Med-tech M&A activity opened 2026 at a slower pace, with January deal value totaling $665.33 million, coming in well below the 2025 monthly average of $3.51 billion and trailing most individual months last year.
The variety of organoids that can be developed in vitro is enabling major advances. Depending on the type of tissues and the research goals, these small 3D cell-based structures that mimic real tissue offer certain advantages over animal models. Scientists at the University of Padova in Italy have created human neuromuscular organoids to reproduce cancer-induced muscle cachexia, a condition that murine models do not accurately replicate.
Following through on efforts initiated in November 2025, the U.S. FDA approved drug labeling changes for six menopausal hormone replacement therapies (HRTs) that removes the risk statements related to cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and probable dementia from the boxed warnings.
More than a decade after it was first proposed, the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative that grew into the NIH’s All of Us dataset has reached its target of collecting genetic and health-related data from 1 million Americans representative of the diversity across the country.