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They All Got Mysterious Brain Diseases. They’re Fighting to Learn Why.
In late 2018, after an otherwise-normal Christmas holiday, Laurie Beatty started acting strange. An 81-year-old retired contractor, he grew unnaturally quiet and began poring over old accounting logs from a construction business he sold decades earlier, convinced that he had been bilked in the deal.
Over the course of several days, Beatty slipped further into unreality. He told his wife the year was 1992 and wondered aloud why his hair had turned white. Then he started having seizures. His arms began to move in uncontrollable jerks and twitches. By the end of May, he was dead.
Doctors at the Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Center in Moncton, the largest city in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, zeroed in on an exceedingly rare condition — Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, caused by prions, misfolding proteins in the brain — as the most likely culprit.
The doctors explained this to Beatty’s children, Tim and Jill, and said they would run additional tests to confirm the post-mortem diagnosis. Three months later, when the siblings returned to the office of their father’s neurologist, Dr. Alier Marrero, that’s what they were expecting to hear. Instead, Marrero told them that Laurie’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob test had come back negative. “We were all looking at one another,” Tim says, “because we were all very confused.” If Creutzfeldt-Jakob hadn’t killed their father, then what had?
Three years later, however, no satisfactory explanation has been found, and the New Brunswick syndrome remains shrouded in mystery — and controversy. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether something in the environment may be responsible, at least in part, for the onset of the patients’ illness.
Pfizer Is Staking Its Turnaround on Cancer Drugs
The Wall Street Journal reported:
At a recent company town hall here, Pfizer’s cancer-business chief looked over some 100 scientists, marketers and other staffers who had just joined the giant drugmaker through a $43 billion acquisition and asked them to reach below their chairs.
Ten of the new Pfizer employees in the large conference room pulled out Ray-Ban sunglasses that had been taped under their seats and put them on, as colleagues in the crowd laughed.
“The future is bright for everyone in oncology,” said Chris Boshoff, Pfizer’s chief oncology officer, donning his own pair of the black Wayfarers.
Pfizer is counting on it. The drugmaker is betting much of its future on cancer drugs, wagering they can ring up billions of dollars in new sales and turn around a company struggling with falling COVID-19 revenue and the lower-priced competition that looms for some big-selling products.
Seagen, whose Seattle-area offices Boshoff was visiting, is central to Pfizer’s cancer strategy. Through its purchase of the biotech, Pfizer got three next-generation cancer therapies on the market and at least a dozen drugs in development.
FDA May Greenlight Updated Covid-19 Vaccines as Soon as This Week, Sources Say
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is poised to sign off as soon as this week on updated COVID-19 vaccines targeting more recently circulating strains of the virus, according to two sources familiar with the matter, as the country experiences its largest summer wave in two years.
The agency is expected to greenlight updated mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech that target a strain of the virus called KP.2, said the sources, who declined to be named because the timing information isn’t public. It was unclear whether the agency simultaneously would authorize Novavax’s updated shot, which targets the JN.1 strain.
The move would be several weeks ahead of last year’s version of the vaccine, which got FDA signoff on Sept. 11.
140 Women in England Receive Payout for Vaginal Mesh Implant Complications
More than 100 women who suffered traumatic complications after having vaginal mesh implants have received payouts in the first successful group claim in England.
The Guardian understands that 140 women have reached an undisclosed settlement with the manufacturers Johnson & Johnson, Bard and Boston Scientific. The total sum is expected to run into millions of pounds, although the size of the total and individual payments has not been shared.
The women claimed that the implants, used to treat stress urinary incontinence and prolapse, caused complications including chronic pain, bladder and bowel perforations, bleeding and mesh eroding through the vaginal wall. Many of the women underwent subsequent revision surgeries to remove the mesh and some continue to struggle with pain and other problems.
Gaza Faces Public Health Crisis With First Confirmed Case of Polio
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are in the throes of a public health crisis after local officials announced the enclave’s first case of polio in more than two decades — a harrowing consequence of Israel’s months-long war that has destroyed key water and sanitation infrastructure.
The Gaza Health Ministry on Friday said that a number of children have presented symptoms “consistent with polio” and that laboratory tests confirmed one of them — a 10-month-old child — was infected with the virus. It said the disease, which is highly contagious and can cause paralysis and death, would continue to spread unless there are “radical solutions” to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, including an end to the fighting.
The United Nations is now pushing for an urgent cease-fire — or at least a pause in hostilities — so it can coordinate two mass vaccination campaigns for more than 640,000 children.
Mpox Vaccine Maker Seeks Approval for Use in Teens
Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic said Friday it was seeking European approval to use its mpox vaccine in children aged 12 to 17, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the current virus surge a global public health emergency.
The WHO this week declared the rapid spread of the new, more dangerous mpox strain, dubbed Clade 1b, a public health emergency of international concern—the highest alarm the UN agency can sound.
Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine is currently only approved for people 18 years and older.
Travellers Advised to Consider Mpox Vaccine
Travellers should consider getting vaccinated against mpox if they will be visting affected areas in Africa, new advice says.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has updated its recommendations in response to outbreaks of a new strain of the virus. Other continents, including Europe, can expect some cases too, it says.
ECDC says the risk of it spreading everywhere is low, despite the World Health Organization recently declaring the mpox situation a global emergency.
The disease — formerly known as monkeypox — can be passed on by close contact with anyone with the infection.
Bayer Stock Soars After German Pharma Company Wins Roundup Court Battle
Shares in German pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Bayer climbed nearly 13% on Friday after the company won a legal battle in the U.S. related to its Roundup weedkiller.
At the time of writing, shares in Bayer were up 12.38% at €29.67, after the company won a legal battle to limit liability from claims that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
The plaintiff, David Schaffner, a Pennsylvania landscaper, claimed that Bayer’s Monsanto unit violated state law by failing to put a cancer warning on the label for Roundup.
However, a U.S. appeals court said that federal law governing the pesticide’s warning label trumped Pennsylvania laws.
Bayer said, according to Reuters, that it was pleased with the decision and has maintained that Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate are safe, and said it “continues to stand fully behind” the brand.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-Flu Jab Disappoints in Trial
Germany’s BioNTech and U.S. pharma giant Pfizer said on Aug. 16 they had suffered a setback in a late-stage trial of their combined mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 and influenza.
In a phase 3 trial, the combo vaccine showed a stronger immune response against the influenza A strain than against the less common influenza B strain.
Against COVID-19, the combo jab was as effective as the companies’ standalone vaccine, they said. The trial was carried out on more than 8,000 people aged 18-64.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they were “evaluating adjustments to the combination vaccine candidate aimed at improving immune responses against influenza B, and will discuss next steps with health authorities.”
GSK Wins Latest US Litigation Over Zantac Drug Saga
British pharmaceutical group GSK on Aug.16 welcomed victory in drawn out U.S. litigation regarding its Zantac drug for heartburn that allegedly caused cancer.
The over-the-counter treatment, known also by its non-commercial name ranitidine, was manufactured by several rivals including the French group Sanofi and U.S. drugmaker Pfizer before it was withdrawn in 2019.
GSK said in a statement on Aug.16 that Florida State Court had made a ruling “consistent with scientific consensus that there is no consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the risk of any cancer.”
