Medicine
fromwww.theguardian.com
18 hours agoMedicines watchdog to investigate UK peptide clinics over health claims
UK clinics may be illegally promoting unregulated peptide therapies with unverified health claims.
Incyte tops this list due to its rare combination of commercial scale, cash generation, and pipeline depth. The company posted FY2025 revenue of $5.14 billion, up 21.2% YoY, anchored by Jakafi generating $828.2 million in Q4 2025 alone (+7% YoY) and Opzelura delivering $207.3 million (+28% YoY). With $3.58 billion in cash and 14 pivotal clinical trials underway, Incyte offers an acquirer immediate revenue, margin expansion potential, and a deep oncology pipeline spanning KRASG12D, CDK2 inhibition, and mutCALR.
On that sunny March morning, in a small health center in Lobamba, a rural area of Eswatini, this 32-year-old sex worker has just become one of the first people in the world to receive lenacapavir, a drug that, administered twice a year, offers nearly 100% protection against HIV.
The funds raised through Visionaries of the Year are used for research to advance lifesaving therapies like immunotherapy, genomics and personalized medicine, which are saving lives today.
The INLIGHT interim readout reported a 14.3% placebo-adjusted reduction in visceral fat six months after a single dose, alongside preservation of lean muscle mass - a differentiated profile compared to GLP-1 therapies that often reduce muscle alongside fat.
RBC Capital analyst Luca Issi upgraded the stock to Outperform from Sector Perform with a price target of $35, up from $11. Wells Fargo also upgraded uniQure to Overweight from Equal Weight with a $60 price target. The catalyst: the departure of Vinay Prasad from the FDA. RBC views this as a positive for uniQure, noting it is "not inconceivable" that the FDA reverts to its prior stance, and believes Prasad's departure is likely to open up a more balanced discussion on risk/reward for Huntington's disease.
Emma Dyer remembers the moment she clicked "buy now" on a set of weightloss jabs she found online. She had no medical consultation, no ID checks, and no questions about her history of anorexia and bulimia. "It was just so easy - too easy," she says. "They never asked for my medical history or what medication I was taking. It was like buying groceries."
A report last year found unnecessary surgeries were carried out, cancers were missed and poor standards of care were delivered at the University Hospital of North Durham and Darlington Memorial Hospital. CDDTF said it wanted to support the patients it had let down, including by offering access to psychological support, and to ensure they knew how to make a claim or raise concerns with police.
X4 Pharmaceuticals drew a fresh initiation from Guggenheim, which assigned a Buy rating and $12 price target, framing the company as a "differentiated hematology play" with significant upside in the next 18 months. The firm's thesis centers on mavorixafor, a potential first-in-class oral CXCR4 antagonist already approved for WHIM syndrome and currently in Phase 3 development for primary chronic neutropenia.
On Tuesday the American Cancer Society (ACS) released its annual report on cancer statistics in the U.S., and it offered a rare bit of good news: the proportion of people who were alive at least five years after a cancer diagnosis hit a record high. The report found that, among all cancer patients diagnosed between 2015 and 2021 in the U.S., the survival rate at the five-year mark relative to those who didn't have cancer was 70 percent.
In Extended Data Fig. 8 of this article, a micrograph shown in the left column (panel AZD) was inadvertently duplicated during figure preparation. The intended image was meant to show phospho-ERK (P-ERK) levels in a MAP2K1-mutant patient-derived xenograft (PDX) exposed to the MEK inhibitor AZD6244 (AZD). However, this image was accidentally overlaid with a micrograph from Extended Data Fig. 10 (left column, panel PAN), which displays P-ERK levels in an EGFR-mutant PDX exposed to panitumumab (PAN).
Before treatment began, participants underwent neuroimaging. Instead of relying on a single modality, the researchers fused structural connectivity (how regions are physically wired) with functional connectivity (how regions co-activate at rest). The goal was not to throw every possible feature at a black box, but to learn a constrained pattern-what the authors call structure-function "covariation"-that carries the most predictive signal for outcome. In other words, the model tries to find the smallest set of connections that meaningfully forecasts symptom change.
For years, scientists have viewed cancer as a localized glitch in which cells refuse to stop dividing. But a new study suggests that, in certain organs, tumors actively communicate with the brain to trick it into protecting them. Scientists have long known that nerves grow into some tumors and that tumors containing lots of nerves usually lead to a worse prognosis.
Public health consultant Dr Ross Keat said supporting people earlier to make small preventative changes would make "a big difference later on". Some 3,500 people in the north of the island within that age bracket are eligible for the checks. The checks will be carried out by two pre-existing nurses that support GP staff and would not replace GP appointments, Keat explained, adding that the cost would be minimal and absorbed by Ramsey Group Practice.
New findings on cancer survival rates offer hope for the more than 2 million Americans diagnosed each year. Seven out of 10 Americans diagnosed with cancer now survive five years or more, according to the American Cancer Society, a 7 percent increase since the mid-1990s, when the rate stood at 63 percent. The survival rate data - from patients diagnosed with cancer between 2015 and 2021 - showed, significantly, that those with high-mortality cancers and advanced diagnoses had the largest gains.
Although specific bacterial taxa have been associated with favourable clinical responses to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in cancer patients12,13,18,19,20,21,22, the mechanisms by which the intestinal microbiota influences anti-tumour immune responses remain poorly defined. Products of the microbiota, including metabolites23,24,25 and innate receptor ligands26, may reprogramme myeloid cells27, lowering the activation threshold for antigen presentation and thereby facilitating priming and activation of tumour-reactive T cells.
Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez has spent more than 10 years pursuing a goal that seemed very distant, but which he now sees as a little closer: to develop a preventive vaccine against cancer. The physician and researcher is leading a study that presented the first promising results of a colon cancer vaccine in a small group of patients suffering from a rare disease that makes them 17 times more likely to develop colon cancer than the general population.
When Lisa Dutton was declared free of breast cancer in 2017, she took a moment to celebrate with family and friends, even though she knew her cancer journey might not be over. As many as one-third of people whose breast tumours are cleared see the disease come back, sometimes decades later. Many other cancers are known to recur in the years following an initial treatment, some at much higher rates.
EMPAVELI is the first and only approved treatment for C3G and IC-MPGN across pediatric patients 12+, adults, and post-transplant recurrence. That's roughly 5,000 patients in the U.S., with EMPAVELI holding exclusive approval for about two-thirds. Add the European CHMP positive opinion in December 2025, and you have a rare disease franchise with global expansion potential and pricing power that typically commands gross margins north of 90%.
Mucopolysaccharidosis type II (MPS II), or Hunter syndrome, is a rare genetic disorder primarily affecting boys, caused by a deficiency in the enzyme needed to break down sugar molecules. This harmful buildup in cells and tissues impacts multiple body systems, causing frequent infections, organ enlargement and developmental disabilities. Management involves supportive care and enzyme replacement therapy, as there is currently no cure,
The Food and Drug Administration commissioner's effort to drastically shorten the review of drugs favored by President Donald Trump's administration is causing alarm across the agency, stoking worries that the plan may run afoul of legal, ethical, and scientific standards long used to vet the safety and effectiveness of new medicines. Marty Makary's program is causing new anxiety and confusion among staff already rocked by layoffs, buyouts, and leadership upheavals, according to seven current or recently departed staffers.
As for side effects, the companies reported that little had changed from previous analyses; adverse events were similar between the two groups. The top side effects linked to the vaccine were fatigue, injection site pain, and chills. The results "highlight the potential of a prolonged benefit" of the vaccine combined with Keytruda in patients with high-risk melanoma," Kyle Holen, a senior vice president at Moderna, said. They also "illustrate mRNA's potential in cancer care," he said, noting that the company has eight more Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials going for mRNA vaccines against a variety of other cancers, including lung, bladder, and kidney cancers.
We provide thought partnership. When a company is developing a drug, there's a lot of work involved, such as understanding the science, designing a study and generating good data. We come in and explain what the standard of care looks like today for their patient population, and what we think it will look like in five to eight years or whenever they plan to launch their therapy.
But these studies typically require large numbers of patients, huge amounts of data, and thorough follow-ups, none of which comes easy or free. The upshot is fewer investigations into scenarios that are clinically important but unlikely to yield a profit for the firms funding them. Accordingly, researchers have been developing an option that uses real-world data from insurers to save patients from falling through the cracks.