Biotech, in brief

Nigeria flew its only Ebola patient from Abuja, its capital, to Switzerland on Monday morning, health minister Muhammad Ali Pate said. [1][4]

She is a 42-year-old woman born in Uganda and married to a Swiss diplomat. She is being treated at Geneva University Hospitals. [4][5]

Pate said she was stable, awake and talking. He added that this does not mean she can no longer pass on the virus. [1][4]

Her husband has no symptoms. He flew on the same plane and is in isolation at University Hospital Zurich. [1][5]

Africa CDC, the African Union's disease agency, is sending leading Ebola scientists to Nigeria to find out how she was infected, its head Jean Kaseya told Reuters. [2]

The team will be led by Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the Congolese scientist who helped discover Ebola. [2]

Kaseya said her travel papers show she never visited Congo, where this outbreak began in May. She had spent two weeks on holiday in Uganda. [1][2]

If she caught it in Uganda, the virus may be passing between people there without anyone knowing. [1] Uganda's last recorded case was on 21 June. [3]

Nigeria now lists 53 people who were in contact with her, nine more than its first count. Most are health workers. [4]

Nigeria's government released 10 billion naira, about $6.7 million, in emergency money for tests, protective gear and health workers. [6]

At the land border with Benin, an AFP reporter saw health forms that asked about fever but not about Ebola, and no temperature checks. [4]

The outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo, a rare kind of Ebola with no approved vaccine or treatment. It has now reached four countries. [1][2]

On Friday, gene tests found her virus closely related to the one that infected Kenya's first patient. Kaseya said this does not mean one of them infected the other. [2]

Why it matters. The next fact to watch is where Muyembe's team says she caught the virus: if it was Uganda, declared free of Ebola in August, the virus has been passing between people there unseen. [2][3]

A drug from Merck, a big US drugmaker, and Kelun-Biotech, a Chinese company, cut the risk of death by about a third in advanced endometrial cancer. [10] Endometrial cancer, which starts in the lining of the womb, is a common cancer in women. [10] The result came from a final-stage trial presented on Monday at a cancer meeting in Madrid. [10] The drug, sacituzumab tirumotecan or sac-TMT, is a targeted chemotherapy already approved in China. [10]

Why it matters. Merck is running 18 final-stage trials of sac-TMT around the world, 10 of them in women's cancers, to win approval outside China. [10] It needs new sellers before Keytruda, its best-selling drug, loses patent protection in 2028. [10]

Genmab, a Danish drugmaker, said its drug Rina-S passed its first final-stage trial, in 582 women with ovarian cancer that no longer responds to platinum chemotherapy. [11] Against the usual chemotherapy, it cut the risk of the cancer growing or death by 71%. [11] It also cut the risk of death by 57%. [11] Genmab announced it on Friday 23 October and has shared only top-line figures so far. [11] At ESMO it also showed a second drug, petosemtamab, given with Keytruda, shrinking tumours in 63% of 43 head and neck cancer patients. [11]

Why it matters. Analysts at William Blair said the results look strong next to AbbVie's rival Elahere and may reach more patients. [11] Last year AbbVie went to court, accusing Genmab of ignoring stolen trade secrets when it bought Rina-S. Genmab denies it. [11]

BioNTech, the German company behind a Covid vaccine, said on Monday its breast cancer drug met its main goal in a final trial but helped only modestly. [12][13] The drug, trastuzumab pamirtecan, is an antibody that carries a cell-killing drug to cancer cells. [12] It slowed HER2-low breast cancer, a kind with small amounts of a protein called HER2, better than chemotherapy. [12] More patients got lung inflammation than in earlier tests, and a small share had severe or fatal events. [12][13]

Why it matters. The companies said the benefit would be limited because Enhertu, from AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo, already treats this cancer. [12] BioNTech had reported two other trial setbacks before this one, including a missed goal for its mRNA cancer vaccine BNT113 this month. [12][13]

Incyte, a US drugmaker, showed early results at ESMO for INCB161734, a drug aimed at one faulty form of a gene called KRAS, known as G12D. [14][15] Given with the chemotherapy mix FOLFIRINOX, it shrank tumours in 81% of 28 patients with pancreatic cancer. [14] With a different chemotherapy, the figure was 58% of 26 patients. [14] Diarrhoea hit 68% of patients and nausea 64%. [14] A final trial has started, with results expected in 2028. [14]

Why it matters. Incyte's research chief said the drug is 'neck and neck' with one from Revolution Medicines, which already sells a pancreatic cancer pill. [14] Incyte needs new drugs before its best seller, Jakafi, loses patent protection in 2028. [14]

Tango Therapeutics, a US biotech, said it will cut about 14% of its staff, mostly researchers looking for new drug targets. [16] It will focus its money on drugs such as vopimetostat, given with Revolution Medicines' pill Rasonque for pancreatic cancer. [16] At ESMO, tumours shrank in 82% of 22 patients, down from 92% of 12 at a count in May. [16] Tango's shares fell 16.4% on Friday. [16]

Why it matters. Tango plans a final trial in the first half of next year but has no deal yet with Revolution Medicines to supply Rasonque for it. [16] Its chief executive said other options are being looked at. [16]

Johnson & Johnson, a big US drugmaker, showed early results at ESMO for JNJ-6143, a daily pill for advanced prostate cancer. [17][18] At the 50mg dose, 77% of patients saw their PSA, a blood marker of the cancer, fall by at least half. [17][18] The pill grips a protein found on the cancer and a protein the cell needs to live, so the cell dies. [18] It came with J&J's $3.05 billion purchase of Halda Therapeutics last year. [17]

Why it matters. A final trial is set to start this week, Fierce Biotech reported on Sunday. [18] Only those later trials can show whether men on the pill live longer. [18]

China's drug regulator said on Monday it had approved asundexian, a blood thinner from Bayer, the German drugmaker. [31][19] It will be sold as Sunharbo, to lower the risk of another stroke in adults who have already had one. [19] A stroke happens when blood stops reaching part of the brain, often because of a clot, and a blood thinner makes clots less likely to form.

Why it matters. Patients in China who have had a stroke get a new pill aimed at stopping a second one. [19] For Bayer, it is a new seller as some of its biggest medicines lose sales to cheaper copies. [19]

Corxel Pharmaceuticals, a drug startup, said on Monday it will list on the stock market by merging with a shell company already listed there. [20] With $300 million from private investors, the money will take CX11, a weight-loss pill licensed from China's Vincentage Pharma, into a final trial. [20] In a US mid-stage trial, people on CX11 lost up to 11.5% of their weight in 36 weeks. [20] A late-stage trial in China, run by Vincentage, was positive in May. [20]

Why it matters. An international final trial could start in early 2027. [20] CX11 trails pills from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, so Corxel is aiming it at people who are overweight but not obese, about 31% of US adults. [20]

In Beni, a city in eastern Congo, rumours are keeping some sick families away from Ebola treatment centres, Africanews reported. [9] Healers and a pastor told Zawadi Kavira Musubao's family that their illness came from poison or evil spirits. [9] She lost four relatives, including her son. [9] Her brother, a village chief, then took more than a dozen relatives to the treatment centre. [9] Musubao says he saved her life. [9] Congo's health ministry counts more than 9,800 cases and 4,700 deaths since May. [9]

Why it matters. Her brother had to argue against the belief that people who go to a treatment centre never come out alive, telling relatives that some recover. [9] Communities long neglected by Congo's government are wary of its officials, and several treatment centres and health workers have been attacked. [9]

Israel's health basket committee, which picks the drugs and treatments the state pays for, began work on Monday on its list for 2027. [21] It has 650 million shekels, about $211 million, to add new treatments. [21] That is the same sum added every year since 2023, while the population ages and new drugs arrive. [21] On the table are new cancer drugs, a meningitis vaccine called Bexsero for children, and wider access to diabetes pills. [21]

Why it matters. The panel was appointed late, so new drugs may not be added until early next year. [21] Patients who need them before then may have to pay a lot themselves. [21]

Pakistan's government ordered a review of the formula that sets medicine prices, and said no price may rise without good reason. [22] Ahad Cheema, the economic affairs minister, gave the order on Monday at a meeting of DRAP, Pakistan's drug regulator. [22] He suggested DRAP pay for international drug-price databases, to check prices against other countries. [22] Officials told the meeting there is enough of the flu vaccine the WHO recommends on sale. [22]

Why it matters. Drugmakers say prices held still for years, while imported ingredients cost more, can force them to stop making a medicine. [22] They want regular rises tied to costs written into the new formula. [22]

A new centre at the NIH, the US government's medical research agency, has a wider job than its launch suggested, STAT reported. [23] Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced it this month as a centre for people hurt by vaccines. [23] It is a study inside the NIH's infectious disease institute that will enrol several hundred people with vaccine injuries or lasting symptoms after an infection, such as long Covid. [23] It will not treat patients. [23]

Why it matters. Its aim, an official said, is to learn why some immune systems react more strongly than others and to make vaccines safer. [23] Even people worried by Kennedy's doubts about vaccines have praised its director. [23]

Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI, said in papers filed in the US on Monday that it plans to grow in the life sciences. [24][25] It said Claude can now operate lab equipment such as microscopes, liquid handlers and robot arms, using a standard it began with Janelia, a research campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. [24] Anthropic runs its own molecular biology lab, which recently found a stretch of DNA a little like CRISPR, a gene-editing tool. [25] The filing does not say how much it spends on this work. [24]

Why it matters. The filing also warns that its safeguards against the AI being used to make biological or chemical weapons are incomplete and have been got around before. [25] It says lab work brings new risks for the company, such as workplace injuries and pollution. [25]

Peta, an animal-rights group, released video on Monday of experiments on newborn monkeys at the University of Washington's primate research centre. [26] Researchers gave 32 pregnant macaques daily doses of domoic acid, a toxin from sea algae that builds up in shellfish. [26] They took 28 babies from their mothers to test whether the toxin had harmed their brains. [26] The project ran from 2014 to 2020 with more than $4.2 million from the NIH. [26]

Why it matters. The centre says the work helps explain how the toxin may affect learning, but there is no clear sign it changed health advice. [26] More than 106,000 monkeys were held in US labs in 2025, up 1.5% on the year before. [26]

Scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), a research institute, found six genes whose activity helps predict how long people with acute myeloid leukaemia live. [27] AML is a blood cancer whose outcome varies widely from one patient to the next. [27] The team moved between experiments in mice and patient records, keeping genes that behaved the same way in both. [27] The work was published in the journal Science Advances. [27]

Why it matters. Patients already give a bone marrow sample, and measuring six genes is simpler and cheaper than reading a full genetic profile. [27] It is a step toward a test, not yet a test doctors can order. [27]

WuXi AppTec, a Chinese company that drugmakers pay to research and make their medicines, raised its forecast for this year's sales again on Monday. [28][30] Its profit in the first nine months of 2026 rose 62.4% to 19.16 billion yuan, about $2.87 billion, from 11.80 billion a year earlier. [28] Its revenue rose 38.6% over the same months. [28] It works for clients in more than 30 countries. [30]

Why it matters. WuXi said the rise came from more of its customers' medicines succeeding. [30] Its figures for the third quarter have not yet been checked by auditors. [30]

A nose spray of mebufotenin, a psychedelic drug first found in the venom of the Sonoran Desert toad, eased depression in a mid-stage trial published in JAMA on Monday. [29] Its 193 patients in Australia, Europe and the US had already tried two to five antidepressants without success. [29] Each got one dose, and most were ready to go home within about two hours. [29] Benefits began about two days later and lasted at least eight weeks, though one patient had two severe panic attacks. [29]

Why it matters. The 8mg dose now moves to a final trial against existing treatments. [29] Chittaranjan Andrade, a psychiatrist outside the trial, wrote that the average patient got only about 30% better, and fewer recovered than usually do on ketamine. [29]