Eleven clinical trials that will shape medicine in 2026
Nature Medicine asks leading researchers to name their top clinical trial for 2026, from long-awaited vaccines for infectious diseases to new treatments for advanced cancers and long COVID.
Full list:
Great list, thanks for sharing 
. Very interested in long acting antivirals (second row, as may have off label benefits e.g. Maraviroc). Also interested in the outcome of IL-6 inhibition, as interested in anti inflammatory generally (e.g chronic inflammation in MS) and inflamaging too…
Thanks for sharing. I am mostly interested in the stem cell ones.
Yes, thanks for posting. I was not aware of Pelacarsen, the antisense RNA to block Lp(a). That could be a big hit.
Thanks for sharing. It’s definitely great to see in one way, but they’re also kinda… boring, or unambitious somehow? Many seem to be fancy, expensive ways to incrementally improve what we already have.
TB vaccine for adult (we all had BCG as kids, I’m sure) is a great one. More than 1 million deaths per year due to adult TB.
The HIV one is not that exciting IMO. We already have super solid treatments, including ART which gives people normal life expectancies by taking 1 cheap pill per day. This is going to be longer lasting, less frequently treatment, but also likely significantly more expensive. (Basically it’s like a Repatha when you already have statins.)
Anti-IL-6 could be cool for people who already controlled lipoproteins but have stubborn high inflammation (CRP etc). Just adding more risk reduction on top of the basics (lipoproteins, blood pressure, anti-platelet etc). Then again, I’d argue that we have less fancy drugs like colchicine which seem to do the job pretty well in terms of outcome, and I wonder how much better this will be. And of course we can assume anti anti-IL-6 will be significantly more expensive!
Pelacarsen is the most relevant on the list for us IMO. Currently there are no treatments for high Lp(a), and this one seems to work well.
The cancer ones I’m not very knowledgable but oral KRAS for pancreatic cancer would be a good demonstration. But there’s no “game changing” sort of cures/immunotherapies here as far as I can see.
List seems arbitrary, so I made my own :
A Study of Tirzepatide (LY3298176) Plus Mibavademab Compared With Tirzepatide Alone in Adult Participants With Obesity ClinicalTrials.gov. Note that Muba is a leptin agonist
A Study to Investigate Weight Management With LY3841136 and Tirzepatide (LY3298176), Alone or in Combination, in Adult Participants With Obesity or Overweight With Type 2 Diabetes. ClinicalTrials.gov. Note that LY3841136 is an amylin agonist (eloralintide) .
A Study to Investigate Weight Management With Bimagrumab (LY3985863) and Tirzepatide (LY3298176), Alone or in Combination, in Adults With Obesity or Overweight. ClinicalTrials.gov. Note that Bimagrumab is a myostatin inhibitor.
