Welcome to the October issue of Pharmafocus!

In this issue, there are plent y of interesting news pieces to read, such as Bayer submitting a third application for a prostate cancer drug (page 4) or the announcement from CluePoints about new software for reviewing clinical data (page 6). A drug for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from Sanofi has been approved in the US (page 8) while a new drug has been approved for early symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease in Japan (page 9).

Pharmafocus also brings you the latest stories on research and development, such as a collaboration between the European Microbiome Innovation for Health (EMHI) and the Microbiome Therapeutics Innovation Group (MTIG) (page 10), as well as PolTECH starting preclinical development for a study on CAR-Treg neuroinf lammatory autoimmune disease (page 11).

After the news comes insights from AstraZeneca on a lesser-k nown cause of heart failure – transthyretin-mediated amyloid cardiomyopathy (page 14). PacBio shed light on the world of genomics, and how experts are calling for more diversity to fix the def icit in genomics research (page 16). Our final insight comes from Kerato, detailing how corneal transplants are affecting the f ield of ophthalmolog y (page 18).

Enjoy a hot drink this autumn along with October’s edition of Pharmafocus.

Natalia Elliot