Wastewater surveillance, used to track COVID-19 outbreaks since 2020, has grown to 72 countries with over 4,600 testing sites worldwide and can be used to help develop forecasting models to predict disease levels in a community to help shape policy decisions. Wastewater testing has expanded to monitor a number of pathogens besides SARS-CoV-2, as well as antimicrobial resistance and the presence of cancer, making it a "promising and exciting" way to monitor the world for known and unknown pathogens, said environmental engineer and microbiologist Tong Zhang, a pioneer of COVID-19 wastewater surveillance methods.

People over the age of 60 who take reverse transcriptase inhibitors to suppress HIV were less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, with diagnoses occurring in 2.5 people per 1,000 rather than 6.15 per 1,000, according to a study in Pharmaceuticals. The APP gene, linked to Alzheimer's, is prone to RT-linked mutations, and drugs that inhibit RT in brain cells might also prevent Alzheimer's disease, the researchers said.

A newly discovered bacterium, Rosenbergiella_YN46, reduces dengue and Zika virus infections in mosquitoes by making the gut acidic, leading to the denaturation of viral proteins needed to infect mosquito cells, according to a study in Science. Mosquitoes with this bacterium were more abundant in areas with low dengue prevalence and lower in dengue-endemic regions, and the researchers hope that the discovery will lead to new tools for controlling mosquito-borne diseases.

Subpopulations of cells within a tumor may respond differently to drugs, and NIH researchers have developed an AI tool that could accurately predict the responses of single tumor cells to 44 different cancer drugs, either alone or in combination, according to a study in Nature Cancer. The researchers applied this tool to published data from multiple myeloma and breast cancer patients and found that even a single tumor cell resistant to a drug could hinder the patient's response to treatment.

Targeted prescribing of antibiotics for patients with urinary tract infections improved with the use of a computerized provider order entry bundle that included education, feedback and real-time prompts of patient-specific multidrug-resistant organism risk, researchers reported in JAMA. Use of the CPOE bundle was also associated with improvements in antibiotic selection for patients with pneumonia, according to another study published in JAMA.

A machine learning model identified small molecules that inhibit alpha-synuclein aggregation, a component of Parkinson's disease, researchers reported in Nature Chemical Biology. The model was significantly faster and cheaper than conventional drug discovery methods, but Michael Okun, director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases, says that "introducing more compounds could actually slow the pipeline."

In a survey, 57% of senior disease experts said they expect influenza will be the cause of the next pandemic, due to the pathogen's constant evolution and mutation, according to a study that will be presented at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases conference. After influenza, 21% of experts anticipate a pandemic from an unknown pathogen, or Disease X, while 15% believe the next pandemic will come from SARS-CoV-2.

The US plans to work with 50 other nations on a testing, preparedness, surveillance and communication plan to help countries better address future pandemics. The new Global Health Security Strategy aims to protect populations worldwide and "make the United States stronger, safer, and healthier than ever before at this critical moment," said President Joe Biden, who is looking for $1.2 billion in global health safety funding in his latest budget proposal.

The Center for Clinical Trial Innovation is a new hub launched by the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research that aims for clinical trial innovations to improve the design and conduct of such activities to "efficiently generate evidence on the safety and effectiveness of new therapies in ways that meet the growing demands of drug development," the CDER said. The C3TI's goal will be to expedite the sharing of learnings gained from the CDER's existing initiatives for clinical trial innovation with external parties.

In the first quarter of 2024, biotech funding raised $5.9 billion across 209 rounds, marking the lowest number of deals since 2018 and particularly affecting early-stage deals, with investors prioritizing companies with experienced teams and clinically validated science. Carolina Alarco, founder of the consulting firm Bio Strategy Advisors, believes that true innovation lies with younger entrepreneurs and scientists and thinks "we're doing a disservice to science by not opening up some funding to these highly innovative approaches."