pharma
17 stories tagged "pharma"
Roche'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.
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 & FDAGenSight's Blindness Gene Therapy Reached the NEJM on the Same Day It Reported €0.7 Million in Cash
Seven of ten patients blinded by retinitis pigmentosa sensed more light through special goggles after one gene injection, in an uncontrolled trial whose sponsor held €0.7 million on September 30 and warned it may not survive the year.
Autoimmune & InflammationNovo Nordisk Paid to Count the Inflamed Heart Failure Patients Its Antibody Is Chasing
Three big studies putting heart failure inflammation anywhere from 38% to more than half were funded by Novo Nordisk, whose IL-6 antibody missed its first outcomes trial in July. Their predictor tables point at fat, smoking and kidneys.
CancerThe 80.5 Percent Headline, and the Three Confirmed Responses Behind It
Vividion led its colorectal announcement with an 80.5 percent disease-control rate. In that same group, three tumors shrank enough to count as a response.
InvestigationsThe Mandatory Drug-Pricing Rule Nearly Every Major Drugmaker Was Allowed to Skip
Medicare's actuaries scored the final rule at $440 million in savings. The proposal they started with was worth $12 billion.
Autoimmune & Inflammationargenx's Own Scientists Found Antibody Levels Alone Don't Explain Who Its $225,000 Myasthenia Drug Helps
Six of the paper's authors work for argenx and hold its stock. Their data on 50 patients shows efgartigimod's benefit tracked more closely with how thoroughly it disarmed the rogue antibodies than with how many it stripped away.
InvestigationsThe Escape Hatch in Trump's Drug Deal: 26 Companies Signed Their Way Out of the Price Cuts
Twenty-six drugmakers have signed voluntary White House agreements that exempt them from the proposed mandatory Medicare price cuts, and an analysis finds the deals could erase as much as 80 percent of the projected savings.
Autoimmune & InflammationA Fat 'Brake' Eased Pain in 49 Men but Barely Touched the Swelling
UCL researchers gave 49 healthy men a drug GlaxoSmithKline shelved after early trials. Pain resolved faster and a class of immune cells shrank, but the heat, redness, and swelling showed no significant change.
Brain & AgingStatins and Dementia: A Benefit the Registries Keep Finding and the Trials Never Do
A Danish registry of 132,000 diabetics reports early statin use lowers dementia risk by 15 percent. The randomized trials that could confirm it, covering tens of thousands of patients, found nothing.
Brain & AgingAnti-Tau Alzheimer's Drugs Keep Hitting Their Target and Missing the Disease
Tau is the new headliner at the Alzheimer's conference, but the anti-tau antibodies keep proving they bind the protein while doing nothing for patients. The clearest win so far is a blood test.
InvestigationsNEJM Retracted the Study That Approved Amgen's Vasculitis Drug. It Had Never Done That in 200 Years.
The FDA says the drug's superiority result came from re-scoring nine patients after the trial was unblinded. It is still on U.S. shelves while Amgen fights the withdrawal.
Metabolic & WeightYour Kidneys Are Quietly Failing. The WHO's Plan Skips What's Actually Killing Them.
The Lancet is pushing fast implementation of the first WHO kidney resolution, which expands screening and treatment access while leaving the ultraprocessed food and sugar driving the global CKD doubling untouched.
Drugs & FDAMedicare's Product-Hopping Loophole Is Back On The Chopping Block. The Bigger Pharma Giveaway Isn't.
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed closing the product-hopping loophole that lets drugmakers reset Medicare's negotiation clock by tweaking inactive ingredients. It is the same fix the same administration quietly tabled in October.
CancerOzempic's 30 Percent Breast-Cancer Headline, and the Trial Evidence It Walked Past
A single-system observational study at ASCO 2026 attached a roughly 30% lower breast-cancer rate to GLP-1 use. The randomized record already on the table is quieter.
Drugs & FDAAlnylam Bet $2 Billion on AI-Designed RNAi. The Check It Actually Wrote Was $30 Million.
Alnylam paid Inceptive Nucleics $30 million up front, with up to $2 billion in milestones tied to outcomes the rest of AI drug discovery has spent a decade failing to deliver.
Metabolic & WeightA gut hormone keeps showing up in the brain's reward circuit, and 600,000 veterans just gave us the biggest hint yet that it matters
A VA cohort of 606,000 diabetic veterans on GLP-1 drugs showed lower risks of new substance use disorders and large drops in overdose and drug-related death versus a peer diabetes drug. The mechanism story is where it gets interesting.