Lena Marshall
159 stories · Page 6 of 7
The FDA Cleared a Sickle-Cell Cure for Two-Year-Olds in 53 Days. It Starts With Chemo That Can Sterilize Them.
Casgevy is a real advance against a brutal disease. It is also a $2.2 million therapy that requires sterilizing chemotherapy, saw a child die in trials, and reached toddlers on a 53-day review Makary's FDA hands out as a favor.
Brain & AgingA Juice Company Built a Department Inside a Japanese University. Its Scientists Just Found Vitamin C Guards the Aging Brain.
Kagome, Japan's largest vegetable-juice maker, funded the work, employs two of its authors, and measured the vitamin itself. The gray-matter correlation it reported is real, and small enough to miss.
CancerNo Gene Editing, No Catheter Into the Skull: A Pediatric Brain-Cancer T-Cell Trial Reported One Complete Response in 33 Young Patients
Children with diffuse pontine glioma rarely live past a year. A first-in-human trial infused 33 young patients with pediatric brain tumors, including DIPG, with T cells trained on three tumor proteins, no genetic engineering, and reported one complete response and three survivors still alive years l
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Office That Vets Gene Therapy Has Run Through Its Entire Top Tier in a Year
The office that decides whether gene therapies reach patients has lost its director, her deputy, and the man brought in to replace them, all inside twelve months.
CancerTwenty Years of Nothing on Brain Cancer, and the Best New Lead Is a Vitamin Nobody Can Patent
A University of Calgary trial added high-dose niacin to standard glioblastoma treatment and reported 82% of 24 patients progression-free at six months. The design is single-arm and early, but the molecule is a cheap, unpatentable vitamin.
Drugs & FDAThe Standard Treatment for Nerve Damage Was Never Built to Repair a Nerve
Gabapentin is the seventh most prescribed drug in America, handed out for neuropathy it was never shown to reverse. A retired researcher's drug-free protocol asks the question the pharmacy aisle can't: what if you removed the cause instead?
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Pulled Infigratinib as a Cancer Drug in 2024. It Just Passed Phase 3 in Children With Dwarfism.
The FDA pulled infigratinib as a failed cancer drug in 2024. Now its maker says the same pill grows children with dwarfism faster, on a surrogate no one has yet shown reaches adulthood.
CancerFor Twenty Years, a Vitamin B12 Cancer Drug Has Worked in Mice, Dogs, and Rats. It Still Hasn't Reached a Human Trial.
Nitrosylcobalamin crossed the blood-brain barrier and pooled in a rat's brain tumor. This study didn't shrink one, the synergy ran in a petri dish, and the scientist behind the headlines holds the patents.
InvestigationsThe WHO Invented Osteopenia for Statisticians. Merck Turned It Into 34 Million Patients.
The man who chaired the 1992 WHO meeting says they never imagined osteopenia would be treated as a disease. Three years later Merck launched Fosamax and started putting bone scanners in doctors' offices.
CancerFibrolamellar Carcinoma Hides Immune Cells in Scar Tissue. A Drug Approved in 2008 Pulled Them Back Out.
Fibrolamellar carcinoma mostly kills young adults, and checkpoint immunotherapy bounces off it. Researchers found the tumor herds T cells into fibrous bands, and a drug shelved for stem-cell work since 2008 freed them in patient tissue. No human trial has started.
Nutrition & FoodThey Call It Aging. Sometimes It's a Vitamin Your Doctor Forgot to Check.
New Cornell research explains how B12 deficiency starves muscle of energy, and why the standard test your doctor orders can call the problem aging.
Drugs & FDAThe Immune System's Guardrails Were Too Rare to Study. A Bonn Lab Just Grew Them in a Dish.
A German lab built a way to grow follicular regulatory T cells from precursors in a dish, opening a notoriously hard-to-study brake on antibody production to direct experiment.
Nutrition & FoodSummer Sun Won't Save You: A Vitamin D Study Funded by the People Who Sell the Spray
A Newcastle screening study found vitamin D deficiency persists through summer in older and ethnic-minority adults in northern Britain. The funder sells the fix.
InvestigationsThe Knee Procedure That Barely Beats a Convincing Fake
A university press release pitches a minimally invasive knee procedure as a way to delay joint replacement, but the only sham-controlled trials show the fake version works nearly as well.
Infectious DiseaseThe Bird Flu Was Hiding in the Udder. The Receptor Map Showed Up Two Years Late.
A new University of Pittsburgh study explains why H5N1 infects cow udders instead of lungs. The receptor evidence pointed there in 2024; the federal response did not move as fast.
InvestigationsFauci's Pardon Was Supposed to End This. It's the Reason He Can't Stay Quiet.
Rand Paul subpoenaed Anthony Fauci on June 22 after declassified documents reopened the COVID-origins question, and the preemptive pardon meant to shield him is why he cannot refuse to answer.
Nutrition & FoodWHO Tripled the Foodborne Death Toll. The Food Didn't Get Deadlier.
WHO's new estimate says unsafe food kills 1.5 million people a year, more than triple its 2015 figure, even as it admits the burden has fallen. The jump is an accounting change, not an epidemic.
CancerA Repair Gene Turns Saboteur, and a $4 Billion Drug Class Sees an Opening
A Penn State lab found that too much of the DNA repair gene EXO1 makes ordinary tumors behave like BRCA-mutant ones in a dish, and respond to the same drugs. The science is clean. The market context is not.
CancerThe "Secret Reason" Cancer Drugs Stop Working Was Published in February
A Montreal team's antibody against the SLAMF6 brake on T cells made the rounds this week as a fresh discovery. The paper went up in February, the work is in mice, and the antibody has not been given to a person.
CancerIvermectin and Cancer: The Review the Horse-Paste Crowd Wasn't Supposed to Get
A 2025 systematic review finds coherent anticancer biology in ivermectin across ten tumor types. The human evidence to match it does not exist. The question of why is what the punchline was designed to bury.
Investigations'A Reality, Not an Emergency': The Lancet Picks Another Political Side
The Lancet's new editorial recasts immigration enforcement as the public-health pathology. The receipts on the journal that published it run from the Daszak letter to the Surgisphere fraud.
Infectious DiseaseThe cheaper staph antibiotic just won the biggest trial ever run
The largest randomized trial ever run for staph bloodstream infection finds the cheap generic antibiotic cefazolin works as well as the older standard, with less kidney damage and no pharma money behind the answer.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Just Approved a Third Over-the-Counter Naloxone. The Maker Once Doubled the Price of the Injectable.
The agency calls Rextovy's OTC approval a win for access. The manufacturer's pricing history, and the market it just walked into, complicate the story.
Metabolic & WeightSleep apnea's heart damage may run through the gut, not the airway
Researchers at UCSD report that knocking out a single bile-acid receptor abolishes the arterial plaque sleep-apnea conditions would otherwise drive in mice. The mechanism fits the CPAP era's underwhelming trial record better than the airway story ever did.