Volume 43 Issue 6, June 2025

More precise base editors make mitochondrial DNA editing efficient enough to model disease and correct pathogenic mutations in rodents, but they are slow to move into clinical trials.

The first cancer vaccines matched to a person’s unique tumor neoantigens are forging ahead, with expectations running high as the field awaits results from the first pivotal trial.

Merck’s new antibody clesrovimab and other long-lasting shots promise to both expand and simplify care of newborns across the world to combat respiratory syncytial virus.

Producing goods, such as foods and fuels, with minimal environmental impacts is urgently needed. Although advances in bioproduction are promising, there is often a noticeable gap in our understanding of whether and where new processes can compete with existing methods on an economic and environmental basis. Transparent lower bound calculations from basic principles highlight potential benefits of producing foods, but not fuels, from electro-microbial production of biomass.

23andMe’s bankruptcy serves as a moment of reflection for the direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics industry. We analyzed 23andMe financial data and business practices to reveal the factors behind the fall of the company, once valued at US $6 billion and now being considered for acquisition by Regeneron for merely $250 million. Key challenges faced by 23andMe in monetizing its genomic data reveal that this information, at least in a typical DTC setting, is simply not worth that much.

Two CRISPR tools harness DNA-dependent polymerases for genome editing — and may overcome some limitations of prime editors.

Satellite cells, the stem cells of skeletal muscle, are responsible for muscle development and regeneration. Although low in abundance, satellite cells can be isolated from muscle but cannot be propagated successfully in culture in numbers needed for therapeutic use. We developed a method to generate cells with satellite cell characteristics from skeletal muscle organoid cultures.

We developed click editors, comprising HUH endonucleases, DNA-dependent DNA polymerases and CRISPR–Cas9 nickases, which together enable programmable precision genome engineering from simple DNA templates.

We have discovered an effect, termed stacking-induced intermolecular charge transfer-enhanced Raman scattering (SICTERS), that enhances the Raman signal intensities of small molecules by relying on their self-stacking rather than external substrates. This effect enables the design of substrate-free small-molecule probes for high-resolution, non-invasive transdermal Raman imaging of lymphatic drainage and microvessels.

The therapeutic principle of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation, one the most common forms of cancer immunotherapy, is alloreactivity, yet its molecular determinants remain largely unknown. An analytical framework now enables personalized assessment of alloreactivity from whole-exome sequencing of donor–recipient pairs, to help with prognostication of disease relapse and immune-mediated complications.

To handle increasingly large protein databases, a new ultrafast, highly sensitive method — Dense Homolog Retriever (DHR) — detects remote homologs using dense retrieval and protein language models. Its alignment-free nature makes it much faster than traditional approaches, and the newly found remote homologs benefit our understanding of protein evolution, structure and function.