US approves a tablet for herpes lesions unresponsive to antivirals

In the trial behind the approval, lesions fully healed by day 28 nearly twice as often as on other treatments

In an announcement dated 9 October 2026, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Hovilpri (pritelivir) tablets for adults with weakened immune systems who have herpes simplex virus (HSV) lesions on the skin or mucous membranes that did not respond to acyclovir, valacyclovir or famciclovir. The decision rests on part C of the phase 3 PRIOH-1 trial: 101 immunocompromised adults were randomised to pritelivir or to a treatment chosen by the investigator. By day 28, all lesions had healed in 63% of people on pritelivir and in 34% of those on the comparison treatments.

In people after transplantation, with blood cancers, HIV or autoimmune disease, herpes outbreaks can be more frequent and serious, and the virus can be resistant to the usual drugs. This adds a tablet option for that narrow group.

Approved in the United States for this group only, not for herpes in general. The trial was open-label, and the comparison arm received different treatments rather than one standard drug. The participants had a wide range of conditions. The most common adverse reaction was headache, and the label lists drug interactions.

The FDA extended Anktiva to one form of bladder cancer on the basis of evidence from a related form

Anktiva (nogapendekin alfa inbakicept-pmln) is given with BCG directly into the bladder. The indication added on 14 October 2026 covers adults with high-grade papillary-only non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer that has not responded to BCG. The agency calls it the first treatment approved specifically for this group. The FDA based the decision on results from the earlier CIS trial together with clinical and laboratory similarities between CIS and high-grade papillary-only disease, rather than on efficacy measured directly in a papillary-only cohort. The FDA applied results from an earlier trial in 77 adults with carcinoma in situ, a flat form of the cancer, some of whom also had papillary tumours: 62% had a complete response, and of those, 58% kept it for at least 12 months and 40% for at least 24 months.

The FDA presents this as a new approach to evidence in this disease.

Approved in the United States. The prescribing information warns that delaying surgery to remove all or part of the bladder can allow the cancer to spread, which can be fatal.

In 8,709 cancer-centre patients with detectable brown fat, higher activity was linked to lower odds of cardiometabolic disease

On 14 October 2026, researchers from Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering reported in Nature that, in a retrospective cohort of 101,243 patients at a cancer centre, detectable brown adipose tissue—a type of fat that uses energy to produce heat—was associated with a lower prevalence of cardiovascular and psychiatric diagnoses. The propensity-matched comparison included 8,897 patients with detectable brown fat and 17,405 without it. A machine-learning tool measured brown fat activity in 8,709 patients with detectable brown fat. Higher total activity was associated with lower odds of type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease. Higher activity in the armpit depot was associated with lower odds of type 2 diabetes, heart failure and high blood pressure.

The authors also found that use of angiotensin receptor blockers was associated with detectable brown fat. In brown adipocytes, losartan increased markers of thermogenic activity; in mice, it increased brown-fat thermogenesis and whole-body energy expenditure.

Measuring brown fat in humans has been slow and done in small groups. A tool that measures it semi-automatically on existing clinical PET-CT scans makes much larger retrospective studies possible.

This is a retrospective study at one cancer centre: it shows associations, not that brown fat protects anyone. The scans were obtained without prior cold exposure, which can underestimate the prevalence of detectable brown fat. The effect of losartan on brown fat was shown in cells and mice. In mice, body weight and fat mass did not change. The study does not show that losartan changes brown fat, weight or health outcomes in people, and it is not a reason to start or change any medicine.

A vaccine built from each patient's tumour mutations was given to three in four evaluable patients at first ovarian cancer recurrence

On 14 October 2026, researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute reported in Nature Medicine that ten people with platinum-sensitive, high-grade epithelial ovarian cancer received personalised NeoVax in a phase 1 feasibility and safety trial. The vaccine is made for each patient from peptides that match mutations found in her own tumour. It was combined with an immune stimulant and, later, with the immunotherapy drug nivolumab after standard platinum chemotherapy. They included one newly diagnosed patient and nine patients at first recurrence. Among evaluable patients at first recurrence, 9 of 12 (75%) received the vaccine; in the newly diagnosed group, 1 of 9 (11%). No unexpected safety signals were seen, and no one stopped treatment because of side effects. More than 70% of the selected targets remained detectable by cell-free DNA analysis after a median of 6.5 months from diagnostic biopsy to vaccine administration. Biomarker analyses suggested biological activity of the vaccine in six of the ten.

Making and giving a separate vaccine for every patient is the step that larger, controlled trials depend on.

The vaccine remains investigational: this report describes ten vaccinated patients and provides no control-group comparison, so it cannot show whether the vaccine extends life or delays recurrence. Because vaccination followed standard chemotherapy and was combined with delayed nivolumab, the vaccine's own contribution cannot be separated. No timeline for routine clinical use can be inferred from this phase 1 report.

This material is for information only and does not replace a consultation with a doctor. Nothing in it is a recommendation to start, stop or change treatment.

Sources

• US Food and Drug Administration. FDA Approves Drug to Treat Lesions Caused by Herpes Simplex Virus. October 2026. fda.gov

• PRIOH-1: pritelivir for acyclovir-resistant mucocutaneous HSV infections in immunocompromised people. ClinicalTrials.gov. NCT03073967

• US Food and Drug Administration. FDA Approves First Treatment for Certain People With BCG-Unresponsive Bladder Cancer. 14 October 2026. fda.gov

• QUILT-3.032: BCG with N-803 in BCG-unresponsive non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. ClinicalTrials.gov. NCT03022825

• Gómez-Banoy N, et al. Artificial intelligence-enabled clinical phenotyping of human brown fat. Nature. 2026. PMID 42875491

• Sellars MC, et al. Personalized neoantigen-targeting cancer vaccines in ovarian cancer: a phase 1 trial. Nature Medicine. 2026. PMID 42875558

• NeoVax with nivolumab in patients with ovarian cancer. ClinicalTrials.gov. NCT04024878