Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have jointly won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries that enabled scientists to control nerve cells using light. The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the prize on 5 October “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.” The SEK 12 million ($1.21 million) prize will be shared equally among the three scientists.
Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai were awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on 7 October for discovering how chemical reactions can produce an excess of one of two mirror-image forms of a molecule. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”
AM-Pharma BV of the Netherlands is being acquired by a specialist healthcare company in the UK in a deal that will see its enzyme replacement therapy for hypophosphatasia (HPP) advance to Phase 2. The buyer is Ambrose Healthcare Ltd which already has two rare disease programmes in its portfolio and is positioning itself for more. This comes at a time when the US Food and Drug Administration is updating its guidance for the developers of drugs for rare diseases. Current estimates put the number of these diseases at 7,000 to 10,000 globally.
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