The FDA has granted breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) to Aimmune Therapeutics' investigational oral immunotherapy for peanut allergy, known as AR101.

The two members of the House who have been leading an effort to overhaul certain functions at the FDA and the National Institutes of Health and other areas of the US biomedical research and development enterprise wit the goal of accelerating the discovery, development and delivery of medical therapies have vowed to work out their differences and move the legislative process forward.

The death of a doctor who was being treated for Ebola in the US with the best of what medical care has to offer, including the hard-to-obtain experimental drug ZMapp, was a stark reminder that in the very advanced stages, even the most modern techniques are not enough to save a patient's life when they reach a critical threshold, said Dr Jeff Gold, chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha.

It's been a rough year for healthcare under the Obama administration – first with the botched launch of the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges, and now with a scandal involving falsified records of patient wait times at medical facilities operated by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which is likely to linger throughout the time the president has left at the White House.