Biotech, in brief

Kenya confirmed four new Ebola cases on Saturday, 17 October, bringing its total to seven. [1]

Kenya had never recorded an Ebola case before this month. [1]

One of the new patients is a relative of Kenya's first patient. [1] The other three are health workers who treated him. [1]

The first patient, a 40-year-old Kenyan man, travelled from Congo through Uganda to Nairobi without being caught at airport checks. [3] He was diagnosed soon after a relative took him to hospital, and died on 5 October. [3]

Ebola spreads through contact with an infected person's body fluids, such as blood or vomit. [3] Anyone exposed can fall ill any time from 2 to 21 days later. [3]

The second and third patients, both relatives of the first, were already in quarantine when they fell ill. [3][2] Both are stable and responding to treatment, Kenya's health ministry said. [1]

Kenya listed 128 people the first patient had met. [3] By 14 October it had found 113 of them, and 108 were in quarantine in Kenya. [3] Five had left the country. [4]

Kenya's health ministry says it has quarantined most people at risk and sees no sign of the virus spreading among the wider public. [1]

Every Kenyan case is the Bundibugyo type of Ebola, which has no approved vaccine or accepted treatment, the World Health Organization says. [1] Up to half of the people it infects can die, the United Nations says. [1]

In Congo, where this outbreak began in May, more than 9,200 cases have been confirmed and more than 4,400 people have died. [3][1]

Only just over a third of Congo's confirmed cases had been on a contact list before they fell ill, wrote an Ebola response leader at the International Rescue Committee, an aid group. [5]

Why it matters. The next test is whether any new Kenyan case turns up in someone who was not already on a contact list, which would mean the virus has reached people nobody is watching. [1][3]

The CDC, the US public health agency, said on Thursday it will send a scientist from its Epidemic Intelligence Service to help fight measles in Pennsylvania. [13] It is also releasing nearly $4 million for the response, NBC News reported. [13] Pennsylvania had confirmed 1,222 measles cases and six deaths linked to the disease by Wednesday. [13] Lancaster County, the centre of the outbreak with more than 415 cases by 9 October, is the state's largest county without its own health department. [13]

Why it matters. A county commissioner says she learns of new cases and deaths from the news, at the same time as the public. [13] Without local staff, the work of finding cases falls on the state's central health system, which covers 60 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. [13]

The FDA's drugs centre said on Friday it has set up a board to oversee its decisions on exclusivity. [6] Exclusivity is a period after approval when cheaper copies of a new drug may not be sold. [6] It covers the five-year protection for a drug whose main ingredient was never approved before. [7] It also covers three years for an old ingredient approved again after new trials, and biological medicines. [7] It will not usually review the six-month protection for studies in children or the seven-year protection for rare-disease drugs. [7]

Why it matters. These decisions set how long a drugmaker can sell a medicine before cheaper copies arrive. [6] The FDA says the aim is clearer, more consistent decisions. [7]

Syndax, a US drug company, said on 12 October that its drug axatilimab failed a mid-stage trial in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. [9] That is a rare disease in which the lungs slowly scar and stiffen. [9] The drug did not slow the yearly fall in how much air patients could breathe out, compared with a dummy treatment. [9] Syndax's shares dropped 17% in trading after the market closed. [9]

Why it matters. The same week, Bristol Myers Squibb, a large US drugmaker, said its own drug for the disease passed a final-stage trial, though only the lower of two doses worked. [14] So one new drug for scarred lungs moved toward approval while another dropped out. [9][14]

Viatris, a large drugmaker, said on 16 October that the FDA has approved its eye drops Ryzumvi for presbyopia in adults. [8] Presbyopia is the slow loss of the eye's ability to focus on things close up, and most people notice it in their early to mid 40s. [8] The drops contain phentolamine and are also labelled for reversing pupils widened by other eye drugs. [8] Viatris sells them in the US under a licence from Opus Genetics. [8]

Why it matters. Nearly everyone gets presbyopia with age, and Viatris is now looking for a US partner to sell the drops for it. [8] Eye redness affected 21% of people in testing, and the company's statement gives no measure of how well the drops worked. [8]

Agilent, a US maker of lab instruments, is buying Proscia for $240 million in cash, with up to $30 million more if targets are met. [10] Pathology is the study of tissue samples to find disease, often cancer. Proscia makes Concentriq, software that stores and handles scanned images of those samples. [10] More than 4,000 labs, hospitals and drug companies use it. [10] The two firms agreed in 2022 to sell a pathology system together. [10]

Why it matters. Agilent's chief executive, Padraig McDonnell, says pathology work is fast moving onto screens. [10] Proscia's software lets outside AI programs help read those images, for drug research as well as for diagnosing patients. [10]

Helen Branswell, a reporter on infectious diseases for STAT, a US health news site, died on 13 October aged 69, of complications from cancer. [11] She began covering germs during the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto. [11] On 31 December 2019 she posted that a ProMED alert, an email list where doctors report unusual illnesses, about unexplained pneumonias in China gave her SARS flashbacks. [11] That was before scientists had read the new virus's genes. [11] She and two colleagues were Pulitzer Prize finalists for their early Covid stories. [11]

Why it matters. Experts and public health officials around the world respected her reporting on flu, polio, Ebola and Covid. [11][12] The head of the World Health Organization said her work was a trusted source of clarity at a time of false information. [11]

Health workers and other front-line staff in Beni, a city in eastern Congo, were given the Ervebo Ebola vaccine on Friday. [15] Ervebo worked in past outbreaks of the more common Zaire type of Ebola. [15] Whether it protects against the Bundibugyo type behind this outbreak is still being studied. [15] It is given under compassionate use, a rule that lets doctors use a medicine in a serious emergency before it is approved for that use. [15] About 50,000 doses are meant for front-line workers, and 20,000 more for a trial of whether it works. [15]

Why it matters. Mohamed Janabi, the World Health Organization's director for Africa, said 2,400 people have survived Ebola in this outbreak with care such as blood, oxygen and antibiotics. [15] The WHO says the outbreak is out of control and on track to pass the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people. [15]

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic in the US tested the blood of 110 people after surgery for squamous cell cancers of the head and neck, in the skin or in the lining of the mouth and throat. [16] The test looks for tiny pieces of DNA shed by tumour cells left behind, matched to each patient's own tumour. [16] People whose blood carried this DNA before follow-up treatment lived shorter lives and saw their cancer return more often over almost three years. [16] The test flagged 71% of the patients whose cancer came back. [16]

Why it matters. Doctors now choose radiation or chemotherapy after surgery from the tumour's features, and the authors say most patients get too much or too little. [16] The study, published on 18 October, followed patients at one hospital and was not a trial, so it can only shape the trials that would test the blood result as a guide. [16]