Revolution Medicines announced a stunning survival benefit for its experimental drug in a Phase 3 pancreatic cancer study this week.
Patients with advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma who were treated with the company’s daily pill called daraxonrasib lived a median of 13.2 months compared to 6.7 months for patients who received standard chemotherapy.
Revolution said it plans to use the data to apply for Food and Drug Administration approval, although it did not say when. When it does submit the data, approval might come fast.
STAT spoke with Paul Oberstein of NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, an investigator in the trial, on its biotech podcast “The Readout Loud.”
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start by talking about pancreatic cancer generally. Why is it so challenging to treat it and what are the current survival rates?
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Hellooooo, friends. Psychedelics and testosterone are front and center today, but also we note that GLP-1’s dominance in obesity may not be as inevitable as it looks. Early animal data from GLP-1 pioneers suggest that pathways like GIP-glucagon offer effectiveness and better overall tolerability.
The need-to-know this morning
Kailera Therapeuticsraised $625 million in an initial public offering — the largest-ever Wall Street debut for a drug company. Kailera is developing obesity drugs licensed from China.
Do we even need GLP-1 anymore?
The scientists whose work helped spur the development of GLP-1-based obesity drugs are now questioning whether that target is necessary at all. Instead, they’re proposing that using GIP-glucagon as a dual target could deliver comparable — or even superior — weight loss, without the nausea and dosing limitations that come with current therapies.
Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here.
Earth Day is next week, meaning it’s time for one of my favorite traditions: listening to the annual 24-hour livestream of a marsh in unceded W̱SÁNEĆ territory in British Columbia.
<![CDATA[Artemis astronauts spotlight psychiatric medication, mental health support, and trust—revealing why psychiatry’s village mindset strengthens care, leadership, and ethics.]]>
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
The problem with thinking you’re part Neanderthal
There’s a theory that many of us have an “inner Neanderthal.” The idea is that Homo sapiens and a cousin species once bred, leaving some people today with a trace of Neanderthal DNA.
This DNA is arguably the 21st century’s most celebrated discovery in human evolution. But in 2024, a pair of French geneticists called into question the theory’s very foundations.
They proposed that what scientists interpret as interbreeding could instead be explained by population structure—the way genes concentrate in smaller, isolated groups.
This story is from the next issue of our print magazine, which is all about nature. Subscribe now to read it when it lands on Wednesday, April 22.
Why having “humans in the loop” in an AI war is an illusion
—Uri Maoz
AI is starting to shape real wars. It’s at the center of a legal battle between Anthropic and the Pentagon, playing a growing role in the conflict with Iran, and raising questions about how much humans should remain “in the loop.”
Under Pentagon guidelines, human oversight is meant to provide accountability, context, and security. But the idea of “humans in the loop” is a comforting distraction.
The real danger isn’t that machines will act without oversight; it’s that human overseers have no idea what the machines are actually “thinking.” Thankfully, science may offer a way forward.
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Despite blacklisting Anthropic, the White House wants its new model Trump officials are negotiating access to Mythos. (Axios) + Anthropic said it was too dangerous for a public release. (Bloomberg $) + Finance ministers are alarmed about the security risks. (BBC) + Anthropic just rolled out a model that’s less risky than Mythos. (CNBC) + The Pentagon has pursued a culture war against the company. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Sam Altman’s side hustles have raised conflict-of-interest concerns His opaque investments could influence decisions at OpenAI. (WSJ $) + A jury will soon decide if OpenAI abandoned its founding mission. (Wired $) + The company is making a big play for science. (MIT Technology Review)
3 A Starlink outage during drone tests exposed the Pentagon’s SpaceX reliance It was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to Starlink. (Reuters $) + The DoD is also tapping Ford and GM for military innovations.(NYT $)
4 Data center delays threaten to choke AI expansion 40% of this year’s projects are at risk of falling behind schedule. (FT $) + Partly because no one wants a data center in their backyard. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Alibaba just released its own version of a world model Happy Oyster is the latest attempt to extend AI’s ability to comprehend physical reality. (SCMP) + But they still need to understand cause and effect. (FT $)
6 Google’s Gemini is now generating AI images tailored to personal data By analyzing users’ Google services and data. (Quartz) + Google says it will cut the need for detailed prompts. (TechCrunch)
7 OpenAI is beefing up its agentic coding and development system Its Codex update is a direct shot at Claude Code. (The Verge) + But not everyone is convinced about AI coding. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Europe’s online age verification app is here It’s available for free to any company that wants it. (Wired $)
9 Smartglasses are giving Korean theaters hope of a K-Pop moment Their AI-powered translations are taking the shows to the world. (NYT $)
10 Global voice actors are fighting Hollywood’s AI push Their voices are training the models that are replacing them. (Rest of World)
Quote of the day
“There’s this dark period between now and some time in the future where the advantage is very much offensive AI.”
—Rob Joyce, former director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, tells Bloomberg how AI is creating new hacking threats.
One More Thing
COURTESY OF NOVEON MAGNETICS
The race to produce rare earth elements
Access to rare earth elements will determine which countries meet their goals for lowering emissions or generating energy from non-fossil-fuel sources. But some nations, including the US, are worried about the supply of these elements.
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ This ska cover of Rage Against the Machine is an upbeat way to start a revolution. + We finally know how far Stretch Armstrong can really stretch. + Customize these ambient sounds to wash away disruptive thoughts. + Here’s proof childhood dreams can come true: a girl guiding a seal to perform tricks.
IntroductionElectroencephalography (EEG)-based stroke analysis has mainly relied on conventional signal and network descriptors, while higher-order brain network structures remain insufficiently characterized.MethodsWe used persistent homology to extract cycle-based topological features from EEG functional networks, capturing higher-order organization with reduced sensitivity to threshold selection. These features were integrated with conventional EEG representations and embedded into a graph convolutional network for stroke severity classification.ResultsThe proposed framework achieved 86% accuracy in discriminating mild from moderate stroke. Cycle ratio analysis further revealed that the prefrontal cortex exhibited the most prominent higher-order structures, indicating its prominent involvement in post-stroke brain network organization.DiscussionOur results suggest that higher-order topological features can enhance EEG-based stroke severity classification and offer additional insight into post-stroke brain network alterations.
