The Department of Health and Social Care has published new terms for the UK’s Statutory Scheme for branded medicines.

The terms follow a warning from over 20 life sciences leaders against plans to change the scheme, stating that they are ‘unworkable’ and could be ‘highly damaging’ to UK life sciences and NHS patient access to medicines.

The publication also follows the announcement of a new Voluntary Scheme for Pricing, Access and Growth – a negotiated alternative scheme for companies to opt into over the Statutory Scheme.

The new scheme will require companies to pay a rebate on the sales of branded medicines to the NHS of 21.9% in 2024, 24% in 2025 and 26.8% in 2026.

Despite rebate rates being lower than 2023 (27.5%), they remain significantly higher than the historical average of 10.6% prior to 2023.

In comparison to other similar mechanisms operating in other countries, the UK’s statutory rebate rate is significantly higher, with rebate rates of 12% in Germany, 7.5% in Spain and 8.25% in Ireland.

Although a majority of 102 respondents have rejected the plans, the government has continued to move forward with the Statutory Scheme but will revoke one of the most controversial proposals in the scheme, the Life Cycle Adjustment.

A study led by the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) has identified a new protein as a potential therapeutic target for frontotemporal dementia, a type of early-onset dementia.

Published in Nature, MRC LMB researchers successfully pinpointed the aggregated structures of the TAF15 protein using cutting-edge cryo-electron microscopy to study the brains of four patients who had this type of dementia.

The FUS protein is already known to be associated with frontotemporal dementia. However, researchers were surprised to identify the TAF15 protein in the four brains.

This type of early-onset dementia can be seen in patients with motor neurone disease (MND).

Researchers studied the brains of two patients who had signs of both diseases and identified the same aggregated structure of TAF15 in brain regions associated with MND.

The identification of these proteins and the basic structures of these filaments in this form of early-onset dementia could lead to the development of early diagnostic tests and drugs to combat their formation.

The study was funded by the MRC, along with Alzheimer’s Research UK, the US National Institute of Health, the Alzheimer’s Society, the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Levehulme Trust.

Results from a study led by the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany have revealed that CAR-T therapy significantly improved the symptoms of autoimmune diseases or made them go away entirely.

First conducted in 2021, previous findings from five patients with systematic lupus erythematosus (SLE) showed promising results after they all went into remission.

Researchers tested whether CD19 CAR-T cells achieved a deeper reset of B cells, which trigger autoimmune diseases, eradicate autoimmunity and achieve lasting drug-free remission in autoantibody-dependent AID.

The study enrolled a further eight patients living with SLE, four with systemic sclerosis and three with inflammatory myositis (IIM), who were no longer responding to multiple standard treatments.

Within a week of receiving CAR-T infusions, researchers found that the patients’ B cells were eliminated from the blood and then reoccurred in most patients within a few months.

Additionally, all 15 patients were able to stop taking the immune-suppressive drugs to reduce the symptoms of their disease and all three IIM patients went into remission after three months, substantially reducing the activity of their disease.

Researchers have said that further research is required, with a larger group of patients, to determine whether the CAR-T therapy will have long-term benefits for patients living with chronic autoimmune diseases.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge, University of Milan Bicocca and Hospital Casa Solievo della Sofferenza in Italy have shared promising results from an early-stage stem cell therapy trial in progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).

In a study published in Cell Stem Cell, scientists successfully injected neural stem cells directly into the brains of 15 patients with secondary MS, recruited from two hospitals in Italy.

The stem cells were taken from the brain tissue cells of a single, miscarried foetal donor, and after a 12-month period, researchers observed that no treatment-related deaths or serious adverse events had occurred and that side effects were temporary or reversible.

Additionally, none of the patients involved in the study showed an increased disability or worsening of symptoms, or symptoms that suggested a relapse and worsening of cognitive function.

After assessing volume changes in the brain tissue associated with MS in a subgroup of patients, researchers found that larger doses of injected stem cells led to smaller reductions in brain volume over time.

They also discovered that changes in the fluid around the brain and blood over time were linked to how the brain produced fatty acids. This was connected to how well the treatment worked and how the disease developed.