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Our ability to use engineered bacteria for cancer therapy is rapidly expanding. A survey of preclinical, clinical and commercial efforts provides an overview of the state of the field, revealing trends that could inform future directions.
To enhance the safety and security of the US bioeconomy, a new public–private partnership should be established to facilitate information sharing and threat analysis among industry, government and academia, and to develop and deploy safeguards.
After two decades of experience with biosimilars, physicochemical and in vitro biological comparison with their reference products appear sufficient to guarantee clinical safety and efficacy. Hence, the regulation of biosimilars has become redundant, and biopharmaceuticals should now be regulated through the generic pathway available for small molecules.
The Innovate Genomics Institute brought together regulators from 16 countries to discuss global capacity building for the regulation of genome-edited crops. The workshop provided insights into the suitable use of technical analyses to validate edits and raised future considerations regarding regulation reporting, offering suggestions to help countries meet their objectives in the ever-growing landscape of genome editing techniques.
The European Innovation Council aims to catalyze the formation and growth of science-based businesses in Europe through highly targeted initiatives, actively managed innovative portfolios and a stepped funding pathway of grants and equity investment.
The proper use of spike-in normalization in ChIP-seq improves sensitivity for detecting genome-wide changes between conditions, but improper use is common, calling some biological conclusions into question. A survey of public datasets generates guidelines for implementation of spike-in normalization for future ChIP-seq experiments.
Comparative studies that integrate genetically diverse mouse models and in vitro cell-based assays will accelerate drug discovery for precision medicine.
There is an ever-growing choice of single-cell and spatial ’omics platforms for industry and academia. The scTrends Consortium provides a brief historical overview of the established platforms and companies, revealing market trends and presenting possible angles for how technologies may differentiate themselves.
VitaDAO funds longevity research through a blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), showcasing the potential of collaborative, transparent and alternative systems while also highlighting the challenges of coordination, regulation, biases and skepticism in reshaping traditional research financing methods.
Biotechnology (biotech) clusters have evolved over time. Being a top biotech region in the early years 1978–1990 still positively correlates with the cluster’s biotech strength decades later. An entrepreneurial orientation of scientific actors as well as a variety of networks with partners outside the cluster both contribute to sustained biotech activity.
Pfizer created a ‘light-speed’ approach to meet the challenge of vaccinating the world against COVID-19. It involved developing new strategies for all aspects of vaccine development, from sourcing materials and scaling up manufacturing to transportation and dosing.
The MicroArray Quality Control consortium—a 16-year international effort led by the FDA and involving hundreds of scientists from academia, industry and government—helped make genomic medicine a reality.
The not-for profit foundation n-Lorem seeks to provide experimental antisense oligonucleotide treatments to patients with ultra-rare disease free for their entire lifetime.
Can traditional computational analysis and machine learning help compensate for inadequate peer review of drug-repurposing papers in the context of an infodemic?
