Weekly Recap: 14 Health Press Releases You Need to See

A roundup of the most newsworthy healthcare press releases from PR Newswire this week, including the 2025-2026 Best OTC Medicine & Health Products, Lilly's collaboration expansion with Purdue University, and a breakthrough in gene editing.

, /PRNewswire/ -- With thousands of press releases published each week, it can be difficult to keep up with everything on PR Newswire. To help healthcare journalists and consumers stay on top of the week's most newsworthy and popular releases, here's a recap of some major stories from the week that shouldn't be missed.

The list below includes the headline (with a link to the full text) and an excerpt from each story. Click on the press release headlines to access accompanying multimedia assets that are available for download.

1. World's First Patient Treated with Personalized CRISPR Gene Editing Therapy at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia "We want each and every patient to have the potential to experience the same results we saw in this first patient, and we hope that other academic investigators will replicate this method for many rare diseases and give many patients a fair shot at living a healthy life," said Kiran Musunuru, MD, PhD, the Barry J. Gertz Professor for Translational Research in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine.
2. $101M XPRIZE Healthspan Awards First Milestone Winners Driving Toward Revolutionary Healthy Aging Advances Launched in November 2023, the $101M XPRIZE Healthspan is the first health-focused competition of its kind, incentivizing teams to develop proactive, accessible therapeutic solutions that restore muscle, cognition, and immune function by a minimum of 10 years, with a goal of 20 years, in persons aged 50-80 years, in one year or less.
3. U.S. News Announces the 2025-2026 Best OTC Medicine & Health Products
   The brands with the most No. 1 products among the 2025-2026 rankings are Nature Made (7), followed by CeraVe (6) and Neutrogena (5); the companies with the most No. 1 products are Haleon plc, followed by Kenvue Inc., Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc., The Procter & Gamble Company and L'Oreal Usa, Inc.
4. FDA Approves Teal Health's Teal Wand™--The First and Only At-Home Self-Collection Device for Cervical Cancer Screening, Introducing a Comfortable Alternative to In-Person Screening
   Women can now collect their own sample from the privacy of home, no speculum required, and mail it to a certified lab to be tested on the same test as the doctor's office, with the same accuracy.
5. Pager Health and Protera Health Team Up to Expand Access to Value-Based, Virtual-First MSK Care Pager Health's omnichannel care navigation solution will rapidly identify members with potential MSK-related issues and connect them seamlessly to Protera Health's virtual MSK program. From there, members will be directed to in-home care, in-network physical therapy or orthopedic surgical consults as appropriate.
6. Sanofi to invest at least $20 billion in the US through 2030, growing investments in science and expanding domestic manufacturing "Sanofi's 13,000 US-based employees are pioneering the research and development of first- and best-in-class medicines across numerous therapeutic areas. Our expected investments in the US will be substantial and will help ensure the production of key medicines in the US," said Paul Hudson, Sanofi Chief Executive Officer.
7. In new SELECT trial analysis, early reduction in cardiovascular events was observed with Wegovy®, before clinically meaningful changes in body weight "For people with obesity and existing cardiovascular disease, preventing another heart attack or stroke is vitally important. Seeing this SELECT secondary data demonstrate that patients experienced MACE risk reduction within three months is remarkable," said Dr. Jason Brett, MD, Principal Medical Head at Novo Nordisk Inc.
8. Lilly plans to expand Purdue University collaboration with up to a $250 million investment to accelerate pharmaceutical innovation The Lilly-Purdue 360 Initiative aims to achieve several key goals, including discovering and accelerating the delivery of medicines to patients; bridging the gap between laboratory discoveries and clinical applications; creating more resilient, efficient and sustainable supply chains; and deploying innovative, scalable approaches to workforce development. 
9. Guardian adds over 20 new and innovative benefits to its hospital indemnity insurance policy, designed to inspire well-being® Guardian's enhanced hospital indemnity insurance policy becomes one of the industry's most comprehensive offerings, going further to support workers' mental, physical, and financial well-being needs. As part of these additions, Guardian becomes the first carrier to include fertility health, family-building, and caregiving wellness solutions directly in hospital indemnity insurance.
10. U.S. Drug Spending Up 10.2% in 2024, with Weight Loss Drugs Remaining Top Driver Clinic drug spending rose sharply — up 14.4% to $158.2 billion — while nonfederal hospitals saw a more modest 4.9% increase to $39.0 billion. With GLP-1 shortages largely resolved, continued growth in this category is expected, though direct-to-consumer channels may complicate efforts to track usage trends.
11. American College of Lifestyle Medicine Announces Integration of First Set of Lifestyle Behavior Assessment Tools Into Epic Electronic Health Records The new tools include ACLM's lifestyle medicine short form assessment tool, a clinical survey to capture patient lifestyle behaviors and readiness for change; ACLM's Diet Screener, which helps clinicians quickly capture a picture of a patient's diet during routine medical appointments; the Physical Activity Vital Sign (PAVS) tool for assessing physical activity in adults; as well as additional tools to capture lifestyle behaviors and opportunities for change.
12. Hearing Wellness Pioneer Eargo Launches Eargo 8 As Its Newest Flagship Hearing Aid Eargo 8 was thoughtfully engineered with premium features, technology, and design while delivering essential post-purchase assistance for a seamless integration into users' lives. Eargo 8 is FDA cleared and its MSRP is $2,699.
13. AbbVie and ADARx Pharmaceuticals Announce Collaboration and License Option Agreement to Develop Next-Generation siRNA Therapies Across Multiple Therapeutic Areas The strategic collaboration will leverage ADARx's RNA discovery expertise and proprietary siRNA technology, which has the potential to enable sustained and precise mRNA silencing. AbbVie will contribute its expertise in antibody engineering, antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) and tissue delivery approaches as appropriate, to augment ADARx's discovery efforts.
14. MavriX Bio Announces FDA Clearance of IND Application to Initiate First-in-Human Study of Gene Therapy for Angelman Syndrome "We are thrilled to achieve this critical milestone and move one step closer to delivering the first gene therapy to individuals living with Angelman syndrome," said Allyson Berent, DVM, DACVIM, Chief Development Officer of MavriX Bio. "The clearance of our IND signals a key transition point for our development program and our unwavering commitment to advance novel therapeutic options and a potential single treatment therapy for the Angelman community."

For more news like this, check out all of the latest health-related releases from PR Newswire.

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