The oral relaxin agonist, AZD5462, improved cardiac function in patients with chronic heart failure, according to results presented in a Hot Line session at ESC Congress 2026 and published simultaneously in Circulation.

Despite several guideline-directed medical therapies for heart failure, many patients continue to experience considerable disease burden.

A world-first clinical trial conducted by Monash University researchers has shown that cholesterol-lowering medication can reduce heart attack and stroke in people aged over 70 years.

Statins are commonly prescribed to manage high cholesterol in people up to 75 years, and are known to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Scientists from Gladstone Institutes, UC San Francisco, and Stanford University, in collaboration with Biohub, have unveiled a massive, high-resolution functional map of human immune cells that promises to transform our understanding of how genetics control health and disease.

Published in the journal Cell, the study represents a landmark achievement in immunology and genomics.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Rasonque (daraxonrasib), a RAS inhibitor for the most common form of pancreatic cancer - delivering a new treatment option to patients with advanced pancreatic cancer months ahead of schedule.

This action demonstrates the agency’s commitment to moving with urgency, reducing unnecessary delays and advancing innovative treatments that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of American patients and their families.

Delivering drugs directly to oral tumor sites remains challenging. A recent review involving researchers from Hasanuddin University examines barriers to local drug delivery and analyses strategies for targeting oral cancer lesions. Saliva, chewing, tongue movement, and individual tumor characteristics can affect how long a medicine remains at the treatment site and how consistently it is released.

AstraZeneca announced a new five-year phase of its flagship Young Health Programme (YHP) in partnership with UNICEF and 60 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), extending its investment in youth health equity to over $100m since the YHP’s inception in 2010.

The programme, which supports young people in underserved communities, is committed to preventing conditions such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and lung disease by educating and activating young people to

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Germany. In the search for new therapeutic approaches that target the uncontrolled growth of tumor cells, a class of enzymes known as cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) has come into focus. This is because this family of enzymes plays a fundamental role in gene expression and cell division. An overview of the current state of research on the transcriptional regulation of CDKs and the prospects for cancer treatment was compiled by Prof. Matthias Geyer of the University Hospital Bonn and the University of Bonn in collaboration with Prof. Robert P.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Mimrylo (rusfertide), a new treatment for adults with polycythemia vera, a rare blood disorder that causes the body to make too many red blood cells. The excess cells can thicken the blood and increase the risk of cardiovascular issues, such as blood clots, stroke and heart attack.

A new preclinical study has demonstrated that combining HER3-DXd with olaparib significantly improves treatment responses in lung cancer models. This combination therapy induces irreparable DNA damage in cancer cells while also stimulating the body’s immune system to combat the disease.

Lung cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide.

A first-in-class therapy to target MYC, one of the most sought-after and difficult targets in cancer biology, showed promise in hard-to-treat blood cancers, according to a new preclinical study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center published in Blood.

Researchers led by Michael Andreeff, M.D., Ph.D., professor, and Yuki Nishida, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, both of Leukemia, found that experimental drug GT19630 interrupts a newly discovered cycle between MYC and GSPT1,

In science, the suffix “phage” means to devour. Thus, the name bacteriophage might conjure images of tiny creatures that “eat” bacteria. While that conception isn’t 100 percent scientifically accurate, bacteriophages are lethal bacteria killers nonetheless, and scientists are excited about engineering phage DNA as a path to new antibiotics.

And so it is that chemical engineer Brian Hie and bioengineering graduate student Samuel King came to study bacteriophage ΦX174 (pronounced “FYE-ex-1-7-4”).

Adding the GLP-1 receptor agonist drug tirzepatide (marketed as Mounjaro) to standard care for patients with type 2 diabetes and heart disease is associated with a lower risk of a major cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke, finds a study published by The BMJ.

Randomised trials and observational studies have shown non-inferior effects of tirzepatide compared to another GLP-1 receptor agonist, dulaglutide, for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) - a combined measure of heart attack, stroke, and death from any cause.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved daraxonrasib, an oral multi-selective RAS(ON) inhibitor, for adults with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma who have received at least one prior systemic therapy or are not candidates for multiagent systemic therapy. The approval is based primarily on the results from the pivotal randomized phase 3 RASolute 302 trial comparing daraxonrasib to chemotherapy as second-line therapy for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, led by Brian Wolpin, MD, MPH, director of the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Chemotherapy remains a cornerstone of treatment for head and neck cancers, the seventh-most common cancer type worldwide. However, the disease is often diagnosed at a late stage once it has already spread to other organs, and the majority of patients on active treatment will develop resistance to chemotherapy within a matter of months, underscoring a prominent avenue for designing more effective care strategies.

Spinal cord injuries affect an estimated 15 to 20 million people worldwide, often causing lasting impairments in movement, sensation, and independence. Such injuries can be especially devastating when they occur at the level of the neck, where damaged spinal circuits disrupt signals that control the diaphragm, the main muscle used for breathing.

Despite advances in emergency care and rehabilitation, no approved therapies exist to rebuild the neurons and connections lost after a spinal cord injury.

To develop new targeted treatments for cancer, scientists need tissue models that accurately represent the genetic and molecular traits of the cancer they’re studying. An international team led by researchers at MIT’s Koch Institute, the Broad Institute, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the National Cancer Institute, and numerous other partnering institutions has developed nearly 700 new cancer models, derived from patient tumors, which they hope will aid in drug development.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have developed a drug called CS18 that disrupts the ability of cancer cells to survive therapy. The findings, published in Science Advances, support exploring the possibility of using CS18 to treat human cancer in the future.

“Therapeutic resistance is a main obstacle to achieve effective and durable cancer treatments,” said corresponding author Dr. Weei-Chin Lin, professor of medicine - hematology and oncology and of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor.

Mayo Clinic researchers have developed an experimental drug with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to target the "undruggable" PDZ-domain of GIPC1 protein that helps different types of cancer, including pancreatic cancer, to grow and resist treatment. In laboratory studies, the drug slowed tumor growth, improved survival and enhanced the effects of the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine.

The findings, published in Cell Reports, also demonstrate how AI could help develop a small molecule inhibitor of a target protein that can be less toxic and speed the discovery of new cancer treatments.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Valneva SE (Nasdaq: VALN; Euronext Paris: VLA) announced that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has validated the Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) for PF-07307405, the companies’ 6-valent outer surface protein A (OspA)-based Lyme disease vaccine candidate and will begin its assessment of the application.

The application is based on encouraging efficacy of more than 70% observed in the Phase 3 VALOR “Vaccine Against Lyme for Outdoor Recreationists” clinical trial (NCT05477524), which investigated whether the vaccine candidate, PF-07307405, prevented Lyme disease cases in individuals aged five years and older.

Type 2 diabetes is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. So many people with type 2 diabetes are prescribed blood sugar-lowering medication to reduce this risk.

However, not everyone takes their medication consistently, and that inconsistency could leave them more exposed. Yet scientists have struggled to pin down how much long-term adherence, meaning how reliably someone sticks to a prescription over the years, actually changes a person's risk of a heart attack or stroke.