Loberamisal Scores a Rare Win for Stroke Neuroprotection
The phase III LAIS trial showed that loberamisal, a novel neuroprotectant, raised the proportion of acute ischemic‑stroke patients achieving an excellent functional outcome (mRS 0‑1) to 69.7% versus 56.4% with placebo when given within 48 hours of symptom onset. The study enrolled 997 Chinese patients, excluded those undergoing endovascular therapy, and delivered a 40 mg IV infusion daily for ten days. Safety was comparable to placebo, with modest reductions in serious adverse events and mortality. Exploratory analyses also suggested lower rates of severe depression and anxiety at 90 days.
ASPR Announces Competition for Antiviral Drug Development Targeting Certain Viruses
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) has unveiled a $100 million Small Molecule Approaches for Rapid and Robust Treatment Prize to spur antiviral drug development. The competition targets viruses in the Togaviridae and Flaviviridae families, including dengue, Zika, West...
Kainova Closes $32 Million to Advance Cancer and Inflammation Therapies
Kainova Therapeutics announced a CAD 32 million first close of its Series B financing, led by Investissement Québec and supported by existing backers. The funding brings total venture capital to about $90 million USD and will accelerate development of its GPCR‑focused drug candidates. Lead...
Pharma CEOs Should Demand Prasad’s Departure
BioCentury’s editorial warns that the current director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) is jeopardizing patient safety and destabilizing the pharmaceutical industry. The author cites the director’s handling of Moderna’s flu vaccine as a recent example...
FDA Approved Pembrolizumab Using Single‑Arm Trials Across Tumors
It would be highly instructive to read the pembrolizumab paper highlighted by @DrPatrick. Of course, he doesn't expect anyone to do that. This is what it says IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH: The FDA approved pembrolizumab on May 23, 2017, for...
Creating CAR-T Cells Using Current Alzheimer’s Antibodies
Researchers engineered CD4+ T cells with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) derived from FDA‑approved Alzheimer’s antibodies aducanumab and lecanemab. The lecanemab‑based CAR (Lec28z) selectively bound fibrillar amyloid‑beta and reduced plaque burden in mouse brains, especially when delivered via transient mRNA transfection....
Seres to Lay Off Staff, Pause Top Program in Latest Reboot
Seres Therapeutics, a cash‑strapped microbiome drug developer, will cut about 30 % of its workforce and suspend its lead program SER‑155, which targets graft‑versus‑host disease. The company will redirect resources toward earlier‑stage immunology candidates such as SER‑603, aiming to extend its...
Bioresorbable Implant Uses Heat to Block Pain
Our latest paper appeared today as a cover (inside front) feature article in Advanced Functional Materials, titled “A Bioresorbable Neural Interface for On-Demand Thermal Pain Block.” The focus is on a bioresorbable, implantable form of neural electronics that supports precisely...
FDA’s Prasad‑Era: Rules Shift, Rare‑Disease Drugs Stalled
This week's Biotech Scorecard newsletter: The old Vinay Prasad never left. He just changed jobs Submissions to the FDA are handled by teams of reviewers, of course. But when I look across all of these recent cases, I see a...
Terray’s AI Model Accelerates Drug Potency Prediction, Pose Not Needed
Terray Therapeutics unveiled TerraBind, an AI model that predicts small‑molecule potency without generating a binding pose. The model delivers roughly 20% higher accuracy and a 26‑fold efficiency boost versus the open‑source Boltz‑2 benchmark. By eliminating the computationally intensive pose step,...
Blinded by Science: The Importance of RWD and Post-Market Surveillance
The explosive uptake of GLP‑1 drugs—now used by roughly 12% of U.S. adults—has spotlighted both their therapeutic benefits and emerging safety concerns. Post‑market surveillance, leveraging real‑world data (RWD), is uncovering rare vision‑related adverse events that clinical trials missed. AI‑driven analytics...
Sanofi's Board Ousts Hudson, New CEO Faces Dupixent Gap
So Sanofi's board strikes again. Paul Hudson gets the old Paris boot 6 years after taking on the task of remaking the pipeline. It hasn't gone well. Next: Belen Garijo. She has a few years to get ready for the...
Semaglutide Linked to Higher NAION Risk in Veterans
Among US veterans (mean age 60) with T2 diabetes who received semaglutide (Ozempic) there was a risk of 0.3% in the first 2 years of NAION, a serious vision loss event, that exceeded SGLT-2 inhibitor drugs (graph) @JAMAOphth https://t.co/c3zDHa7OQB https://t.co/hYTxAs6ThH
STAT+: BridgeBio Drug for Genetic Cause of Dwarfism Succeeds in Key Study
BridgeBio Pharma's oral drug infigratinib met its primary endpoint in a pivotal trial of more than 100 children with achondroplasia, delivering an average growth increase of 2.1 cm per year versus placebo. Adjusted analysis showed a 1.74 cm per year advantage, both...
Global Vaccine Market Persists, but Innovation May Falter
“Yes, the rest of the world can maintain a market for vaccines. But will it be as innovative and as vibrant as it has been? That’s a different question.” https://t.co/jB38FWfglo
Exercise Rewires Brain, Boosting Endurance in Mice
How exercise rewires the brain to promote endurance https://t.co/h7fiahzoAn as demonstrated in the mouse model https://t.co/DfUWadNKgt https://t.co/vhrsv1pkUs
STAT+: European VCs Band Together to Improve the Landscape for Biotech Startups
European venture capital firms have launched the European Life Sciences Coalition, a new alliance aimed at strengthening funding pipelines for biotech startups across the continent. The coalition highlights a stark financing gap: of the 67 EU‑based biotech firms that went...
Daré Bioscience Launches Reg A Crowdfunding for Women's Health
Daré Bioscience with an approved product and a pipeline in women’s health is raising money from investors in a crowdfunding like construct (reg A offering with minimum investment of $250). https://t.co/NA3JKe6Irg haven’t seen too many of these
Molecular Mimicry Links J&J Vaccine to Rare Clotting
Cracking the case: how did adenoviral vector vaccine such as the J&J's Covid induce very rare and potentially fatal clotting, bleeding? An elegant proof of molecular mimicry—genetic background + rogue antibodies https://t.co/yp6TNE8ZQC https://t.co/NhhYDvntmT @rkhamsi @TheAtlantic https://t.co/xY7f6MVkx9 @kakape @GretchenVogel1 @ScienceMagazine
🔬Beyond AlphaFold: How Boltz Is Open-Sourcing the Future of Drug Discovery
In this episode, Gabriele Corso and Jeremy Wohlwend discuss how structural biology has moved beyond AlphaFold's single‑chain predictions toward modeling complex interactions and generative protein design with their open‑source Boltz suite (Boltz‑1, Boltz‑2, and BoltzGen). They explain that evolutionary co‑variation...
Monthly CEO Talks Launch on BiotechTV Featuring New Leaders
From Kendall Square - @MassBio’s @KendalleOC will be doing monthly CEO discussion shows on @BiotechTV this year. Leslie Williams and Ed Kaye (who both have new companies) are in the house today. https://t.co/MTSeqemxgc
When to Merge Vs. Separate Single-Cell Datasets
🧵 Should you integrate single-cell RNA-seq datasets or not? You've got PBMCs from multiple donors. Merge them—or keep them separate? Let's break it down. https://t.co/s7PmZrvalM
Robots on the Red Line: A Video Update From SLAS 2026
The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) 2026 conference in Boston highlighted a surge in laboratory robotics and AI-driven automation. Speakers showcased new modular robot platforms and discussed scaling high‑throughput omics workflows. The keynote underscored how intelligent automation can...
Bioinformatics Demands Matrix Thinking—Most Never Learned It
1/ If you're in bioinformatics, you're staring at matrices all day. RNA-seq? Gene x sample. scRNA-seq? Gene x cell. Everything is a matrix. But I never learned how to think in matrices. And I regret it. https://t.co/ygbY31AfMe
Terray's Non‑diffusion AI Beats Boltz
NEW: Terray has taken a contrarian AI approach, building a non-diffusion-based model for binding affinity predictions They shared some H2H results against Boltz-2, a popular open-source model, showing 20% more accuracy + 26x faster to run: https://t.co/BFZU8y6qI8
OPTION: IV Tenecteplase Boosts Outcomes Late After Non-LVO Stroke
The randomized OPTION trial showed that intravenous tenecteplase given 4.5 to 24 hours after symptom onset improves functional outcomes in patients with acute non‑large‑vessel‑occlusion (non‑LVO) strokes. At 90 days, 43.6% of tenecteplase recipients achieved a modified Rankin Scale score of...
AI Models May Cheat on Molecular Binding Predictions
The Utah-based startup Leash Bio is warning of the potential for AI models to be cheating on tasks like predicting binding affinities of molecules I talked with @allmeasures about how its "Name that Chemist" quiz relates to the goal of generalization:...
FDA Defends Skipping Review of Moderna's mRNA Flu Shot
FDA defends its decision not to review Moderna's mRNA flu shot. My comments with @NBCNews @BerkeleyJr https://t.co/h8PlaEUC3v
FDA OKs Risky, Pioneering OSK Rejuvenation Trial with Sinclair’s ER-100
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared an investigational new drug application for Life Biosciences' ER‑100, a viral gene‑therapy that delivers inducible Oct‑4, Sox‑2 and Klf‑4 (OSK) to the eye. The first‑in‑human trial will enroll a small cohort of...
ASCO GU26 Highlights Litespark, Keynote B15, Flare
Key late-breakers at Asco #GU26 include Litespark-011 & 022, Keynote-B15... and who's heard of Flare Therapeutics? Via @ApexOnco -> https://t.co/bXcANMQu5m $MRK $PFE $ALMPF $CGON $VIR
Anti-Epileptic Drug May Prevent Early Plaque Formation in Alzheimer’s Disease
Scientists at Northwestern University identified that the toxic amyloid‑beta 42 peptide accumulates inside neuronal synaptic vesicles and that the FDA‑approved anti‑epileptic drug levetiracetam can halt this process. By binding to the SV2A protein, levetiracetam alters APP trafficking, keeping the precursor...
Streamlining Research Antibody and Reagent Selection
CiteAb unveiled the Explore Platform, combining its long‑standing reagent search engine with a new image‑search capability. The platform draws on a database of more than 16 million research tools cited in over 40 million publications, spanning antibodies, proteins, models and kits. Its...
Scientists Overstate Precision by Ignoring Significant Figures
Pet peeve: why do "scientists" forget about the concept of significant figures? Happens all the time, in biotech & beyond. Too many decimal places scream lack of credibility. "Sig figs" is a simple concept: measurement readings should not push beyond instrument...
Mayo Clinic Platform Standardizes Cancer Data to Speed Up Trials
Mayo Clinic Platform’s Orchestrate tool has added new capabilities that deliver standardized, research‑ready cancer data. The upgrade leverages the OMOP Oncology common data model to transform unstructured inputs such as pathology reports and imaging into consistent tumor characteristics, biomarkers, and...
Young Microbes Rejuvenate Intestinal Function in Mice
Researchers performed heterochronic fecal microbiota transplants, moving gut microbes from young to aged mice, which reactivated canonical Wnt signaling and enhanced intestinal stem cell regeneration. Aged mice receiving young microbiota showed increased expression of Wnt3, Ascl2, Lgr5 and improved epithelial...
STAT+: The Unusual Prasad Missive in the FDA’s Rejection of the Moderna Flu Shot Application
Moderna announced that the FDA rejected its mRNA‑based flu vaccine, a move that caught the company off guard. The decision sparked a public critique from oncologist Vinay Prasad, who questioned the agency’s evaluation process. At the same time, regulators are...
Seven Influential Women in Biotech in 2026
The article spotlights seven women reshaping biotech in 2026, from Shehnaaz Suliman’s $29 million‑funded mRNA program at ReCode to Julie Kim’s historic appointment as Takeda’s first female CEO. It details their strategic wins—such as Vertex’s CRISPR therapy approval under Reshma Kewalramani...
NIH Researchers Identify Four-Marker Blood Test That May Improve Early Pancreatic Cancer Detection
NIH‑backed researchers reported a four‑marker blood test that improves early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The panel combines CA19‑9, THBS2, ANPEP and PIGR, achieving 91.9% overall accuracy at a 5% false‑positive rate and 87.5% sensitivity for stage I‑II disease. The study...
Open AI Breakthroughs Unlock Progress Beyond the Breakthrough
There is a moment in AI history I keep thinking about. In The Thinking Game, someone tells Demis Hassabis that AlphaFold could predict every known protein structure in about a month. He looks up and says, “Why don’t we just do that?” That decision...
90% Want Free AI Mammograms, Yet None Receive It
Over 90% of responders believe it's time for mammography to incorporate AI for every readout, whereas close to 0% who get screened are getting that interpretation now, and at no out-of-pocket charge https://t.co/hITOBNd7pg https://t.co/x1I6Ffxfio
Successfully Cloned Infernal Arabinose Promoter Despite Synonymous Mutation
Infernal arabinose inducible promoter finally cloned. Two of the positive colonies had the same point mutation, but luckily it was synonymous and the affected Tyrosine is still intact. Cloning promoters into modular part libraries is always a pain even with...
US Stalls Flu Vaccine, Lags China on Nasal COVID
Not only has the US blocked a significant advance for a flu vaccine, but it has done nothing, unlike China, to advance a nasal Covid vaccine that achieves mucosal immunity to block infections https://t.co/FXnaWjxkWV https://t.co/WABn5324U8
ICE Enables Accurate Senescence Detection From Sparse Single‑Cell Data
ICE: robust detection of cellular senescence from weak single-cell signatures using imputation-based marker refinement https://t.co/PDp6oK5s3W https://t.co/8cPgIQEuID
Boost R Scatter Plots with Scattermore for Million Cells
R is slow in plotting tens of thousands of points. How to speed up for a million cell scRNAseq data? check out scattermore https://t.co/tGPHObuK9S https://t.co/TfsRb5V9Xs
Collaboration Between Bioinformaticians and Wet Biologists Unlocks Science
🧵The most underrated superpower in science: Bioinformaticians and wet biologists working together. Here’s why it matters. https://t.co/YNDqsvyu6A
MRNA Companies Must Educate Public to Spark Outrage
I stand by this comment from last fall. Moderna and others need to take their messaging to the general public. There’s not going to much public outrage about yesterday’s flu news because there’s been no meaningful public education on mRNA...