest outbreak in more than three decades. [1][4]

Lancaster County, home to many Amish families, has the most cases, 391. [4] Only 7 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties have their own health department, and Lancaster is not one of them. [5]

New York declared a statewide disaster emergency on 5 October, with 108 cases this year against 48 in all of 2025. [6][7] Its order lets pharmacists vaccinate children as young as two. [6] Local health teams there have given more than 1,000 measles vaccine doses in rural areas since 15 July. [6]

The CDC sent states a surprise $100 million for measles vaccination and tracking, in two parts in August and September. [2]

Measles stops spreading only when at least 95% of a community is vaccinated, and US rates have fallen below that. [4][7]

Why it matters. The next marker is November, when international health officials decide whether the US and Mexico still count as measles-free. [4]

Bookings for the shingles vaccine at Boots, a UK chain of chemists, more than doubled in the past year, and at Superdrug they rose 41%. [9] Some buyers hope it will protect them against dementia. [9] Shingles is a painful rash that appears when the chickenpox virus, asleep in the nerves since childhood, wakes up. [9] An Oxford study of over 200,000 Americans found 17% less dementia after the newer Shingrix vaccine than after an older one, 22% in women and 13% in men. [9] Most people under 65 pay about 450 pounds for two doses. [9]

Why it matters. None of this is proof yet. [9] A study of English hospital records found no sign that the older vaccine protects, and trials in Finland and Denmark will not report for years. [9] Alzheimer's Research UK does not advise the jab to prevent dementia. [9]

A Nature Aging study looked at naive T cells, white blood cells that have not yet met a germ. [8] They come mainly from the thymus, a gland in the chest that works hardest until the teenage years, then shrinks. [8] Male mice lost them faster than females, and by middle age their lymph nodes, the small glands where immune responses start, had shrunk and spotted cancer less well. [8] Blocking male hormones regrew the thymus and restored the cells and the cancer fight in middle-aged male mice, but not old ones. [8]

Why it matters. Men are nearly twice as likely as women to get cancer and to die of it. [8] The authors say the findings suggest ways to restore middle-aged men's immune defences, but the work is in mice, with only supporting human data. [8]

Scientists infected mice carrying lung tumours with the virus that causes COVID-19, in experiments run at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. [10] The infection left the lungs short of oxygen and inflamed. [10] That switched on VEGF, a signal that makes new blood vessels grow, and the new vessels fed the tumours, which grew. [10] An antibody that blocks VEGF held the tumours back. [10] Small lumps in the lungs are common in adults, and many are cancers that are not growing. [10]

Why it matters. The authors suggest other lung infections could have the same effect. [10] This has been shown in mice only, and nobody has yet tested whether it happens in people. [10]

Researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, studied MDA5, a protein that cells normally use to sense viruses. [11] In patients' data, tumours with a lot of MDA5 went with shorter survival and with weaker results from immunotherapy, drugs that release the brakes on immune cells. [11] In female mice, removing MDA5 made cancer cells die in a way that alerts the immune system. [11] Killer T cells became more active, and immunotherapy worked better against several kinds of cancer. [11]

Why it matters. The team names MDA5 as a target for future drugs. [11] There is no medicine against it yet, and the result has not been tested in people. [11]

Scientists led by Menna Clatworthy reported B1-like cells in the kidneys and other organs of adults, in the journal Science Immunology. [12] B1 cells are a kind of white blood cell that renew themselves and make ready-made antibodies, proteins that can stick to many different targets. [12] Mice have them, and they had been seen in human organs before birth, but it was unclear whether adults keep them. [12] The cells found in adults made antibodies on their own, without being prompted. [12]

Why it matters. In mice these cells settle in before birth and then renew themselves, unlike the fresh T cells that the thymus makes less of with age. [12][8] The study shows where the cells are in adults, not yet what they do in illness. [12]

AstraZeneca, a British drugmaker, opened an 18-storey research centre in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Monday 5 October. [13] Nearly 2,000 scientists will work there on lung disease, obesity, breast cancer and rare diseases. [13] It stands next to the Broad Institute, a large gene research centre. [13] The building is part of a $1 billion promise to the state, with a plan to grow AstraZeneca's Massachusetts staff by more than half. [13]

Why it matters. The site is part of Massachusetts' $4 billion Mass Leads Act, a 2024 law to attract companies, so public money is part of the draw. [13] The chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said cures for many cancers are not far away, which is a company's hope, not a result. [13]

The MHRA, the UK regulator for medicines and medical devices, will keep checking every AI-based medical device after it goes on sale. [14] Until now a device was checked once, before it reached patients. [14] The change is one of 44 recommendations from a national commission on AI in healthcare, which the UK government accepted on 6 October. [14] A plan to carry them out is due next spring. [14] The MHRA has also opened a third round of its AI Airlock, where companies test devices with the regulator watching. [14]

Why it matters. AI devices can fail, be hacked or cause harm in new ways, so one check before sale may miss problems that appear later. [14] The rules for how the watching works are not written yet. [14]

About 1,900 children up to the age of 14 are diagnosed with cancer each year in the UK. [15] It is the leading cause of death from disease in children under 15. [15] Just under a third of parents say they feel confident spotting the signs. [15] A national campaign backed by CCLG, a children's cancer charity, asks doctors to refer a child after three lasting symptoms, three visits or three weeks of unexplained illness. [15] About half of children are diagnosed within two weeks, but some wait up to 25 weeks. [15]

Why it matters. Cancer grows faster in children than in adults, and quicker diagnosis can mean gentler treatment. [15] More than eight in ten children now survive, far more than in the 1970s, and 13-year-old Amelia Carroll, diagnosed with leukaemia last year, is in remission and back at school. [15]