Beyond Wegovy and Ozempic: Biotechs vie for piece of red-hot weight loss market with novel strategies

Startups are betting on novel mechanisms to treat obesity, hoping that their products will have a unique edge over popular drugs, like having fewer side effects or helping maintain long-term weight loss, that will resonate with patients and insurers. Read more.

By Elaine Chen and Allison DeAngelis

Zoe Davis for STAT

Wealth, not health: For this hospital, closing Chicago's alarming 'death gap' didn't mean more clinics

Rush University Medical Center decided to do something different to close a life expectancy gap in Chicago: Instead of focusing only on health, it began to focus on wealth. Read more.

By Usha Lee McFarling

Keith Srakocic/AP

In a small new study, scientists working on an AI 'brain decoder' inch closer than ever to reading minds

Scientists have developed an AI-based system that can "decode" a person's brain activity and recount the story they were listening to as their brain was scanned. Read more.

By Brittany Trang

More great reads from STAT this week

Gene therapy has helped boys like Conner walk. Scientists are trying to keep it that way
For Eli Lilly's head scientist, Alzheimer's results cap a 25-year scientific quest
'Patients are not hot potatoes': How the fight over dialysis coverage is putting kidney failure patients at risk
For Spanish-speaking Latinas, language gaps — real or perceived — tied to discrimination during labor
Sam Waksal and Jeremy Levin plot 'the turnaround story of the century'
Biden's pick to lead NIH stares down an increasingly political litany of questions
Listen: Two medical residents debate their hospital's unionization drive