A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel has voted to loosen restrictions on controversial peptides that have become popular online, but have not been well researched for human usage. The panel narrowly voted to allow specialised pharmacies to produce drugs including BPC-157, TB-500 and KPV, a major regulatory hurdle towards making them available via prescription. Peptides are small proteins that our bodies normally produce and that have long been used to treat medical conditions, including diabetes. But unregulated injectable peptides have exploded in the online wellness community - including among many young influencers - since GLP-1s (weight loss drugs) became mainstream. The FDA does not have to follow the panel's recommendations, but often does.

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As generative AI captures public attention, a different kind of AI is reshaping drug discovery. Machine learning models are helping to compress decade-long timelines and cracking problems that were previously unsolvable. Designing and developing a new medicine is an expensive, failure-prone scientific challenge. A new drug can take many years to develop, at the cost of a significant investment. And even then, most possible candidates never reach the patient. For biologic medicines, therapies made from engineered proteins rather than synthetic chemistry (which are often used to treat conditions across most major acute and chronic diseases), the complexity is even greater.

The maker of Wegovy and Ozempic, Novo Nordisk, has launched legal action accusing its arch rival Eli Lilly of false advertising in suggesting its weight-loss drugs perform better. The Danish company filed a lawsuit in the US on Tuesday claiming Eli Lilly, which makes Mounjaro and Zepbound, deployed ad campaigns to create the misleading impression that Eli Lilly's medicines are superior. Novo said its rival compared the highest approved doses of its medicines for obesity and type-2 diabetes with lower doses of Novo Nordisk's, while omitting newer, higher-dose options. The BBC has contacted Eli Lilly for comment. The lawsuit comes as Novo and Eli Lilly are locked in battle to dominate the fast-growing weight-loss drug industry, especially in the US, which analysts have estimated could be worth more than $100bn by 2030.

The FDA could decide whether to loosen rules around peptide production this week. Some telehealth players are already seeing dollar signs. Has anyone tried to sell you peptides yet? Once a niche interest among bodybuilders and biohackers, peptides are an increasingly popular class of substance hyped by both fringe influencers and the current US Secretary of Health and Human Services. Earlier this year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the podcaster Joe Rogan that the government intended to loosen restrictions on peptide production.

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Things to Do in L.A. Seen through a magazine, Christin Evans is photographed at her bookstore, the Booksmith, in San Francisco. Evans says health insurance costs have leaped 17% this year, forcing her to cut staff hours. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search.

Check your subscription status, update your details and more. Drug development must change too. In this New Scientist CoLab podcast, experts from global life sciences leader Cytiva explain the hidden, high-stakes science of purification that is required to close the gap between drug discovery and the pharmacy shelf. Artificial intelligence and big data are flooding discovery pipelines with high-potential drug candidates, but this rapid innovation has created a new challenge. Simply put, our capability to design miracle molecules is vastly outstripping our technology to mass-manufacture them safely for the global public.

The company has drawn governments, a major chipmaker, and the Pentagon into an effort to control fragile photons and build a useful quantum machine. It aims to be the first. PsiQuantum aims to build a quantum computer that can solve some of science's hardest problems. Its chips, cut from wafers like the one shown here, will perform computations using photons, the particles of light. The machine that could change the world will be housed in a room that looks like a data center crossed with an ice cream factory. Inside will be some 100 stainless-steel cabinets, each about six feet tall and connected to a supply of liquid helium that keeps them only a few degrees above absolute zero. Inside those cabinets will be hundreds of chips, and on those, thousands of particles of light flying through a maze of optical switches and beam splitters.

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