In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at the settlement between Novartis and the family of Henrietta Lacks, the startup that wants to treat Alzheimer’s with microrobots, medical groups push back on RFK’s vaccine changes and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

Pharmaceutical giant Novartis settled a lawsuit with the estate of Henrietta Lacks over allegations that it unjustly profited off her cancer cells. Lacks, a Black woman whose doctors took cells from a cancerous tumor in her cervix without her knowledge, died in 1951 at the age of 31. The story of Lacks, whose cells subsequently contributed to scientific breakthroughs while her family struggled with poverty, was detailed in the best-selling 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Details of the settlement agreement, finalized in federal court in Maryland, were not made public. It follows an earlier agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific three years ago. Taken together, the two settlements represent something of a reckoning by the medical establishment with the field’s historic racism and the harm that can be done in the name of scientific progress.

Lacks’ doctors had harvested cancerous cells while she was receiving treatment, without her knowledge or permission, a practice that was legal at the time. Those cells, called HeLa cells, were subsequently used in medical research that led to the development of vaccines for polio and Covid-19 and treatments for cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

This Startup Wants to Use Mini Robots To Treat Alzheimer’s

For the past few months, neurosurgeons at hospitals in Florida, Connecticut and New York have been preparing for a wildly experimental operation designed to treat Alzheimer's disease, the dementia that leads to devastating memory loss. The surgery, which they've been practicing on cadavers, aims to clear the drainage pathways to the brain. This could help patients' own lymphatic systems flush out toxins that scientists believe are the hallmarks of the disease, which affects 7 million people in the U.S. alone.

To do so, they're turning to the smallest surgical robotic instruments in the world that can hold tiny needles the size of eyelashes, with scissors and dilators roughly the width of a human hair. The lymph vessels in the neck that surgeons would operate on for the Alzheimer’s procedure can be as little as 0.2 millimeters in diameter, the equivalent thickness of two sheets of paper. “It’s like taking a couple of strands of your hair and tying them together with little bitty sutures,” says Mark Toland, CEO of Jacksonville, Florida-based startup MMI, which makes the microrobots.

They aim to perform the first of these microrobotic surgeries on five people in March. While a very early-stage clinical study, it builds off reports from some 5,000 experimental surgeries performed in China and other Asian countries over the past five years that help the lymphatic system clear out build-up in the brain. They've shown remarkable, if largely anecdotal, results. Surgeons were not only able to slow the disease’s progression — they took patients with moderate Alzheimer’s back to a more mild stage of the disease, Toland says.

In November, MMI, which has raised some $220 million in venture funding at a valuation around $500 million, got the okay from the FDA to proceed with the trials, with the goal of first showing the procedure is safe in 15 people. If the initial trial is successful, Toland hopes to start enrolling 200 to 300 patients in a large-scale clinical trial later this year. With luck, he believes the startup could receive approval for the use of its microrobots to treat Alzheimer’s by the end of 2027.

It sounds pretty crazy. But MMI’s clinical trials build off a relatively new body of scientific research on the brain’s waste removal system that may yield new hope for sufferers of the disease and their families. “Nobody is going to adopt this procedure based on information coming out of China or even Korea,” Toland says. “But if we establish a foundation of research in the United States, it’s a game changer for the whole world.”

Read the full story here.

RFK Taps New Vaccine Advisors As Childhood Infectious Diseases Spread

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. named two new members to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Vaccine Practices (ACIP), which sets recommendations for vaccine schedules. They are Sean Downing, a concierge physician in Florida who was a donor to Kennedy’s presidential campaign; and Angelina Farella, a pediatrician who has a history of spreading misinformation about vaccines and treatments against COVID-19.

ACIP was originally set to meet in February but has been rescheduled for March 18 and 19. The agenda will include discussions on “injuries” allegedly caused by COVID-19 vaccines and also whether vaccination causes Long COVID, despite the fact that clinical evidence to date suggests vaccination helps prevent it. Like many of the current members of ACIP, Downing and Farella have no experience in epidemiology, public health or vaccinology. That’s been the case since Kennedy purged public health experts from the committee last June.

Kennedy’s changes to the committee, as well as the recommendations it has put forth, have provoked strong opposition from medical groups, insurance companies and several state governments. Last month, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists withdrew as a liaison organization from ACIP, saying that Kennedy’s changes “undermine the committee’s scientific integrity and evidence-based approach to vaccine policy.”

Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatricians and other medical societies filed suit against Kennedy, claiming that he illegally removed ACIP members and the votes of the current committee should be rendered void. A federal judge in Massachusetts rejected HHS’s motion to dismiss the case in January, and the plaintiffs have filed for an injunction to prevent ACIP’s next meeting from taking place and to suspend its changes to childhood immunization schedules. Fifteen states have also sued HHS to nullify the schedule changes and disband the current committee.

While Kennedy’s HHS continues to downplay the importance of vaccination, cases of preventable childhood diseases are rising. There have been more than 1,100 recorded measles infections in 2026 so far–about half of last year’s total. Declines in vaccination rates also mean the risk is higher that other childhood diseases, such as whooping cough, meningitis and rotavirus, will make a comeback.

Sunway Healthcare Holdings, a Malaysian medical care provider, kicked off its plans to raise $736 million in an IPO on Friday. The company, a unit of Malaysian billionaire Jeffrey Cheah’s Sunway group, will begin trading on Bursa Malaysia on March 18. The IPO values Sunway Healthcare at about $4.2 billion, making it the country’s largest in over a decade. With the proceeds from the IPO, the company plans to expand its existing five hospitals and build three new ones.

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