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.

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.

Site-specific retroelements, such as R2 retrotransposons, have potential as programmable genome-editing systems, but so far have only been used for targeted insertion at genomic safe-harbor loci. In a paper now published in Nature, Fell et al. profile the evolution of site-specific retrotransposon families to gain insight into target site preferences, which they then used to engineer reprogramming

Huanglongbing is a devastating bacterial disease of citrus trees with no known cure. An emerging strategy to provide resistance to plant pathogens is disrupting genes that increase disease susceptibility. A paper in Science by Zhao et al. uses this approach in citrus trees, and identifies a regulatory circuit that can be modulated to alleviate Huanglongbing disease symptoms. Huanglongbing can infect

Recent patents relating to systems, methods and compositions for bioprinting.

Regulatory DNA sequences orchestrate cell-type-specific gene expression by facilitating transcription factor binding, yet their precise effects and reprogrammability remain challenging to delineate. Now, in Cell, Martyn et al. develop a method called variant effects from flow-sorting experiments with CRISPR targeting screens (Variant-EFFECTS), which measures the quantitative effects of changes to regulatory

Polybion creates this next-generation material by feeding a mango fruit waste slurry to Acetobacter bacteria genetically modified to speed up their metabolism. The bacteria feed on the sugar and turn it into cellulose to form a gel-like mat on the surface of the fermentation tank. Bacteria employ this strategy to survive in harsh environments. “It’s a shelter they create [against] the radiation of

Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.

Big pharma and investors are piling into the precision radiation space as the next generation of increasingly potent targeted α-particle therapies promises to destroy cancerous cells with minimum damage to healthy tissues.

In late March, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Peter Marks, resigned under pressure from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. In his resignation letter Marks said he had been asked to hand in data on measles vaccine-related deaths and brain swelling that do not exist.

Brazil is the first country in Latin America to produce its own cut-price chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies. Now, Caring Cross, a US-based non-profit focused on making advanced therapies affordable, plans to expands Brazil’s model to Turkey and the Middle East.

As part of its Dare2eraD TB initiative to combat the challenge of drug-resistant tuberculosis, Indian researchers sequence the genomes of 10,000 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates. Sequencing will aid in personalizing antibiotic prescription, allowing faster, more effective treatment. India has set the goal of eliminating TB by 2025, five years ahead of the World Health Organization’s global target

The US Food and Drug Administration plans to introduce computational modeling and other innovative methods to replace animal testing in preclinical drug safety studies, according to a roadmap released in April. By encouraging drug sponsors to embrace organ-on-a chip, in silico modeling, organoid and other in vitro assays, the FDA aims to reduce animal testing to the extent that it becomes “the exception

Correction to: Nature Biotechnology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-024-02447-1, published online 18 October 2024.

Correction to: Nature Biotechnology https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3811 published online 27 February 2017.

Correction to: Nature Biotechnology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0566-4, published online 29 June 2020.

The first RNA interference (RNAi) drug for treating heart failure caused by amyloidosis was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March. Alnylam has the go-ahead for Amvuttra (vutrisiran) to treat transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) caused by sporadic or hereditary ATTR, expanding the drug’s label from a previous nod in 2022 for polyneuropathy caused by transthyretin amyloidosis

Human ancestry has a considerable impact on gene expression, but genomic datasets for disease analysis severely underrepresent non-European populations, thereby limiting the advancement of precision medicine. In a paper in Nature Communications, Smith et al. introduce a machine learning tool to mitigate the effects of ancestral bias in transcriptomic data. The tool, called PhyloFrame, creates ancestry-aware

Some plants from the family Asteraceae, which includes daisies, belong to an unusual group known as hyperaccumulators. These species soak up metals from their roots and store them at exceptionally high concentrations in their tissues, a capacity that probably evolved as a defense mechanism against herbivores and pathogens. Of the 750 known hyperaccumulator species, most can thrive in fields with otherwise

Genetically modifying human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is challenging when generating large-scale deletions — a common cause of mitochondrial diseases — owing to the absence of double strand break repair machinery in mitochondria. Writing in Cell, Fu et al. describe a method to modulate large mtDNA deletions in human cells by co-expressing end-joining machinery from Mycobacterium or T4 bacteriophage

Amgen invests $200 million in a new technology center in southern India and plans to invest further in the future to strengthen its operations and R&D capabilities. The site in Hyderabad currently employs 300 people, with plans for 1,700 more recruits skilled in data analytics, AI and digital health technologies. The Canadian government cancels a deal with US-based Novavax to buy millions of doses

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has given a conditional approval to animal healthcare company Zoetis for an updated vaccine to protect poultry against the H5N1 bird flu strain. The Zoetis vaccine contains a killed version of an H5N2 variant that the company designed to work against currently circulating variants of the H5N1 virus. The avian influenza has been spreading in dairy cow and poultry

Replacing fossil-fuel-based plastics with bio-based polymers is crucial in tackling the environmental issues caused by our heavy reliance on these materials. Microorganisms can synthesize numerous biopolymers but have not yet been reported to produce one of the most promising polymers, known as polyester amides (PEAs). In a study published in Nature Chemical Biology, Chae et al. engineer a new-to-nature

Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.