Life and Health Today Weekly: CAR T-cell therapy is curing some blood cancers. Here is where oncology stands now.
Issue of 19 October 2026
What happened last week.
- Longevity CAR T-cell therapy is curing some blood cancers. Here is where oncology stands now.
Fifteen years after The Emperor of All Maladies, oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee sat down with physician Peter Attia to map what has genuinely changed in cancer science. Some of it is remarkable. Some of the hardest problems remain unsolved.
- Performance A mushroom peptide made salt taste 70% saltier in lab tests, no extra sodium needed
Researchers at Gannan Medical University in China identified a peptide from an edible mushroom that amplified the perception of saltiness by more than 70 percent in controlled testing on human tasters and an electronic tongue, not in a clinical trial. The compound has not yet been tested in real food. If it holds up, it could offer a way to cut sodium from processed foods without changing how they taste.
- Performance A treadmill desk reviewed: what it does and what it cannot claim
New Atlas reviewed the Urevo FoldiMix 5L, a folding treadmill that doubles as a standing desk. The review is a product test by one writer in one apartment, not a clinical study, and no health outcomes were measured. Here is what it actually tells you.
- Longevity Senators push for stricter rules on Medicaid computer systems as new work requirements loom
Three Democratic senators are calling on federal regulators to impose mandatory performance standards on the private contractors that run Medicaid eligibility systems for most states. The push comes as new federal work requirements are set to force millions of enrollees through those same systems starting next year. The contractors involved, Deloitte, General Dynamics Information Technology, Gainwell Technologies, and Conduent, have histories of errors that have cut off eligible people from coverage, according to KFF Health News investigations.
- Longevity Last Year's $1,000 of Medical Care Costs $1,015 Now
Life and Health Today's monthly cost reading for September: medical care prices moved +1.5% over the year, slower than overall inflation at +3.7%.
- Biohacking EPFL chip reads multi-region brain activity to trigger depression stimulation in real time
Engineers at EPFL's Integrated Neurotechnologies Laboratory have built a neural implant chip called LogSync that monitors coordinated electrical activity across 32 brain channels and fires a stimulation pulse only when it detects signatures linked to severe depression or anxiety. The device has been validated on human intracranial recordings and in live rats, but has not yet been implanted in a human patient. The work was published October 1, 2026, in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.
- Regenerative Personalized mRNA cancer vaccine cuts melanoma recurrence risk by 42% in 1,137-person trial
A bespoke vaccine built from each patient's own tumor mutations, combined with an immunotherapy drug, reduced the chance of skin cancer returning or the patient dying by 42% compared with the immunotherapy alone. The result, from a pivotal trial presented at a major oncology conference in Madrid, is the first time a customized mRNA treatment has shown that scale of benefit in a phase 3 setting. Researchers are already asking whether the same approach can work in other cancers.
- Longevity Tovecimig plus paclitaxel lifted response rates in biliary tract cancer, but survival gain did not follow
A phase II/III trial found that adding the experimental bispecific antibody tovecimig to standard chemotherapy more than tripled the response rate in patients with previously treated advanced biliary tract cancer and nearly halved the risk of disease progression. Overall survival, however, was no better than chemotherapy alone, and researchers say a crossover design in the trial complicates that reading.