The World Health Organization released its first guidance addressing the rising prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents. The guidance responds to a marked global increase in obesity in younger populations and provides age‑stratified recommendations for management and treatment.
The WHO guidance is presented as a public health response to long-term trends and is intended to inform policy and clinical practice for children and adolescents worldwide.
The WHO guidance sets clear age-based boundaries for recommended interventions. For children aged 0 to 9 years, the WHO does not recommend pharmacological treatment, bariatric surgery, or the use of weight‑loss devices. These interventions are explicitly excluded for that age group in the guidance referenced in the source.
For adolescents aged 10 to 19 years, the WHO allows consideration of treatment with approved drugs only under a defined circumstance: when a supervised multimodal lifestyle program has been implemented and has not achieved desired results. The guidance thereby emphasizes lifestyle programs as the first-line approach before moving to pharmacologic options in adolescents.
The source cites WHO estimates indicating that in 2024 approximately 170 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 years were living with obesity. This total is described as including about 70 million children aged 5 to 9 years and 100 million adolescents aged 10 to 19 years.
The report notes a substantial increase in prevalence since 1990: obesity among the 5–19 age group rose from 2% in 1990 to 8% in 2024, a quadrupling of the prevalence over that period. These figures form the epidemiological basis for the WHO issuing its first formal guidance on the problem.
Caribou Biosciences announced it is shutting down after being unable to raise the financing necessary to support a late‑stage clinical trial of its off‑the‑shelf CAR‑T therapy for lymphoma. The company will discontinue clinical development of its two CRISPR‑based CAR‑T therapies.
The decision follows a fundraising shortfall that left the company unable to cover the costs required to move its lead program forward into a Phase 3 study and beyond. The source attributes the shutdown to the inability to secure sufficient capital for the intended late‑stage trial.
One of Caribou’s investigational therapies identified in the source is vespa‑cel (also referenced as vispa‑cel), intended for patients with advanced B‑cell non‑Hodgkin lymphoma. Over the prior year, Caribou worked with the Food and Drug Administration to finalize the design of a Phase 3 trial for vespa‑cel.
Although the company reached agreement with the regulator on trial design, it was unable to raise the funds necessary to implement the study. As a consequence, Caribou will halt clinical development of vespa‑cel and its other CRISPR‑based CAR‑T candidates.
The source notes that Caribou originated from the research lab of CRISPR scientist and Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna, and that the company’s closure ends its efforts to bring an off‑the‑shelf CAR‑T therapy to late‑stage testing for lymphoma.
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