Lena Marshall
159 stories · Page 5 of 7
Gilead Priced Its Near-Perfect HIV Shot Out of the Countries Where the Virus Is Spreading Fastest
Lenacapavir drove new HIV infections to nearly zero across two Gilead trials and a year-long extension. Gilead lists it at $28,218 a year in America; researchers estimate generics could be made for as little as $25, and the fastest-growing epidemics were left off the cheap-generic map.
CancerChemo-Surviving Ovarian Cancer Cells Release Fructose to Loosen the Tumor Next Door
The same cholesterol-starving mechanism that loosens tumor cells implicates statins, the pills 39 million Americans take, yet the researchers who found it say keep taking them anyway.
CancerThe Reason Immunotherapy Bounces Off Prostate Cancer: Tumors Chew Off a Genetic Tail to Blind the Immune System
Prostate tumors overproduce a protein that destroys the immune system's docking targets. A CRISPR tool that blocks the trick made checkpoint drugs work again, so far only in mice.
CancerThe Genes Driving Cancer's Growth Are the Same Ones It Keeps Breaking
The same super-enhancers that make a tumor grow keep snapping its DNA, and the botched repairs are where the next mutations come from. The finding is real, careful, and already a year old.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Cleared a CRISPR Cure for Two-Year-Olds Whose Own Trial Enrolled No One That Young
Casgevy's pediatric trials enrolled 11 children aged five and up, yet the FDA extended the $2.2 million therapy down to age two, where the conditioning chemo can permanently sterilize a child too young to bank eggs or sperm.
Infectious DiseaseScientists Watched the Flu Dissolve Structures Inside the Nucleus, in Every Cell and Every Strain They Tried
Influenza reaches into the nucleus and takes apart droplets that may be part of the cell's own defense. Scientists have now mapped how. The drug targets that map supposedly unlocks are still hypothetical.
CancerIn 2021, Creatine Spread Cancer in Mice. This Week, a UCLA Lab Said It Fights It.
A UCLA study found creatine energized cancer-fighting immune cells in mice and lab dishes. It was never tested in a patient, and a separate line of research says the same supplement feeds metastasis.
CancerA Week Instead of a Month: The Faster Prostate Radiation Was Only "As Safe" on the Coarser Ruler
PACE-C put five-fraction radiation against the four-week course in 1,208 men. On the old grading scale they matched. On the finer one the short course logged 17 percent bowel toxicity against 10 percent, and the trial still can't say whether the shorter beam controls cancer as well.
CancerThe Same Cancer Mutation, Opposite Effects: What 581 Mouse Tumors Say About Who Gets Sick
Cambridge and Yale gave four strains of mice one identical dose of a carcinogen. The tumors converged on the same pathway but took four different genetic routes to get there, and today's screening ignores the reason.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Approved the First Cholesterol Pill of Its Kind Before Its Trial Could Show It Prevents Heart Attacks or Deaths
Lipfendra lowers LDL cholesterol by up to 60 percent. The 14,550-patient trial that would show whether that prevents heart attacks or deaths does not finish until November 2029, and Merck is charging roughly $3,800 a year in the meantime.
InvestigationsThe American Diabetes Association Had Police Remove the Editor of Its Own Journal. Then It Refused to Print His Reply.
Steven Kahn edits the ADA's own journal. In June its meeting had state police walk him out for handing out one of its editorials. In July it refused to print the response he and his colleagues wrote. He calls it what it is: pure censorship.
CancerThe Evolutionary Fix for Drug Resistance Works Best on a Tumor Too Small to Find
City St George's mathematicians say hitting a tumor at its weakest moment can drive it extinct. Their own model clears 95 percent only below 7 million cells, far smaller than any tumor a scan can find.
Nutrition & FoodPepsi Paid $1.95 Billion for Poppi, in a Category That Averages as Much Sugar as Fiber
UNC researchers read the labels on 108 prebiotic sodas and found roughly 5 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar, and, in most cans, a non-nutritive sweetener. Poppi agreed to an $8.9 million settlement over its gut-health claims; months later Pepsi paid $1.95 billion for it.
Nutrition & FoodIn the Lab, Coffee Flipped an Anti-Aging Switch. The Caffeine Barely Did.
Stephen Safe's lab reported that coffee's polyphenols, more than its caffeine, switch on a cellular stress-defense receptor. Every experiment ran in a dish, and the anti-aging headline traveled a great deal further than the data.
Drugs & FDAFor Years, a Foreign Factory Could Put the Active Ingredient in Your Medicine and Never Tell the FDA
The FDA led with a paperwork convenience for manufacturers. Buried underneath was the admission that it can't always trace where a drug's active ingredient was made, a blind spot Congress had to order it to close.
Brain & AgingFor Thirty Years the Model Said Blue Cones Drift Out of Sharp Vision. They Were Turning Into Red and Green.
Johns Hopkins researchers grew human retinas in a dish and watched blue cones convert into the red and green cones behind sharp central vision. The three-decade-old migration model was wrong.
Drugs & FDAA $440,000 Drug Proved This Obesity Was Never About Willpower
Brain-tumor surgery can wreck the hypothalamus and leave hunger permanently switched on. Setmelanotide restored the missing signal in a real placebo-controlled trial, then arrived priced near half a million dollars a year.
InvestigationsNearly Half of America's ER Substance-Use Visits Involve Someone the Justice System Already Booked
Forty-four percent of Americans who go to an emergency room for substance use have a booking in their past. A survey of 139,524 people measured how much the jail and the ER share a population.
Brain & AgingYour Retina Starts Failing Before Any Scan Can See It. Now Someone Wants to Turn That Into a Panel.
Delayed dark adaptation flagged people who would develop early macular degeneration three years later. Now an optometrist has folded that finding into a 'retinal reserve' framework, bloodwork and all, that no trial has tested.
Metabolic & WeightFor Forty Years He Said the Standard Cholesterol Target Was Wrong. A Computer Finally Agreed.
A Northwestern model projects that the little-used apoB test would prevent more heart attacks and strokes than the LDL number your doctor chases. And non-HDL, a number already printed free on your standard lab report, beat LDL too. No trial has tested any of it on a patient.
Infectious DiseaseDavid Ho's Lab Built an Antibody to Neutralize Nearly Every Strain of HIV. Its First Test in People With the Virus Held for Two Weeks.
Fifty-four volunteers, nine with HIV, and just three with virus still in their blood. The engineered antibody drove their viral load down as much as ninetyfold, then lost the ground within a week as it drained away.
Infectious DiseaseThe Nose-Spray TB Vaccine in Your Feed This Week Has Only Ever Worked in Mice
Johns Hopkins fused two genes into a nasal spray, added it to a drug cocktail, and cleared tuberculosis faster in mice. DNA vaccines have dazzled mice for thirty years and disappointed humans nearly every time. This one has not been in a person yet.
Brain & AgingA Michigan Lab Grew a Living Skull Joint That Wouldn't Fuse. In Mice, It Held.
Craniosynostosis surgery reopens a fused infant skull; in some of the hardest cases it fuses right back and the child goes under the knife again. A triphasic scaffold kept the joint open in mice.
InvestigationsAustralia Switched Off Social Media for a Generation of Kids. Nepal Already Ran That Experiment.
The ban is sold as youth mental-health protection, but its own university researchers call the harm evidence overblown, and the one nation that already banned a platform got ID checks and VPN workarounds, not healthier kids.