Changes to a U.S. CDC website regarding autism and vaccines has sparked a backlash from numerous scientific and other groups, placing HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK) in the spotlight once again for appearing to break promises made earlier this year to secure his nomination.

U.S. and European organ-on-a-chip specialty biotechnology companies are driving development of organ-on-a-chip technologies, fueled by the U.S. FDA’s decision to phase out animal testing for investigational new drugs.

Researchers from the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and their collaborators have identified adenosine as the driving force behind the rapid, fast-acting antidepressant effects of ketamine and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). “Our journey into this area of research began over a decade ago, around 2013, when the clinical world was buzzing with excitement about ketamine's remarkably rapid antidepressant effects,” Minmin Luo, co-senior author of the study, told BioWorld.

Magstim Co. Ltd. reported that the U.S. FDA cleared its Magstim Rapid magnetic stimulation system for the treatment of chronic pain. The clearance provides a clinically validated therapy that directly targets neural pathways involved in pain processing to deliver a non-invasive, drug-free treatment for chronic pain.

A four-way interagency initiative in South Korea, started in 2020, is working to bolster funding for the local medical device industry and grow homegrown devices for the global market.

Synchron Inc.'s recent $200 million raise for its Stentrode brain-computer interface platform comes at a pivotal time for the technology. Advances in BCI development, ongoing clinical trials and growing market demand are drawing increased investor interest in the technology which has the potential to transform the lives of millions of people. At the same time, government agencies are closely monitoring the field, recognizing the potential while urging caution about the risks involved.

Medical Microinstruments Inc., reported the U.S. FDA approval of an investigational device exemption for a study using its Symani surgical system for treating Alzheimer’s disease, one of its earliest forays into the brain.

Despite the formidable challenges for developing precision psychiatry, the approach is notching its first successes in the preclinical and even some clinical settings. Many individual studies as well as large projects like the Psychiatric Ratings using Intermediate Markers studies and the Psychiatric Biomarkers Network have been looking at multiple biomarker types, and have begun to identify predictors of specific symptoms, or disease progression.

Psychiatry has struggled to enter the precision medicine era. But through a mix of innovations and bootstrapping, progress is coming to the field. Scientists are working on improving diagnoses by investigating potential biomarkers and collection methods.

Two in five preclinical studies on subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) published in peer-reviewed scientific journals contain problematic images. A team of researchers from Radboud University Medical Center, who had previously identified several such cases, analyzed the literature in this field to assess the scope of the issue. They found that 40% of the studies included suspicious images.