Advancements in Medical Research

In South Africa, the first human trial of a locally developed HIV vaccine has officially begun. This is also the first trial of its kind in Africa. The BRILLIANT 011 study is enrolling participants at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town. Designed and led by African scientists, this trial will test whether the vaccine candidate is safe and capable of triggering an immune response against the virus. But beyond the clinical milestones, this moment carries something deeper: ownership, especially in a global health landscape where international funding is dwindling, and African countries are turning inwards for locally-led solutions. For decades, HIV has profoundly shaped lives, families, economies and policy across our region. Africa has carried a disproportionate share of the burden. And while global partnerships have been essential, there is something transformational about African scientists leading the charge toward a solution rooted in local expertise, local institutions and local determination. This is what narrative change looks like in practice. From being seen primarily as recipients of aid to being architects of innovation, and from dependency to agency. Progress in science is often slow, careful and methodical. Human trials are only one step in a long journey. But they are a step forward. We celebrate not just a potential vaccine, but the courage of researchers, the commitment of participants, and the quiet, rigorous work happening in laboratories across the continent. The future of global health innovation is not confined to the global North at all. It is being shaped right here at home, in Africa, too. #welldoneSA #science #clinicaltrials #globalhealth #southafrica #africa 🇿🇦

Today in Cell, we published new research showing how AI can help accelerate cancer discovery. With GigaTIME, we can now simulate spatial proteomics from routine pathology slides, enabling population-scale analysis of tumor microenvironments across dozens of cancer types and hundreds of subtypes.   Developed in partnership with Providence and the University of Washington, our hope is that this work helps scientists move faster from data to insight, revealing new links between genetic mutations, immune activity, and clinical outcomes, and ultimately improving health for people everywhere. https://lnkd.in/dSpPdtzz

AI just helped a couple get pregnant - after 19 years and 15 failed IVF cycles. The breakthrough came with an AI tool built by a team at Columbia University. It’s called STAR - the world’s first AI system trained to find sperm that embryologists can’t. The husband had azoospermia - a condition where no sperm is visible under the microscope. Dozens of attempts, surgeries, and even overseas experts had failed. But the team at Columbia didn’t give up. They spent 5 years building STAR (Sperm Track and Recovery). The system scans 8 million images per hour using a chip and computer vision, then gently isolates viable sperm missed by even the most experienced lab techs. And it worked. ▶︎ STAR found 44 sperm in a sample that had been manually searched for two full days. ▶︎ That one breakthrough led to a pregnancy that had felt impossible for nearly two decades. ▶︎ And it did so without chemicals, donor samples, or invasive extraction methods. For millions of couples dealing with infertility, this is a glimpse of what AI-assisted reproductive medicine could unlock. But more importantly - this shows us what AI in healthtech should be aiming for: Not just more data. Not just smarter models. But real clinical results that change lives. And as a healthtech investor, this is what I look for in AI-driven care: → A clear pain point → A targeted intervention → And a story no one can ignore What’s your take - could AI reshape fertility care the way it’s starting to reshape diagnostics and mental health? #entrepreneurship #healthtech #innovation

This is huge news for the fight against tuberculosis. The World Health Organization is recommending near point-of-care tests that can use tongue swabs to collect samples and diagnose TB within an hour—making testing faster, simpler, and more accessible. Tools like this will reach more people, catch TB earlier, and start treatment sooner. Grateful to the scientists and partners who made this progress possible. https://b-gat.es/4clCCIx

Previewed some of Breyer Capital's 2026 Healthcare and Life Sciences Predictions in Forbes, including one core belief I hold strongly: The greatest impact of clinical AI will not be automation. It will be measurement. Medicine has long been limited by what it can reliably observe. Clinical AI advances measurement in two ways: 1) Quantifying entirely new signals from modalities such as audio, video, wearables, patient narrative, and increasingly high-resolution molecular data, and 2) Uncovering latent patterns within the high-dimensional clinical data we already collect. Not every breakthrough requires a new assay. Some come from finally learning how to read the data we already have. This shift is already visible across Breyer Capital’s portfolio: • ArteraAI is extracting clinically actionable phenotypes from cancer histopathology to inform therapeutic selection. • Atropos Health is enabling clinicians and scientists to generate patient-specific real-world evidence from existing clinical data. • Cleerly is redefining coronary imaging by moving beyond stenosis to quantify plaque biology and future cardiovascular risk. • Iterative Health is transforming colonoscopy video from a subjective visual assessment into continuous, reproducible measures of inflammatory burden. • OpenEvidence is turning the medical literature itself into a measurable, queryable clinical substrate at the point of care. These systems are expanding the measurable surface area of medicine. Once something becomes measurable, it becomes optimizable. Jim Breyer Daniel Breyer Ted Breyer Bret Bostwick, MD, FAAP, FACMG

Not all our breakthroughs in medical technology look like a big machine. Sometimes it’s a small vial—filled with a few teaspoons of blood—that carries the potential to change a life. Take multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that affects nearly 3 million people worldwide. For many, the wait for symptoms to appear, or for imaging to confirm what they already feel, can be full of uncertainty. Now a simple blood test can deliver key insights and help ensure patients get the right care at the right time. I find this quiet breakthrough so powerful. The test targets neurofilament light chain (NfL), a blood-based biomarker now detectable with a diagnostic test. This is the first CE-marked* biomarker for MS. When used together with other clinical, imaging, and laboratory findings, NfL can help predict the risk of MS disease activity in an individual patient with RMS. These earlier insights help clinicians personalize treatment earlier and give the patient something often missing: clarity. It’s not dramatic on the outside, but the impact is very real. This is the kind of innovation I believe deserves more attention—the kind that puts meaningful change in a small vial. *𝘊𝘌-0197. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘜.𝘚. 𝘈𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘷𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺.

The next generation of drug discovery will be built on integrated, AI-native systems that connect automation, experimentation, computation, and machine learning into a continuous cycle of learning where every experiment makes the next one smarter. A recent article in Scientific American by Patrick Sisson explores how this new research infrastructure is beginning to take shape and highlights Recursion's pioneering work in this space. At Recursion, we run up to 2.2 million experiments each week and leverage more than 50 petabytes of proprietary biological, chemical, and patient data as part of an end-to-end learning engine for drug discovery and development. But scale alone isn't the differentiator. The real opportunity lies in transforming multimodal data into biological understanding and ultimately into new medicines. Take our neuroscience collaboration with Roche and Genentech. For decades, neuroscience drug discovery has been constrained by repeatedly investigating the same well-studied targets. To move beyond those limitations and explore entirely new biology, our teams developed advanced cell manufacturing capabilities to produce more than 100 billion human iPSC-derived microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, which are notoriously difficult to generate and study at scale. The result is a first-of-its-kind whole-genome Microglia Map comprising 46 million cellular images across 17,000 genes. This systems-level view of biology allows our AI models to move beyond traditional approaches, uncover novel biological insights, and identify therapeutic opportunities that may have otherwise remained hidden. What excites me most is what comes next. These maps – and the AI models trained on them – are the foundation. The real opportunity is translating them into novel, first-in-class therapeutic programs. That's the frontier we're pioneering: turning systems-level biological understanding into medicines for patients. There's still important work ahead, but we're making meaningful progress, and I'm excited about what's possible as we continue to push the boundaries of AI-native drug discovery. Stay tuned. #AI #DrugDiscovery #TechBio #Biotechnology #MachineLearning

Dr. Lisa Mosconi has been sounding the alarm for years and now the research is catching up. New findings are connecting menopause and Alzheimer’s in a way that can no longer be ignored. For decades, we assumed women were at higher risk simply because they lived longer. But the truth is more complex and more urgent. Dr. Mosconi’s work reveals that the drop in estrogen during menopause doesn’t just change our bodies. It changes our brains. Women aren’t just experiencing hot flashes and sleep issues. They’re experiencing real, measurable shifts in brain metabolism, often years before any cognitive symptoms are diagnosed. This isn’t just a women’s health issue. It’s a research gap. A funding gap. And a care gap. We need clinical trials that center women. Diagnostic tools that account for sex-based differences. And real conversations that treat menopause as the medical milestone it is, not a punchline. Because when we invest in understanding menopause, we’re not just improving midlife, we’re protecting the decades that come after it. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eSWST54E

🔬 Latest pharma industry updates 👇 🤝Eli Lilly and Company will acquire AtaiBeckley for up to $3.8B, adding a nasal psychedelic for treatment-resistant depression and expanding its neuropsychiatry pipeline. 💰 Agenus raised $340M to pivot BOT+BAL development from late-line colorectal cancer to neoadjuvant colon cancer. ❌ GSK discontinued camlipixant trials after two Phase 3 chronic cough failures, ending a hoped-for respiratory blockbuster opportunity. 😴 Apnimed filed for an IPO to support the expected launch of Oxnimbi, a dual-acting sleep apnea pill that succeeded in Phase 3. 🧠 Biogen’s BIIB080 generated encouraging Alzheimer’s tau-targeting data, offering clearer evidence of potential cognitive benefit. 📈 Avere will go public via a reverse merger with NextCure, Inc., backed by $320M, to advance weekly oral IL-23 receptor antagonist AVR-001 in psoriasis and ulcerative colitis. 🚨 World Health Organization warned the DRC Ebola outbreak may be 2 to 4 times undercounted, with 1,792 official cases, 625 deaths, health-worker strikes and new prophylaxis trials underway. 🎗️ GSK’s Jemperli showed potential to treat locally advanced rectal cancer without chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery. ☢️ AdvanCell raised an oversubscribed $315M Series D to move lead-212 targeted alpha therapy ADVC001 into Phase 3 for metastatic prostate cancer. 🤝 AstraZeneca licensed Dizal Pharmaceutical’s approved lung cancer drug Zegfrovy for up to $1.5B. 📈 Braveheart Bio, Attovia Therapeutics, BlossomHill Therapeutics, Inc., and Vogenx, Inc joined July’s biotech IPO wave. 💊 Veradermics’ extended-release oral minoxidil met Phase 2 goals in female pattern hair loss, showing strong hair-count gains, early activity and no drug-related cardiac safety issues. 💰 Neko Health raised $700M at a nearly $7B valuation to expand its preventive health scan clinics, including a planned U.S. launch. 📊 Johnson & Johnson raised annual sales and profit guidance after a strong second quarter, driven by 7.8% growth in its Innovative Medicine division. 📊 Boehringer Ingelheim’s human pharma revenue grew 20.1% at constant currency in H1, reaching €13.1B, powered by Jardiance and newer product launches. 🟢 Merck won the first approval for an oral PCSK9 cholesterol pill, Lipfendra, marking a major milestone under a controversial FDA priority voucher pathway. 🤝 Jasper Therapeutics acquired Kira Pharmaceuticals in an all-stock deal alongside a $132M private placement, adding immunology biologics and extending its cash runway into late 2028. ---------- 📩 Get those updates directly via email (link in my profile)

A surgeon tells you there's nothing more to do. The tumor sits too close to major blood vessels. For people with inoperable liver tumors, that used to be the end: surgery was too risky, radiation too blunt, and the cancer kept moving. Now there's another option. The FDA has approved the Edison System, which uses histotripsy—focused sound waves that break apart tumor tissue without cutting. No incision. No scalpel. Often done under anesthesia, with many patients going home the same day. What the study reports: ↳ 95% success rate in meeting clinical performance goals ↳ Minimal major complications ↳ Patients on blood thinners can still be treated ↳ Most go home the same day The results were published in Radiology—peer-reviewed, not a press release. Today, the approval covers primary liver tumors and liver metastases (cancer that spread from other organs). Researchers are also testing whether it can work in other parts of the body. For someone told "there's nothing left," this can mean hours in treatment—and sleeping at home that night. What if the next shift in oncology isn't a better cut, but no cut at all? Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld, for notes on staying human as AI rises. Source: UCI Health. Image from the study: "Trial for Histotripsy of Primary and Metastatic Liver Tumors" https://lnkd.in/e2y4sTCM