A 443,451-Cell Map Finds Pancreatic Tumors Are Crowds, Not Types
Inside one pancreatic tumor, NYU and UC San Diego researchers found as many as 11 distinct clones, which muddies the subtype label used to choose chemotherapy. The drug targets they point to next arrive with a history.
CancerNorway's Own Screening Adviser Ran the Numbers: About One in 86 Screened Women Overdiagnosed
By its own adviser's estimate, Norway's mammography program overdiagnoses about one in 86 screened women, roughly three for every breast cancer death it prevents, while a 58-trial review finds early detection is no reliable stand-in for fewer deaths.
CancerRoche's KRAS Pill Beat the Older Drugs on Survival, an Endpoint Lumakras Never Won Against Chemotherapy
Median survival ran 17.7 months on divarasib and 12.0 on a control arm that was nine-tenths Lumakras, a drug whose own confirmatory trial showed no survival edge over chemotherapy.
CancerMayo's Pancreatic Cancer AI Also Flags One Cancer-Free Scan in Five
Mayo's REDMOD caught 73 percent of pancreatic cancers on CT scans taken months before diagnosis, nearly double the radiologists' rate. It also flagged about 19 percent of cancer-free scans, and its lead researcher says it has not been tested at deployment prevalence.
Drugs & FDAHeart Failure Admissions Ran 3.7 Percent Higher for Every Year the West Sold Legal Pot
Fifty million discharge records tie each year of Western dispensary sales to higher heart failure, heart attack and atrial fibrillation admission rates, while the federal rescheduling fight sits frozen before a DEA judge.
CancerCompass Plans to File a Biliary Cancer Drug Without the Survival Trial the FDA Asked For
Tovecimig plus chemotherapy shrank more biliary tract tumors than chemotherapy alone, but median survival was 8.9 months against 9.4, and 93.5 percent of the combination arm had grade 3 or worse adverse events. The FDA recommended a survival trial before filing. Compass plans to file anyway.
CancerHengrui's Breast Cancer Drug More Than Doubled Progression-Free Survival While Severe Anemia Hit Four in Ten Patients
Trastuzumab rezetecan pushed median progression-free survival to 16.4 months from 6.8 on chemotherapy in 551 patients, all treated in China, while grade 3 or worse anemia reached 42.8 percent against 4.8 percent.
Drugs & FDASix Months Against Twelve: How Essilor's New Myopia Lens Got Called 'Twice as Fast'
Stellest 2.0's six-month numbers sat close to the original lens's one-year result from a separate trial, and a company symposium in London called that twice as fast. The children's lens is on sale abroad and has not been cleared by the FDA.
Brain & AgingPsilocybin Trial's Banked Blood Shows Parkinson's Inflammation Markers Still Lower a Month Later
Five inflammatory signals were still below baseline a month after the second psilocybin session, in blood banked from nine Parkinson's patients in an uncontrolled UCSF pilot whose investigators carry psychedelic-industry ties.
CancerThe Vitamin C Trial That Missed Its Goal and Counted 11 Deaths Against 24
Copenhagen and USC researchers gave 1,000 mg of plain vitamin C a day to people with pre-leukemic blood disorders. The mutant clones grew regardless, but over three years of follow-up 11 patients assigned to the vitamin died, against 24 assigned to placebo.
Drugs & FDAGSK's Hepatitis B Drug Got a Label That Reaches Patients It Functionally Cured About One Time in 14
Below 1,000 IU/mL of surface antigen, 26 percent of treated patients reached functional cure. Between 1,000 and 3,000, a range the FDA's label also covers, GSK's own counts work out to about 7 percent, for a weekly injection boxed for serious liver reactions and low platelets.
InvestigationsA Melbourne Gender Study Scored 234 Children on Their Transition Goals and Left Wellbeing Out
Researchers at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital sorted 234 children aged 8 to 17 by how many of their name, pronoun and appearance goals they had reached. Their cohort tracks mental health, and the paper did not analyze it as an outcome.
CancerThe Number Behind GSK's Rectal Cancer Approval Is 47 Percent, Not 76
Independent reviewers confirmed a year-long complete response in 54 of 116 AZUR-1 patients. GSK's release also carried an exploratory 76 percent. For a narrow slice of rectal cancer patients, the drug may still spare them radiation and surgery.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Fast-Tracked GSK's Rectal Cancer Drug and Left the Trial's Own Scorecard Out of Its Announcement
Independent reviewers found 47 percent of evaluable AZUR-1 patients held a complete response for a year, the trial's registered endpoint. The FDA's announcement quoted friendlier measures instead.
Nutrition & FoodVitamin D2 Supplements Lower the Vitamin D3 Already in Your Blood
Pooling randomized trials, Surrey researchers found people taking vitamin D2 ended up with less circulating vitamin D3, the form sunlight makes, than people who took none, by as much as 18 nmol/L.
CancerTo Keep Cancer-Fighting Cells Alive, a Sloan Kettering Lab Wants Them to Fight Less Hard
Memorial Sloan Kettering researchers say throttling exhausted T cells with a drug class already used against melanoma may keep them alive longer. So far the evidence comes only from lab and animal models.
InvestigationsThe WHO Asked the World to Listen to Mental Health Patients. By Its Own Count, Half Were Committed Against Their Will.
The WHO built this year's World Mental Health Day around putting patients in charge of policy. Its own 2024 atlas reports 49% of reported admissions are involuntary and nearly a quarter of hospital stays run past a year.
CancerThe Urine Test That Could Retire the Bladder Scope Already Has a Startup Behind It
Stanford's uRARE-seq caught 95 percent of localized bladder cancers in a case-control study and nearly tripled cytology's hit rate. It has not faced a prospective trial, and its lead author holds a stake in the spinout commercializing it.
CancerThe Sepsis Drug Eli Lilly Withdrew in 2011 Has a Second Life in a Dish of Blood Stem Cells
Soaked in activated protein C for one hour, human blood stem cells divided less, stayed quiescent, and engrafted better after transplant. The catch: the result lives in mice, and the molecule is one Eli Lilly withdrew as a failed sepsis drug in 2011.
CancerThe Glioblastoma Trial No Drug Company Paid For Posted an 82% Six-Month Progression-Free Rate
Calgary oncologists bought controlled-release niacin at retail, added it to standard treatment, and cleared their own preset bar with room to spare. The trial is small, single-arm and untidy on paper, and it was paid for entirely with grant money.
Drugs & FDAThe First-Line Glaucoma Drop That Flatters Its Own Pressure Reading
Across 128 eyes followed at one VA clinic, the corneas that thinned most on prostaglandin drops made the pressure gauge read 3.3 mm Hg low, and those eyes lost visual field nearly twice as fast.
Metabolic & WeightThe Cells That Should Heal a Diabetic Wound Are Keeping It Open
The immune cells meant to close a diabetic ulcer get stuck attacking it instead, a Shanghai review argues. It maps the biology in detail, then concedes its central framework is contested and the fixes it points to have never been tested in a person.
CancerKetamine Failed Its Only Adequately Powered Cancer-Pain Trial, and Palliative Care Still Reaches for It
Ketamine's one adequately powered trial in advanced cancer pain found no benefit over placebo, more toxicity and worse quality of life. Fourteen years on, a 2026 review still tells clinicians to consider it.
Brain & AgingDrugs Aimed at This Week's Brain-Inflammation Target Have Already Failed in Patients
AstraZeneca and Pfizer each took a P2X7 blocker into rheumatoid arthritis trials, and neither beat placebo. A Birmingham lab now says the same receptor could tame inflammation in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.