“I'm not great at the advice. Can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?”

This is what ‘Friends’ actor Matthew Perry’s character Chandler Bing was known for. He was known for being funny. However, he had his own struggles in his personal life and those struggles were acute depression. He was treating it with ketamine infusion therapy which is legal in the US and the UK.

What is Ketamine infusion therapy?

Ketamine is an anaesthetic used to treat depression, anxiety and pain under supervised and controlled medical settings. However, it does have its side effects, which can lead to distortion of sight, sound and time. It can also produce calming and relaxing effects.

Ketamine increases a person’s heart rate and blood pressure. If overdosed, it can leave users confused and agitated and can cause them to hurt themselves without even realising it. It can also lead to liver damage and bladder problems.

However, when used in moderation and under the supervision of medical doctors, it can treat depression where traditional antidepressants have failed.

Prof Rupert McShane, a University of Oxford psychiatrist who runs an NHS ketamine treatment clinic told BBC that ketamine “probably turns off the area of the brain that is involved in disappointment.”

Can Ketamine Infusion Therapy Kill Someone?

In simple terms, it cannot, be if the dosage is given in a controlled setting and as prescribed. Ketamine infusion therapy uses drugs in small doses than those used for anaesthesia. It acts faster than traditional anti-depressants, but the effects also wear off way quickly. Which is why it is important to monitor patients’ mental state for relapsing back into depression and discouraging them from overdosing on it.

There are ways of giving people ketamine. One of the ways is through “infusing”, which means to use an IV drip. However, injections, nasal sprays and capsules are also methods used to give people ketamine.

Since the dosage of ketamine used in the infusion treatment is small, it being the reason of actor Perry’s death was ruled out. The medical examiner also noted that Perry’s last ketamine infusion therapy session happened more than a week before his death, which means by the time he had died, it must have worn off.

So, What Happened To Perry?

Though Perry’s last session was more than a week before, his post-mortem showed that his blood contained a high concentration of ketamine. He had died of the “acute effects” of ketamine.

If it was not his session, then how did he get ketamine?

Prosecutors alleged that his assistant gave him at least 27 shots of ketamine in four days before his death, reported BBC.

Perry has been open about his personal struggles and this is what the doctors and dealers used against him. Martin Estrada, the US attorney for California’s Central District told the BBC that people took advantage of his condition. They charged him 165 times more than what vials of ketamine cost.

Names that have come up include Dr Salvador Plasencia, drug dealers “Ketamine Queen” aka Jasveen Sangha and Eric Fleming, and Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa.

Who Are These Names And What Did They Do?

Ketamine Queen or Sangha supplied drugs that led to Perry’s death. Her home was a “drug-selling emporium,” said Estrada. More than 80 vials of ketamine, and thousands of pills including methamphetamine, cocaine and Xanax were allegedly found in her house known as the “Sangha Stash House.”

Sangha is known to deal with high-end celebs and was a “major source of supply for ketamine to others as well as Perry,” said Estrada.

Dr Plasencia called Perry a “moron” while charging him $2,000 for vials that cost only $12. He sold Perry 20 vials of ketamine between September and October 2023, costing $55,000.

He was the one who taught Iwamasa, who had no medical knowledge to inject the drug. This is after he knew that “Perry’s ketamine addiction was spiralling out of control,” as per what the investigators told the BBC.

Another dealer Fleming was told by Sangha to “delete all our messages.” While Fleming pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute drugs unlawfully, he also allegedly messaged Sangha: “Please call...Got more info and want to bounce ideas off you. I’m 90% sure everyone is protected. I never dealt with [Perry] only his assistant. So the assistant was the enabler.”

The court documents also revealed that he asked Sangha on whether the ketamine stays in your system or “is it immediately flushed out.”

Dr Pepper, Bots, Cans

The people who allegedly exploited Perry used coded language for ketamine and called it “Dr Pepper”, “bots”, or “cans.”

Selling overpriced drugs, taking advantage of Perry’s mental condition and falsifying medical records to make the drugs given to him look legitimate by Dr Plasencia is what took Perry’s life.

Iwamasa is said to have administered more than 20 shots of ketamine and three on the day Perry died. Whereas ketamine is only administered by a physician. Authorities also found that weeks before Perry’s death, Dr Plasencia allegedly bought 10 vials of ketamine and intended to sell to Perry.

He also injected Perry with a large dose, two days later. This caused him to “freeze up” and spiked his blood pressure.

When I Die, I Want Helping Others To Be The First Thing That’s Mentioned

Perry had always been open about his drug addictions, struggles with alcohol and his depression. He said that his openness would help others who are also struggling and wanted to be remembered by his quote which also is on the homepage of the Mattew Perry Foundation that helps others struggling with the disease of addiction: “When I die, I want helping others to be the first thing that’s mentioned.”

Five arrests have been made in the case so far.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the first drug for Alexander disease, a rare and progressive neurological disorder. Alexander disease is marked by symptoms like seizures, slow development, muscle weakness, difficulty in walking and problems with speech and swallowing.

The FDA approved Zanvastro (zilganersen) for children and adults afflicted with Alexander disease. Being the first approved treatment for the condition, the drug is designed to directly target the abnormal protein buildup, one of the major factors that drives the disease.

Talking about the landmark drug, Emily Freilich, MD, Director of the Division of Neurology I at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research said, “For patients with Alexander disease and their families, there have been no approved treatment options, only supportive care while the disease progresses. Today’s approval is a landmark moment for this community, offering the first therapy that addresses the underlying cause of this rare and serious disease.”

What Is Alexander Disease?

According to the FDA, Alexander disease is extremely rare as it affects fewer than one in a million people. Alexander disease is a rare, genetic neurodegenerative disorder that is caused due to mutations in the GFAP gene. GFAP gene promotes the production of glial fibrillary acidic protein, a type of protein found in the central nervous system.

GFAP is found primarily in astrocytes, a type of specialised cells in the brain and spinal cord that support and protect nerve cells.

In Alexander disease, abnormal GFAP accumulates inside these cells. This leads to formation of cumulative protein called Rosenthal fibres. This disrupts the normal function of astrocytes and ultimately damages the nervous system.

In simple terms, the issue is not that the brain suddenly loses a particular protein. It is that a genetically altered version of GFAP is produced and progressively accumulates where it should not. This is why Alexander disease is considered an astrogliopathy, a disorder which is primarily driven by astrocyte dysfunction.

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Symptoms Of Alexander Disease

The disease can present very differently depending on the timing of its onset. In infants and young children, it can cause delay in development, loss of previously acquired essential skills, seizures, unusually large head, muscle weakness, feeding difficulties and problems with movement. Some severe early-onset cases may progress rapidly.

Juvenile and adult forms can be slower and may involve speech and swallowing difficulties, abnormal way of walking, muscle stiffness, poor coordination, weakness, breathing or sleep problems and autonomic dysfunction.

As symptoms of Alexander disease may overlap with many other neurological disorders, its diagnosis remains challenging. Doctors typically diagnose it by combining key findings in brain MRI with genetic testing for a disease-causing GFAP variant.

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What Makes The New Drug Different?

Until now, the treatment for Alexander Disease has largely focused on managing individual symptoms, like seizures, feeding problems and difficulties with movement, speech or swallowing.

Taking a different approach, Zanvastro, a type of RNA-targeted medicine is designed to reduce production of the abnormal GFAP protein.

Its goal is to lower the amount of disease-driving protein before it can continue accumulating and damaging astrocytes. The drug is administered once every three months as an injection into the spinal canal.

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Zanvastro's FDA Approval

The FDA's approval arrived after a controlled study involving 49 patients aged two and older, along with an open-label substudy involving four children younger than two.

Among patients aged five and older who already had walking difficulties, those receiving Zanvastro had significantly better walking speed after 61 weeks than others.

For children aged two to four, researchers used broader measures of motor development because walking speed alone is not a reliable measure at that age. Those children showed improvement in motor skills, while the control group declined.

The most common side effects included vomiting, back pain, cough, headache and post-lumbar-puncture syndrome. The FDA also warned that aseptic meningitis has been reported.

Alexander disease has long been a condition in which doctors treated complications but had no approved therapy that aimed at the biological process causing the disease.

Zanvastro does not reverse genetic mutations themselves. Instead, it targets one of the consequences of those mutations by reducing production of abnormal GFAP.

As Ionis Pharmaceuticals CEO Brett P. Monia said following the approval, the treatment allows the field to move “beyond managing individual manifestations of the disease to addressing its underlying biology.”

Creating a new senior position to focus entirely on technology and artificial intelligence, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just got its first AI chief. The move could change how the agency evaluates medicines, pharmaceutical products and new technologies in the healthcare sector.

On September 8, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that Jared Seehafer, M.S. will be FDA’s first Deputy Commissioner for Technology and Artificial Intelligence. The newly formed role puts AI and technology directly into the agency’s senior leadership structure.

Seehafer has around two decades of experience working at the intersection of software, AI and FDA-regulated medical technology.

As deputy commissioner, he will be the FDA’s senior leader for technology, software and AI and will help establish an agency-wide strategy for their use.

Why Does The US FDA Need An AI Chief?

From identifying potential drug candidates to analysing clinical-trial data and developing medical devices, the use of AI is increasing rapidly across pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

But, for regulators, AI presents a different challenge. The FDA must determine whether AI-generated or AI-assisted evidence is reliable enough to support decisions about the safety and effectiveness of a product.

The agency has already begun moving in this direction. In May 2026, the FDA issued draft guidance on the use of artificial intelligence to generate information or data intended to support regulatory decision-making for drugs and biological products.

The FDA has also been exploring AI and cloud-based approaches to make clinical trials more efficient, including a pilot focused on early-phase trials.

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AI May Make Drug Approvals Faster

One of the biggest opportunities is using artificial intelligence to process large volumes of information that regulators already receive during drug development and review.

AI could eventually help regulators identify patterns in clinical-trial data, analyse safety aspects, review large regulatory submissions and support more efficient assessment of complex datasets in health and pharmaceutical sector.

But does faster automatically mean better? AI systems may produce incorrect outputs. So regulators need to understand how an algorithm reached a particular conclusion before relying on it for decisions that affect patients. That makes validation, transparency, data quality and human supervision critical in this area.

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The Future Of Drug Regulation

The appointment comes alongside several other leadership changes at the FDA. HHS also named Michael Davis as permanent director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Karim Mikhail as director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Bret Koplow as director of the Center for Tobacco Products.

The broader message from HHS is that the FDA wants to modernise its regulatory infrastructure while accelerating innovation.

“We are building an FDA that moves faster, demands excellence, and delivers results for the American people,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “These leaders will drive the reforms needed to confront our nation’s most serious health challenges and strengthen American leadership in medical innovation.”

FDA Acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas said the appointments were intended to help build the workforce and infrastructure needed to “accelerate innovative” work across the agency.

Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is one of the most aggressive forms of lung cancer. It tends to grow rapidly, spread early and often returns even after initially responding well to treatment.

A new drug combination from Amgen and AstraZeneca has shown a significant overall survival benefit in patients with extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC), offering a new way to delay the disease's return and progression.

On September 8, the companies said that the Phase III DeLLphi-305 trial found that combining Amgen's tarlatamab, marketed as Imdelltra, with AstraZeneca's durvalumab, marketed as Imfinzi, significantly improved overall survival compared with Imfinzi alone.

Small-Cell Lung Cancer Is Difficult To Treat

The cancer can initially respond well to chemotherapy, but that response often does not last for a long time.

Many tumours become resistant to treatment, allowing the disease to return and become harder to treat. Research has described recurrent SCLC as frequently resistant to further therapy.

This is particularly challenging disease goes in extensive stage, where the cancer has already spread beyond the lung. Even with current treatments, the median overall survival for ES-SCLC remains around one year.

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How Does The New Drug Combination Work?

The two medicines attack the cancer through different mechanisms. Durvalumab is an immune checkpoint inhibitor. It blocks PD-L1, a protein cancers can use to evade the immune system, helping immune cells recognise and attack cancer cells.

Tarlatamab is a bispecific T-cell engager. It is designed to attach to DLL3 on small-cell lung cancer cells and CD3 on T cells, effectively bringing immune cells into contact with the cancer cells so they can destroy them. DLL3 is found on the surface of SCLC cells in about 85%-96% of patients but is minimally expressed on healthy cells.

In the trial, 563 patients whose disease had not progressed after initial treatment with Imfinzi plus platinum chemotherapy and etoposide were randomly assigned to receive either the combination or Imfinzi alone as maintenance treatment.

The combination improved overall survival, progression-free survival and response rate. No new safety concerns were identified.

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Hope For Patients With SCLC

The significance of the findings lies in effectively controlling the cancer after initial treatment, when the disease is at the highest risk of returning.

Jacob Sands, MD, Associate Chief of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said: “Given the aggressive nature of small cell lung cancer, many patients quickly relapse on current therapy and never reach second-line treatment.” He added that the results suggest the potential to reshape the natural history of the disease.

Susan Galbraith, AstraZeneca's Executive Vice President of Oncology Haematology R&D, said the results showed an “unprecedented improvement in overall survival” for patients with this highly aggressive cancer.

The full trial data are yet to be presented at a medical meeting and will be submitted to regulatory authorities.