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Biotech news from around the world Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
AstraZeneca and Pfizer will invest almost $1 billion in manufacturing in France. Pfizer will invest $539 million to build R&D capabilities, and AstraZeneca will spend $388 million to upgrade its Dunkirk site. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations awards BioNTech $145 million to build a network in Africa for producing mRNA-based vaccines for malaria, mpox, tuberculosis and other diseases
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Bezos backs taste-good lab proteins Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
Jeff Bezos is bankrolling two new centers to research and develop sustainable proteins that taste good and can be produced in the lab. The Amazon founder is donating $60 million from the Bezos Earth Fund to research, create and commercialize new dietary proteins that are environmentally friendly and affordable. The Bezos Centers for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College London and North Carolina
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Citizen chickpeas Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
The European Union’s biggest citizen science prize for an initiative with the most impact in advancing a sustainable society in Europe has been awarded — and it goes to legumes. The EU Prize for Citizen Science, funded by Horizon Europe, is given to projects in which the general public is engaged in scientific research. This year, the Grand Prize, worth about $64,000, was won by INCREASE, a project
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Vision–language AI assistance in human pathology Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17 Iris Marchal
Pathologists have access to increasingly accurate artificial intelligence (AI) models that can make task-specific or agnostic predictions based on images or genomic data, but a multimodal AI pilot tailored to pathology is still missing. Writing in Nature, Lu et al. introduce PathChat, a generative AI model that can handle both visual and natural language inputs, as a copilot for human pathology. The
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Roche bets on RNA exon editor Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
Roche has struck a partnership with neuro-focused biotech Ascidian Therapeutics over an RNA editing platform. The deal sees the Boston-based Ascidian, a startup with preclinical programs in retinal, neurological and neuromuscular disorders, receive $42 million up front and up to $1.8 billion in milestones and commercial royalties. Under the agreement, Ascidian provides the Swiss pharma with access
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Forum: Lancaster and Pașca Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
In this episode of Forum, Chief Editor Barbara Cheifet speaks with Madeline Lancaster and Sergiu Pașca about organoids — cell cultures derived from stem cells and crafted to replicate a particular organ or certain cell types that make up an organ. These two experts in the field discuss neural organoids specifically, and both how they are being used to study basic biology of the brain and their future
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Counteracting tissue aging through TERT activation Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17 Iris Marchal
Telomere dysfunction is one of the primary hallmarks of aging, causing molecular and cellular damage that is associated with aging-related diseases. A potential strategy to counteract this aging process is the reactivation of the core catalytic subunit of telomerase, telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), but compounds targeting TERT are lacking owing to a limited understanding of their downstream
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Cryo-EM structure of a prime editor complex in multiple states Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17 Iris Marchal
Prime editing systems combine a SpCas9 protein with a reverse transcriptase and a prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA) to install a wide variety of genome edits, circumventing the need for DNA double-strand breaks or a DNA donor template. How a prime editor complex initiates and terminates pegRNA-guided reverse transcription remains poorly understood. Now, in Nature, Shuto et al. use cryoelectron microscopy
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Super-resolution microscopy Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
Recent patents relating to systems and methods for super-resolution microscopy.
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From Bench to Podcast: Roman Sarrazin-Gendron Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
On this episode of From Bench to Podcast, our Associate Editor Cláudia Vilhena interviews Roman Sarrazin-Gendron, first author of an absolutely incredible story about … videogames! During this informal chat, Roman and Cláudia talked about the behind-the-scenes of Borderlands Science. They explored the concepts of citizen science, massively multiplayer online video games, and the impact of community
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The cost of drug patent expiration date errors Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17 S. Sean Tu, Dinis Cheian, Sarah Gabriele, Benjamin N. Rome, Aaron S. Kesselheim
Errors in the US Patent and Trademark Office’s automated program to calculate patent expiration dates could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs to drug prices.
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People Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.
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NIH Applicant Assistance Program counteracts decades of underrepresentation in SBIR grant awardees Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17 Katharine L. Korunes, Ethan C. Cissell, Tiger Xie, Eva R. Garland
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Fungal detox: investors eye mycelium bioremediation Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17
The digestive prowess of fungi to decontaminate natural environments from polluting plastics, oil spills, toxic waste and even radiation is gaining traction around the globe.
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Five questions with Ryan Flynn Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17 Michael Francisco
A physician-scientist exploring the mechanisms and physiological relevance of glycoRNAs talks about being useful, the challenges of running a laboratory, and translating foundational knowledge into products that will benefit people.
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A community effort to track commercial single-cell and spatial ’omic technologies and business trends Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-17 Joachim De Jonghe, James W. Opzoomer, Amaia Vilas-Zornoza, Peter Crane, Benedikt S. Nilges, Marco Vicari, Hower Lee, David Lara-Astiaso, Torsten Gross, Jörg Morf, Kim Schneider, Juliana Cudini, Lorenzo Ramos-Mucci, Dylan Mooijman, Katarína Tiklová, Sergio Marco Salas, Christoffer Mattsson Langseth, Nachiket D. Kashikar, Charles E. S. Roberts, Joakim Lundeberg, Mats Nilsson, Alex K. Shalek, Adam P.
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G•U wobble base pairs improve site-directed RNA base editing Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-12
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Enzymatic synthesis of RNA oligonucleotides Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-12 Marcel Hollenstein
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Template-independent enzymatic synthesis of RNA oligonucleotides Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-12 Daniel J. Wiegand, Jonathan Rittichier, Ella Meyer, Howon Lee, Nicholas J. Conway, Daniel Ahlstedt, Zeynep Yurtsever, Dominic Rainone, Erkin Kuru, George M. Church
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Precise in vivo RNA base editing with a wobble-enhanced circular CLUSTER guide RNA Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-12 Philipp Reautschnig, Carolin Fruhner, Nicolai Wahn, Charlotte P. Wiegand, Sabrina Kragness, John F. Yung, Daniel T. Hofacker, Jenna Fisk, Michelle Eidelman, Nils Waffenschmidt, Maximilian Feige, Laura S. Pfeiffer, Annika E. Schulz, Yvonne Füll, Erez Y. Levanon, Gail Mandel, Thorsten Stafforst
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CAR-Ts sweep into autoimmunity Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-10
Biotechs are equipping CAR-T cells to destroy B cells — not to treat blood cancers, but to take on multiple sclerosis and a raft of autoimmune disorders.
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Breathing new life into in vivo lung editing Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-08
New lipid nanoparticle designs make targeted in vivo lung editing possible in mice and may lead to new treatment options for cystic fibrosis.
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Complete substitution with modified nucleotides in self-amplifying RNA suppresses the interferon response and increases potency Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-08 Joshua E. McGee, Jack R. Kirsch, Devin Kenney, Faith Cerbo, Elizabeth C. Chavez, Ting-Yu Shih, Florian Douam, Wilson W. Wong, Mark W. Grinstaff
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Evolutionary gambit to defeat drug resistance in cancer Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-04 Andriy Marusyk
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Programming tumor evolution with selection gene drives to proactively combat drug resistance Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-04 Scott M. Leighow, Joshua A. Reynolds, Ivan Sokirniy, Shun Yao, Zeyu Yang, Haider Inam, Dominik Wodarz, Marco Archetti, Justin R. Pritchard
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Editor’s pick: Unnatural Products Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-03
Each year, Nature Biotechnology highlights companies that have received sizeable early-stage funding in the previous year. Unnatural Products is rewriting the rules for potent oral therapies.
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Editor’s pick: Empress Therapeutics Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-03
Each year, Nature Biotechnology highlights companies that have received sizeable early-stage funding in the previous year. Empress Therapeutics is reverse-engineering microbial manufacturing.
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Next-generation patient models for colorectal cancer research Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-02
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High-throughput discovery of MHC class I- and II-restricted T cell epitopes using synthetic cellular circuits Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 Ayano C. Kohlgruber, Mohammad H. Dezfulian, Brandon M. Sie, Charlotte I. Wang, Tomasz Kula, Uri Laserson, H. Benjamin Larman, Stephen J. Elledge
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Tracking-seq reveals the heterogeneity of off-target effects in CRISPR–Cas9-mediated genome editing Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 Ming Zhu, Runda Xu, Junsong Yuan, Jiacheng Wang, Xiaoyu Ren, Tingting Cong, Yaxian You, Anji Ju, Longchen Xu, Huimin Wang, Peiyuan Zheng, Huiying Tao, Chunhua Lin, Honghao Yu, Juanjuan Du, Xin Lin, Wei Xie, Yinqing Li, Xun Lan
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Patient-derived mini-colons enable long-term modeling of tumor–microenvironment complexity Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 L. Francisco Lorenzo-Martín, Nicolas Broguiere, Jakob Langer, Lucie Tillard, Mikhail Nikolaev, George Coukos, Krisztian Homicsko, Matthias P. Lutolf
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CRISPR screens of tumor-infiltrating NK cells identify genetic checkpoints for CAR-NK therapy Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-25
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Increasing access to biotech products for animal agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa through partnerships Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 José de la Fuente, Christian Gortázar, Marinela Contreras, Frederick Kabi, Paul Kasaija, Swidiq Mugerwa, Justus Rutaisire
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In vivo AAV–SB-CRISPR screens of tumor-infiltrating primary NK cells identify genetic checkpoints of CAR-NK therapy Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Lei Peng, Paul A. Renauer, Giacomo Sferruzza, Luojia Yang, Yongji Zou, Zhenghao Fang, Jonathan J. Park, Ryan D. Chow, Yueqi Zhang, Qianqian Lin, Meizhu Bai, Angelica Sanchez, Yongzhan Zhang, Stanley Z. Lam, Lupeng Ye, Sidi Chen
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Machine learning prediction of prime editing efficiency across diverse chromatin contexts Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-21 Nicolas Mathis, Ahmed Allam, András Tálas, Lucas Kissling, Elena Benvenuto, Lukas Schmidheini, Ruben Schep, Tanav Damodharan, Zsolt Balázs, Sharan Janjuha, Eleonora I. Ioannidi, Desirée Böck, Bas van Steensel, Michael Krauthammer, Gerald Schwank
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Effects of the first successful lawsuit against a consumer neurotechnology company for violating brain data privacy Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-20 José M. Muñoz, José Ángel Marinaro, José Antonio Iglesias, Moisés Sánchez, Natalia Monti, Ciro Colombara, Guido Girardi
On 9 August 2023 the Supreme Court of Chile (SCC) ruled in favor of former senator Guido Girardi in a constitutional protection appeal filed against the neurotechnology company Emotiv1 for violating his rights to privacy and psychological integrity, which are enshrined in Article 19 of Chile’s constitution2. The authors of the present piece — the plaintiff, some of his lawyers and legal advisers, and
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Editor’s pick: Tenpoint Therapeutics Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-19
Each year, Nature Biotechnology highlights companies that have received sizeable early-stage funding in the previous year. Tenpoint Therapeutics optimizes delivery and generation of stem-cell-derived retinal cells for vision repair.
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Tracking gene order provides a new perspective on intraspecific evolution in microbiotas Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-19
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Editor’s pick: Tome Biosciences Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-19
Each year, Nature Biotechnology highlights companies that have received sizeable early-stage funding in the previous year. Tome Biosciences inserts large DNA sequences into precise genomic locations, overcoming limitations of base and prime editing.
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Strain tracking in complex microbiomes using synteny analysis reveals per-species modes of evolution Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-19 Hagay Enav, Inbal Paz, Ruth E. Ley
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Engineered yeast produces the plant-based vaccine adjuvant QS-21 Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17 Iris Marchal
Extracting pharmacological compounds from plants can be ecologically damaging and often results in low yields, which limits their broad use. For instance, the supply of the potent vaccine adjuvant QS-21 is dependent on laborious extraction from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree. Writing in Nature, Liu et al. describe an alternative method to produce QS-21 and its derivatives at scale using engineered
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OpenFold provides insights into AlphaFold2’s learning behavior Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17 Iris Marchal
Despite the immense utility of AlphaFold2 in predicting protein structure, the official implementation excludes code for its training procedure and the associated required data. This makes it difficult to study the model’s learning behavior and to create variants that can perform new tasks. Writing in Nature Methods, AlQuraishi and colleagues now report OpenFold, a trainable and open-source implementation
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Honey without bees Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
Honey has been a prized food since ancient times. A complex blend of sugars, mostly fructose and glucose, and small amounts of other sugars, proteins, amino acids, vitamins and minerals, honey is a $8.94 billion market, and its popularity continues to grow. But over the last decade, honeybees (Apis mellifera) have been hindered from making this natural product by disappearing grassland, herbicides
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A vaccine strategy for inducing broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17 Iris Marchal
An effective HIV vaccine must induce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) that target the most conserved sites of the HIV envelope, a feat that has not yet been achieved in humans. Germline-targeting vaccine design holds promise by using immunogens to prime naive B cells for bnAb precursor activation and then boosting their maturation. A major challenge for this approach is that antibody–antigen
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First-in-class T cell engager approved for lung cancer Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
Amgen’s T cell engager Imdelltra (tarlatamab) has gained FDA accelerated approval for an aggressive type of cell lung cancer that is notoriously difficult to treat. The bispecific antibody is designed to bind both delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3) on small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cells and CD3 on T cells. Pharma companies have long considered DDL3 a promising target in oncology because healthy cells express
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Forum: Anikeeva, Courtine and Bloch Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
On this episode, Chief Editor Barbara Cheifet speaks with Polina Anikeeva from MIT, Grégoire Courtine from EPFL, and Jocelyn Bloch, a neurosurgeon at Lausanne University Hospital. These three leaders in the field of neurotechnologies discuss new devices that help us learn how our brain works, implantable brain–computer interfaces that are helping patients with neurological disorders walk again, and
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Biotech news from around the world Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
The kingdom pledges $500 million to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help fight polio. The funding, which helps close the funding gap in the $4.8 billion budget for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, will be spread out over five years and makes Saudi Arabia one of the biggest national donors, along with the United States. A pilot project by the government of New South Wales has produced
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Gene therapy restores hearing Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has released preliminary data from the first two patients treated with the investigational gene therapy DB-OTO. At the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) annual meeting in May, the company disclosed that, during the CHORD clinical trial, designed to evaluate safety and tolerability, the gene therapy improved hearing in two children with profound genetic deafness
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Cancer diagnostics Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
Recent patents relating to systems and methods for cancer detection and diagnosis.
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Bird flu in wastewater Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is testing wastewater across the United States to track the spread of influenza virus, including the avian influenza A virus H5N1 outbreak. The CDC and its partners are sampling wastewater from 689 sites to detect influenza A virus by quantitative PCR. The surveillance and reporting system also includes monkeypox and SARS-CoV-2. Data from May 5–18
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B cells as drug factories Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
Companies are engineering B cells to produce gene-encoded medicines, but clinical proof of concept is needed to convince the doubters that this platform can deliver.
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People Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17
Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.
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Barriers and enablers to the effective implementation of omics research in low- and middle-income countries Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17 Jacus S. Nacis, Patrick Kamande, Alemayehu Teklu Toni, Evans Mudibo, Robert Musyimi, Siam Popluechai, Trenton Dailey-Chwalibóg, Wieger Voskuijl, Genevieve Dable-Tupas, Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayeem Bin Shahid, Neil Andrew Bascos, Farzana Afroze, Mohammod Jobayer Chisti, Benson Singa, Moses Ngari, Caroline Tigoi, Gomezgani Mhango, Harry Freitag, Isabel Potani, John Mukisa, Amir Kirolos, Kuda Mutasa, Lionel
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The sufficiency of disclosure of medical artificial intelligence patents Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-17 Mateo Aboy, W. Nicholson Price, Seth Raker, Kathleen Liddell
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Precision radiation opens a new window on cancer therapy Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-12
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Crowd-sourced benchmarking of single-sample tumor subclonal reconstruction Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-11 Adriana Salcedo, Maxime Tarabichi, Alex Buchanan, Shadrielle M. G. Espiritu, Hongjiu Zhang, Kaiyi Zhu, Tai-Hsien Ou Yang, Ignaty Leshchiner, Dimitris Anastassiou, Yuanfang Guan, Gun Ho Jang, Mohammed F. E. Mootor, Kerstin Haase, Amit G. Deshwar, William Zou, Imaad Umar, Stefan Dentro, Jeff A. Wintersinger, Kami Chiotti, Jonas Demeulemeester, Clemency Jolly, Lesia Sycza, Minjeong Ko, David C. Wedge
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Cis-editing for all Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-06
CRISPR technologies offer new opportunities to democratize gene-edited crops and promote global sustainability.
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High-yield porphyrin production through metabolic engineering and biocatalysis Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-05 Haihong Chen, Yaohong Wang, Weishan Wang, Ting Cao, Lu Zhang, Zhengduo Wang, Xuran Chi, Tong Shi, Huangwei Wang, Xinwei He, Mindong Liang, Mengxue Yang, Wenyi Jiang, Dongyuan Lv, Jiaming Yu, Guoliang Zhu, Yongtao Xie, Bei Gao, Xinye Wang, Xueting Liu, Youyuan Li, Limin Ouyang, Jingyu Zhang, Huimin Liu, Zilong Li, Yaojun Tong, Xuekui Xia, Gao-Yi Tan, Lixin Zhang
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High-fidelity and fast 3D imaging of subcellular dynamics in native states Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-04
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Next-generation psychedelics: should new agents skip the trip? Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 33.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-03
Companies attract venture funding for redesigned psychedelic drugs and notch clinical trial milestones.