New research has teased out specific aspects of how Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) sparks the immune response that leads on to the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), opening the way to the rational design of vaccines and antivirals that address the root cause of the disease.

Certain cancers that contain organized clusters of immune cells known as tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) do not respond to treatment as well as expected. Even though they have TLS that support the elimination of cancer cells, they remain resistant to immunotherapy. γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), better known as the brain’s major inhibitory neurotransmitter, may play a role in this lack of response by acting as an immunoregulatory metabolite, according to a study led by scientists at Sorbonne Université.

More than 52,000 individuals, lawmakers, institutions and other organizations have submitted comments on the White House Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) proposal to revise its Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance, which serves as a government-wide framework for administering grants, cooperative agreements and other forms of assistance.

The Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) is the world’s biggest dementia conference. And at the AAIC 2026 meeting, there is big buzz around tau. Sunday’s plenary speaker Ryan Watts, CEO of Denali Therapeutics Inc., highlighted tau-lowering agents as being among the most exciting themes of the conference. “At this conference, we’re going to see additional clinical data that may validate [tau as] a second target in Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid being the first,” he told the audience.

Cancer researchers are increasingly turning to the microbiome to understand why some patients respond well to treatment while others face severe complications. Gut microbial communities shift during intensive therapies such as bone marrow transplantation, and those changes influence infection risk, immune recovery and long‑term survival. New advances in microbial sequencing and engineering redefine this community as a measurable clinical parameter that can be monitored, modeled, and even therapeutically reshaped to improve outcomes in oncology and other conditions.

While biomedical resources in the form of specialized tools, hundreds of thousands of published papers and huge repositories of ‘omics, health records and other data, are growing exponentially, discovery is getting slower and more expensive. That is the perspective from which scientists at Stanford University approached the development of their artificial intelligence (AI) research assistant Biomni.

Whether by fine-tuning neurotransmitter signaling or silencing disease-associated genes, emerging biologic therapies are reshaping neuroscience drug development, according to presentations at the FENS Forum 2026.

At the recently opened FENS Forum 2026 in Barcelona – the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies’ flagship congress and Europe’s largest neuroscience meeting – a symposium on ectodomain shedding showcased how soluble synaptic proteins are emerging as both biomarkers and therapeutic candidates for disorders ranging from autism to schizophrenia.

Astrazeneca plc has returned to China’s CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd. for another discovery collaboration, this time in a deal worth up to $1.77 billion to use CSPC’s siRNA drug discovery platform and extrahepatic targeted delivery technology to develop small nucleic acid drug candidates.

The majority of epilepsies are developmental disorders that start in childhood. But there is a large minority that starts in late adulthood. And increasingly, researchers are suspecting that such epilepsies share mechanisms with dementia. Summarizing the highlights of epilepsy research presented at the recent Annual Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN), Aleksandar Ristic told his audience that the biggest epilepsy story out of the Congress was “not a drug, but it was a reframing.”