In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at the first human Alzheimer’s patients getting microrobotic surgery, Indian billionaire Dilip Shanghvi’s plans to expand his healthcare empire in the U.S., the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

A clinical trial for the use of microrobots in treating Alzheimer’s disease kicked off with its first robotic-assisted procedure in human patients at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida. The first patient, treated on Thursday, had moderate Alzheimer’s disease–the dementia that leads to devastating memory loss and affects 7 million people in the U.S. alone–and confirmed abnormalities in their deep cervical lymph node region. Two additional patients with moderate Alzheimer’s underwent the procedure on Monday. Microrobot maker MMI (Medical Microinstruments Inc.) expects to ultimately enroll 15 patients and follow them for 12 months after their operations. The goal of the surgery is to clear drainage pathways to the patients’ brains, helping their own lymphatic systems flush the toxins that scientists believe are hallmarks of the disease.

Alzheimer’s has long confounded researchers, and efforts to develop treatments for it have resulted in a graveyard of failures, but fixing the brain’s “plumbing” with surgeries or drugs has attracted increased attention recently. This has left scientists viewing MMI’s wildly experimental operation (which Forbes profiled earlier this year) with a mix of skepticism and hope. While MMI’s studies are very early stage, they build off reports from some 5,000 experimental surgeries performed in China and other Asian countries over the past five years that have shown remarkable, if largely anecdotal, results.

MMI, which has raised $220 million from investors that include Fidelity, Deerfield Management and RA Capital at a valuation around $500 million, designed robots that use the smallest surgical instruments in the world that can hold tiny needles the size of eyelashes and scissors and dilators roughly the width of a human hair. That’s crucial because the lymph vessels in the neck that surgeons operate on can be as small as 0.2 millimeters in diameter (about as thick as two sheets of paper).

The company, which was founded in Italy in 2015, already sells its precision robots for nerve repair and clearing fluid buildup in the arms and legs caused by lymphedema. It got the okay from the FDA in November to proceed with the Alzheimer’s study with a goal of first showing that the procedure is safe. If the trial is successful, it hopes to begin a large-scale clinical trial with a few hundred patients later this year. The first patient went home over the weekend, and, CEO Mark Toland says, was singing songs in the car there–a positive sign. As Toland told Forbes: “These are the patients that really don’t have a treatment option now. If they can get this procedure done and see the impact, it’s groundbreaking.”

Indian Billionaire Dilip Shanghvi Doubles Down On The U.S.

Indian billionaire Dilip Shanghvi is doubling down on the United States. Last week, the company he controls, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, agreed to buy publicly traded women’s health company Organon in a deal valued at $11.8 billion.

Sun Pharma first entered the U.S. in 1998 with the acquisition of Caraco Pharmaceuticals; last year, it bought skin cancer drug company Checkpoint Therapeutics for $355 million. In its latest fiscal year (ended March 31, 2025), the American market accounted for roughly one-third of its more than $6 billion in revenue. With the purchase, Sun’s annual revenue will more than double to $12.4 billion, making it one of the world’s top 25 drugmakers–and tilting its business further to the U.S.

Shanghvi called the Organon deal “a significant opportunity” that can help the company create a “stronger and more diversified platform.” Now 70 and one of the world’s wealthiest healthcare entrepreneurs (worth $25.8 billion), he started Sun Pharmaceuticals in 1983 with a $200 loan from his father. “Our story is all about incremental growth,” he told Forbes in 2008. “We’re not looking for big leaps; we prefer small jumps.”

Cruise Ship Hantavirus Is A Rare–And Deadly–Strain

Three people on a cruise ship have died and five more have been sickened, apparently from a hantavirus infection. The ship, MV Hondias, left Argentina with 149 passengers and crew on April 1 for the Canary Islands, visiting other islands along the way. It is currently traveling to dock in the Canary Islands, pending clearance.

Hantavirus infections, typically spread through contact with rodents like rats or mice, are relatively rare but can cause severe complications depending on the strain of the virus. In the United States, the most common strain is hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a severe flu-like illness. In Europe and Asia, strains typically cause a hemorrhagic fever that can harm the kidneys. There are currently no FDA-approved vaccines or treatments for these infections, though new research into hantavirus structures published earlier this year may provide keys to developing them.

While hantavirus is most commonly transmitted from rodents, there is one exception: a rare strain known as the Andes virus, found in South America, which can spread from person-to-person and has a 40% mortality rate. The World Health Organization confirmed today that the outbreak on the cruise ship was the Andes virus. An international team led by the public health agency is currently investigating the outbreak and evacuating and treating patients as needed. Although concerning, the disease requires close contact to spread, making a major outbreak unlikely as health authorities work to contain it.

Deal of the Week

Kanvas Biosciences, which is creating microbiome-based treatments for cancer and other diseases, raised $48 million led by DCVC and Lion’s Capital with additional investment from the Gates Foundation and others. That brings the Princeton, N.J.-based biotech’s total funding to $78 million at a valuation that Kanvas declined to disclose. The company plans to use the funds to support ongoing phase 1 clinical trials for two of its drug candidates: one to treat colitis caused by cancer immunotherapies, and the other to treat refractory cancers in concert with other medicines. (Forbes covered the company’s seed round in 2024.)

Microbiome-based treatments have faced uphill challenges over the past decade, with seemingly promising solutions failing in clinical trials. Kanvas’s cofounder and CEO Matthew Cheng told Forbes that his company’s spatial imaging techniques should help. The company has built what he likens to a “Google Maps” that can identify promising strains of gut bacteria that can act in concert with each other to improve patients’ health. Kanvas can make pills that contain 145 bacterial strains, an order of magnitude higher than many treatments that contain fewer than 10, Cheng said. These act as a less-risky alternative to a fecal transplant, he added, replacing a disordered microbiome with healthier gut bacteria. While this has conventionally been used to treat infections from the bacteria C. difficile, scientists are now experimenting with a wide range of applications, including support for cancer treatment as well as inflammatory bowel disorder, diabetes and food allergies.

“We are convinced that we have developed a therapy that can simulate the immune system in a particular way to make cancer therapy more effective and probably safer at the same time,” he said.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Changes to immigration policies are making the U.S. a less attractive place for international researchers in the life sciences, which could lead to a long-term brain drain.

Obesity has displaced cancer as the biggest contributor to pharma company’s R&D pipeline values, according to a new report from Deloitte. That’s partly because weight-loss drugs are also being investigated for treatment of other chronic diseases.

Biotech Latus Bio raised $42 million to begin clinical studies of its gene therapy for Huntington’s disease.

A minimally invasive alternative to open heart surgery for replacing aortic valves has gained popularity, but some patients find their new valves don’t work as well as they’d once hoped.

The Supreme Court temporarily restored the ability for providers to prescribe mifepristone – which is now used in the majority of abortions – through pharmacies or by mail through telehealth services after a lower court issued a ruling blocking such prescriptions without an in-person doctor visit.

State and local officials are scrambling to find financial support for hospitals hit by federal cuts to Medicaid of more than $900 billion over the next decade.

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