Biotech, in brief

The US Labor Department finalised a rule on Thursday aimed at drug middlemen called PBMs. [1]

PBMs, or pharmacy benefit managers, run the drug side of health plans for employers. [1]

The rule makes them show those employers every payment they get from drugmakers and others. [1]

It covers more than 70 PBMs and 130,000 employers, US officials estimate. [2]

The department says lower costs should reach workers as well as their employers. [1]

Economists call this asymmetric information: one side of a deal knows more than the other. [1]

Experts expect the rule to help mostly by pushing PBMs to compete harder. [1]

PBMs stand to lose income that only they could see until now. [1]

Employers gain figures they can audit, and a reason to bargain. [1]

But with three firms holding 80% of prescriptions, an employer has few rivals to move to. [1]

The rule takes effect on 1 July 2027. [2]

Until now only the PBMs could see what they kept between the plan, the pharmacy and the drugmaker. [1]

A $22 billion saving sounds settled, but it is the department's own estimate, and the yearly figure STAT reports would add up to far less over ten years. [1][2]

From July 2027 they can see and audit every payment their PBM receives. [1]

They must show employers income they could keep out of sight until now, or face fines and lost contracts. [1]

How much the PBM rule will really save.

The department puts it at $22 billion over ten years, while STAT reports officials' figure as more than $800 million a year, which comes to far less over a decade. [1][2]

Whether any saving reaches workers at the pharmacy counter.

The rule hands the figures to employers, and nothing in it sets what a worker pays for a prescription. [1]

Whether PBM groups will take the rule to court.

They argued the department has no legal power to demand these figures, and the rule does not start until July 2027. [1][2]

The CDC, the US national disease agency, will require a new form from every air traveller. [4]

Passengers and crew must state they were not in Congo in the past 21 days. [4]

The Democratic Republic of Congo, in central Africa, is the centre of an Ebola outbreak. [4]

More than 5,000 people there have died since May, government figures show. [5]

The CDC limited travel from Congo for foreigners in May, then for US citizens in July. [4]

Airlines for America, which speaks for big US airlines, called the plan unworkable. [4]

US border officers screened about 130 million air passengers in 2025. [4]

Fewer than 25,000 of them had a link to Congo, Airlines for America says. [4]

The form falls on every traveller in order to find the few who were in Congo. [4]

IATA, which represents over 370 airlines, said two weeks was too little time to prepare. [4]

IATA asked why ships and land crossings are left out of the rule. [4]

The form becomes compulsory on Tuesday, 3 November. [4]

Why a middleman who sees both prices can keep the gap

An employer pays the PBM for each worker's prescription

The PBM pays the pharmacy, and collects rebates from drugmakers

Only the PBM sees all three sums

So the employer cannot check the gap the PBM keeps

The new rule makes the PBM show every sum, every six months

A PBM can keep the gap between what a plan pays and what a pharmacy gets, because only the PBM sees both numbers.

About 80% of US prescriptions pass through three PBMs, so an employer unhappy with its deal has few places to go.

The CDC cannot see where 130 million air passengers have been, so it makes each one write it down and sign.

Only the drug maker saw its own germ tests, and the FDA found what they showed only by inspecting its records.

Seeing the numbers lowers them only if the employer can switch to another PBM. Three PBMs handle about 80% of US prescriptions, so there are few rivals to switch to.

A worker at the pharmacy counter sees only what they pay. The employer sees a bill, and the drugmaker sees the rebate it paid.

They must change check-in systems and train staff to collect a signed form from every passenger by 3 November. [4]

What the US Ebola travel form will catch.

Fewer than 25,000 of the 130 million air passengers screened in 2025 had a link to Congo, and the CDC did not answer Reuters' request for comment. [4]

Pakistan confirmed its eighth polio case of 2026 on Sunday. [6]

The child is a girl of 13 months from Khyber district. [6]

Polio can paralyse a child for life; it has no cure, but vaccines prevent it. [6]

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the last two countries where polio has never stopped spreading. [7]

Epidemiologists test the environment for the virus; samples around Peshawar show it still circulates. [6]

A round for nearly 24 million children in 97 districts starts today. [6]

It runs from 2 to 8 November, alongside a round in Afghanistan. [6]

Pakistan has run four large campaigns this year, reaching more than 45 million children. [6]

In Karachi's District Central, about 4,000 workers used to walk 8 to 10 km a day. [7]

Many skipped lunch to save their daily allowance of 1,500 rupees. [7]

The programme says no child is safe until every child is vaccinated, again and again. [6]

Some families refuse the drops because of rumours, and some turn violent, Dawn reports. [7]

The district now gives its workers lunch and rides in rickshaws that seat seven to nine. [7]

Its deputy commissioner, Taha Saleem, says the workers have all come back this year. [7]

A vaccination round for nearly 24 million of them starts today, alongside one in Afghanistan. [6]

They now get lunch and transport during campaigns, and the district says they have all returned this year. [7]

How widely polio is spreading around Peshawar and Khyber.

Environmental samples there show the virus circulating, but the programme has given only the count of confirmed cases, eight this year. [6]

Pakistan has run four large polio campaigns this year, reaching more than 45 million children several times over.

Acumen Pharmaceuticals, a US drug company, has stopped work on its Alzheimer's drug sabirnetug. [8]

The drug failed a phase 2 trial, the mid-sized test before a final one. [8]

After 18 months, thinking and daily skills declined about as fast as on a dummy drug. [8]

Neither dose tested, 35 or 50 mg for each kilogram of weight, slowed the decline. [8]

Sabirnetug is an antibody built to catch amyloid oligomers, small clumps of a protein. [8]

Acumen's shares fell 91% in a week, from $2.29 to 21 cents. [8]

The company says it will save cash and look at its options. [8]

Sabirnetug was Acumen's leading drug, so the failure leaves the company's future open. [8]

Trial designers call the main goal an endpoint: the one measure that decides pass or fail. [8]

Its shareholders lost most of the stake's value in one week. [8]

The company's shares fell 91% in a week after its leading drug failed. [8]

Sydnexis, a drug company, wants US approval for SYD-101, eye drops for children's short sight. [9]

Short sight, or myopia, blurs far-away things and worsens fastest in young children. [9]

The drops carry a tiny dose of atropine: 0.01%. [9]

In the main trial, children aged 3 to 14 used them for three years. [9]

Fewer children on the drops passed a set level of worsening than on dummy drops. [9]

The gap was 9.6 percentage points; the trial was planned to find 15. [9]

The FDA, the US drug regulator, turned the drops down in October 2025. [9]

It agreed the drops met their main goal, but called the effect modest. [9]

The company's case now goes to the FDA's outside advisers on eye and skin drugs. [9]

Worsening myopia in childhood cannot be undone, the company says, so slowing it matters. [9]

Statisticians call a gap significant when it is real, which is not the same as large. [9]

The company says young children, whose eyes worsen fastest, gain more than the average suggests. [9]

Its eye drops get a second hearing before the FDA's outside advisers after the FDA turned them down in October 2025. [9]

How the FDA's outside advisers will judge the myopia drops.

The company's briefing papers are public, but we found no report of the advisers' meeting or of any vote. [9]

Beam Therapeutics, a US gene-editing company, reported early results for its treatment BEAM-301. [8]

It is for glycogen storage disease type 1a, a rare inherited liver disease. [8]

Patients' livers cannot release stored sugar, so they take starch to stop blood sugar crashing. [8]

Geneticists call BEAM-301 a base editor: it changes one letter of DNA, here R83C. [8]

Tiny fat bubbles carry the editor into the liver. [8]

Two of three patients on the 40 mg dose went the full 15 hours without food. [8]

The third patient showed no gain, perhaps because of body weight, Beam said. [8]

Another gene therapy, Ultragenyx's Genglycos, became the first approved for the disease in August. [8]

If the effect lasts, patients could live without their daily starch. [8]

The results come from only three patients, with data cut off on 17 August. [8]

Both of those two patients stopped needing their daily starch. [8]

Beam is now testing a higher 60 mg dose. [8]

Why Beam's third patient did not respond.

Beam points to body weight and to the patient carrying the R83C mistake on only one of its two copies of the gene, but three patients cannot settle it. [8]

Novartis, a Swiss drugmaker, will take a $1.9 billion charge on a muscle-disease drug. [11]

The drug, del-desiran, came with its $12 billion purchase of Avidity Biosciences. [11]

It failed a late-stage trial in August in a rare muscle-wasting disease. [11]

Novartis revealed the charge in its quarterly results on Tuesday 27 October. [11]

An open extension of the trial, where patients knowingly get the drug, is still running. [11]

Accountants call the charge an impairment: it cuts what the company says the drug is worth. [11]

Novartis faces patents running out on big drugs, so it needs new ones like this. [11]

Novartis still hopes to win approval, but has not said when a new trial would start. [11]

Its executives told analysts they expect to need another final trial. [11]

It is writing off $1.9 billion of the $12 billion it paid for Avidity Biosciences. [11]

Whether del-desiran can still reach patients.

Novartis expects to need another final trial and has not said when one would start. [11]

The FDA sent a warning letter on 22 October to Northland Nuclear Medicine in Bismarck. [10]

Northland makes PET drugs, radioactive tracers used in a kind of medical scan. [10]

Inspectors visited in May and read its germ tests from the cleanest work areas. [10]

Records showed more than 100 such finds between March 2024 and April 2026. [10]

Of about 75 finds since December 2024, only two were sent off to be identified. [10]

Its test plates were stored with a spore-killing liquid, which can hide germs. [10]

Batches kept failing a yield limit, so the firm lowered the limit. [10]

The FDA said lowering a limit to fit a failing process breaks the rules. [10]

Without knowing which germs grew, nobody can trace where the contamination came from, the FDA said. [10]

Quality engineers call this root-cause analysis: find why a fault happens, then fix that. [10]

The FDA said the firm has not reviewed whether past batches should have been released. [10]

The FDA called the firm's June reply inadequate, and warned of seizure or a court order. [10]

Only the drug maker saw its own germ tests, and the FDA found what they showed only by inspecting its records.

A study in Nature, a leading science journal, found 48 new genetic risk spots for Alzheimer's. [12]

It compared the DNA of about 109,000 people with Alzheimer's and 2.1 million without it. [12]

People in the study came from many different ancestries. [12]

The team found 118 risk spots across all groups, and 9 more within single ancestries. [12]

Genes more active in microglia, the brain's immune cells, carried much of the risk. [12]

So did genes less active in neurons, the brain's nerve cells. [12]

Twin studies suggest genes explain 60% to 80% of Alzheimer's risk. [12]

Common DNA differences account for about 16% of the differences in Alzheimer's risk. [12]

That is nearly three times earlier estimates. [12]

Today's approved Alzheimer's drugs target only amyloid, and have shown limited benefit, the authors write. [12]

Acumen's failed drug, reported this week, was also aimed at amyloid. [8]

Geneticists call this a genome-wide association study: compare DNA from many sick and healthy people. [12]

Nobody knows yet whether drugs aimed at the new targets will work. [12]

Researchers found bacteria living inside pancreatic tumours, in a study in Cell Death & Disease. [13]

The cancer studied is PDAC, which grows from the pancreas's ducts. [13]

It used samples from 62 patients treated before surgery and 101 treated after. [13]

It also used mice bred to grow the cancer. [13]

Tumours held more kinds of bacteria than healthy pancreas tissue. [13]

In mice, a bacterial molecule increased autophagy, the way cells break down their own parts. [13]

Patients whose tumours had more bacteria and more autophagy lived longer. [13]

If the link holds, tumour bacteria could help doctors judge a patient's outlook. [13]

Epidemiologists call this an association: two things found together, without proof one causes the other. [13]

The study shows a link, not that the bacteria themselves help patients live longer. [13]