Just two weeks after showing off positive results at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting, uniQure and partner CSL have been hit with an FDA clinical hold for their bleeding disease treatment etranacogene dezaparvovec.

Drugs that target cancer-causing genes have proven effective in many tumor types, but patients often become resistant to them. Combination therapies could be key to overcoming this problem, and two academic groups recently released promising preclinical research on two such combos.

The promise of a digital revolution in healthcare has been described as “just a few years away” for the better part of a decade, but the spread of COVID-19 in 2020 has spurred that transformation’s slow trot into a full gallop.

After raising $123 million this past summer to fuel its artificial-intelligence-based drug design work, Atomwise has helped launch a new company focused on uncovering treatments in immuno-oncology.

Personalized CAR-T therapies, checkpoint inhibitors and bispecific antibodies are examples of recently developed cancer therapies that target the immune system’s T cells. These treatments have high success rates in several cancer types, but many patients eventually relapse.

“The future will be overrun by an army of new choices and changes in attitudes towards one’s own health. That creates a whole new area for bioscience and health, and for investing,” Mike Edelhart, managing partner, Social Starts & Joyance Partners said, opening the Demy-Colton Virtual Salon, “The New Alchemy of Investing in Health.”

It has been said that late-stage clinical trials are where Alzheimer’s drugs go to die—there have been well over 130 failed clinical trials for Alzheimer’s in the last decade. Still, AB Science SA reported promising data from its Phase IIb/III trial of masitinib in patients with confirmed mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. And the approach is consistent with much of what is known about the disease’s pathology.

Autophagy is the process by which cellular debris is reused to make new components. This waste-disposal system is important for normal cell survival, but scientists at Regeneron have found a drawback: Autophagy can also protect tumor cells from being targeted by the immune system.

Servier is seeking a major R&D transformation and is tapping contract research organization IQVIA to help.

Amgen has maintained its lead in the race to bring a KRAS-targeting medicine to market after filing for approval of sotorasib in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the U.S.