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Assessing the laboratory performance of AI-generated enzymes Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-23
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Discovery of tumor-reactive T cell receptors by massively parallel library synthesis and screening Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Ziva Moravec, Yue Zhao, Rhianne Voogd, Danielle R. Cook, Seon Kinrot, Benjamin Capra, Haiyan Yang, Brenda Raud, Jiayu Ou, Jiekun Xuan, Teng Wei, Lili Ren, Dandan Hu, Jun Wang, John B.A.G. Haanen, Ton N. Schumacher, Xi Chen, Ely Porter, Wouter Scheper
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Therapeutic application of circular RNA aptamers in a mouse model of psoriasis Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Si-Kun Guo, Chu-Xiao Liu, Yi-Feng Xu, Xiao Wang, Fang Nan, Youkui Huang, Siqi Li, Shan Nan, Ling Li, Edo Kon, Chen Li, Meng-Yuan Wei, Rina Su, Jia Wei, Shiguang Peng, Nitay Ad-El, Jiaquan Liu, Dan Peer, Ting Chen, Li Yang, Ling-Ling Chen
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Computational scoring and experimental evaluation of enzymes generated by neural networks Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Sean R. Johnson, Xiaozhi Fu, Sandra Viknander, Clara Goldin, Sarah Monaco, Aleksej Zelezniak, Kevin K. Yang
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Why Japan lacks a vibrant biotech industry Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Mark Kessel, Chris Vickrey
Recent analysis of the biopharmaceutical industry in Japan has emphasized that the lack of a thriving biotech ecosystem in that country is largely due to tight controls on drug pricing1. However, this is only one part of the explanation, and any strategy to promote Japanese biotech must acknowledge the full complexity of the problem. Japan has long punched above its weight in innovative research in
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Customized molecular glue complexes with desired properties Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Iris Marchal
Degron tags can trigger rapid and temporally controlled degradation of proteins using small molecules known as molecular glues. These molecular glues induce or stabilize protein interactions between a target protein and a ubiquitin ligase. As research tools, molecular glue complexes are limited by the large size of degron tags, which prevents integration in endogenous protein-coding genes. In a study
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World’s priciest drug treats MLD Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the first therapy for metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD), a rare fatal genetic disorder. The lysosomal storage disease affects about 40 children each year in the USA. It is caused by a mutation in the gene encoding the arylsulfatase enzyme that leads to progressive demyelination and progressive loss of motor and cognitive functions. There were previously
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Saving Cavendish Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Farmers have a green light to grow the first genetically modified banana. The wilt-proof strain of the Cavendish banana developed by researchers from the Queensland University of Technology is resistant to Panama disease (Fusarium wilt), a devastating fungus. The Office of the Gene Technology Regulator in Australia gave the go-ahead on 12 February to allow the genetically modified banana to be grown
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Prime editing Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Recent patents relating to methods and compositions for prime editing.
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FDA approves first MASH drug Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
The first drug to treat fatty liver disease due to metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) has been given a green light by the US Food and Drug Administration. Madrigal Pharmaceuticals’ Rezdiffra (resmetirom) received an accelerated approval to treat the disease, previously known as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). In this progressive liver condition fat buildup triggers inflammation
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Biotech news from around the world Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
The Ministry of Health and Welfare selects Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS to operate the country’s global accelerator platform. JLABS will engage with various local incubators and collaborators in the startup ecosystem to offer venture development programs, stimulate employment and encourage commercialization to enhance the global competitiveness of Korea’s life sciences sector. Costa Rica revises its biotech
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First gene-edited pig kidney transplant Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital have transplanted a pig kidney into a living person for the first time. On 16 March, a 62-year old man with end-stage kidney disease received a kidney from a genome-edited pig developed by eGenesis. The humanized pig organ was taken from a genetically engineered Yucatan miniature pig carrying a total of 69 gene edits designed to increase compatibility between
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RoseTTAFold expands to all-atom for biomolecular prediction and design Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Iris Marchal
Deep learning methods enable the structural prediction of proteins with high accuracy but are unable to model non-protein molecules that are essential for a protein’s biological function. Writing in Science, Krishna et al. introduce RoseTTAFold All-Atom (RFAA) to model the structure of full biological assemblies containing proteins, nucleic acids, small molecules, metals and covalent modifications
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Mapping the landscape of host–microbiome interactions Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Iris Marchal
The human body hosts countless microorganisms that play diverse roles in health and disease. However, the lack of tools capable of investigating these host–microbiota interactions at large scale has left many of them undiscovered. Writing in Nature, Sonnert et al. developed and validated a tool, named BASEHIT, to map the broad interplay between bacteria and human proteins. BASEHIT identified an extensive
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Prime editing deal flurry to nail down patent rights Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
The prime editing field is booming, with companies making strategic decisions to avoid an IP showdown.
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Startups probe hidden viruses in the ‘dark genome’ to treat disease Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Drug hunters are finding that ancient virus-like artifacts in the human genome could offer new avenues to treat neurodegeneration, cancer, autoimmunity and even aging with antibodies, vaccines and antiretroviral agents.
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Video game unleashes millions of citizen scientists on microbiome research Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
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Five questions with César de la Fuente Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Michael Francisco
A pioneer in the emerging fields of AI for antibiotic discovery and molecular de-extinction describes his transdisciplinary background and lifelong passion to understand biology.
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People Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17
Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.
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Mapping the global landscape for induced pluripotent stem cells from patents and clinical trials Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Liyang Lyu, Ye Feng, Borong Huang, Ren-He Xu, Yuanjia Hu
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Sharing best practices for educational programs on venture creation and commercialization Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Jordan Eidlisz, Zachary Hill-Whilton, Gabriel Vizgan, Daniel Cobos, Sadhana Chitale, Colleen Gillespie, Nabil Dib, Gabrielle Gold-von Simson
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Improving microbial phylogeny with citizen science within a mass-market video game Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Roman Sarrazin-Gendron, Parham Ghasemloo Gheidari, Alexander Butyaev, Timothy Keding, Eddie Cai, Jiayue Zheng, Renata Mutalova, Julien Mounthanyvong, Yuxue Zhu, Elena Nazarova, Chrisostomos Drogaris, Kornél Erhart, Amélie Brouillette, Gabriel Richard, Randy Pitchford, Sébastien Caisse, Mathieu Blanchette, Daniel McDonald, Rob Knight, Attila Szantner, Jérôme Waldispühl
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Inferring gene regulatory networks from single-cell multiome data using atlas-scale external data Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Qiuyue Yuan, Zhana Duren
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Genome engineering with Cas9 and AAV repair templates generates frequent concatemeric insertions of viral vectors Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Fabian P. Suchy, Daiki Karigane, Yusuke Nakauchi, Maimi Higuchi, Jinyu Zhang, Katja Pekrun, Ian Hsu, Amy C. Fan, Toshinobu Nishimura, Carsten T. Charlesworth, Joydeep Bhadury, Toshiya Nishimura, Adam C. Wilkinson, Mark A. Kay, Ravindra Majeti, Hiromitsu Nakauchi
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Gene trajectory inference for single-cell data by optimal transport metrics Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Rihao Qu, Xiuyuan Cheng, Esen Sefik, Jay S. Stanley III, Boris Landa, Francesco Strino, Sarah Platt, James Garritano, Ian D. Odell, Ronald Coifman, Richard A. Flavell, Peggy Myung, Yuval Kluger
Single-cell RNA sequencing has been widely used to investigate cell state transitions and gene dynamics of biological processes. Current strategies to infer the sequential dynamics of genes in a process typically rely on constructing cell pseudotime through cell trajectory inference. However, the presence of concurrent gene processes in the same group of cells and technical noise can obscure the true
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Genetically encoding colors and images into bioengineered microbial materials Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-02
Using synthetic biology, we engineered a cellulose-producing bacterium that can produce eumelanin and respond to light, so that it is possible to grow a microbial leather material that is colored black or contains projected black patterns.
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Capturing and modeling cellular niches from dissociated single-cell and spatial data Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-02
Cells interact with their local environment to enact global tissue function. By harnessing gene–gene covariation in cellular neighborhoods from spatial transcriptomics data, the covariance environment (COVET) niche representation and the environmental variational inference (ENVI) data integration method model phenotype–microenvironment interplay and reconstruct the spatial context of dissociated single-cell
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Self-pigmenting textiles grown from cellulose-producing bacteria with engineered tyrosinase expression Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Kenneth T. Walker, Ivy S. Li, Jennifer Keane, Vivianne J. Goosens, Wenzhe Song, Koon-Yang Lee, Tom Ellis
Environmental concerns are driving interest in postpetroleum synthetic textiles produced from microbial and fungal sources. Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a promising sustainable leather alternative, on account of its material properties, low infrastructure needs and biodegradability. However, for alternative textiles like BC to be fully sustainable, alternative ways to dye textiles need to be developed
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The potential of DAOs for funding and collaborative development in the life sciences Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Simone Fantaccini, Laura Grassi, Andrea Rampoldi
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.
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Antivenom slithers back to life Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-03
Snakebite treatment still relies on antivenom, a 130-year old technology, but biotech is on the job.
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The covariance environment defines cellular niches for spatial inference Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Doron Haviv, Ján Remšík, Mohamed Gatie, Catherine Snopkowski, Meril Takizawa, Nathan Pereira, John Bashkin, Stevan Jovanovich, Tal Nawy, Ronan Chaligne, Adrienne Boire, Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis, Dana Pe’er
A key challenge of analyzing data from high-resolution spatial profiling technologies is to suitably represent the features of cellular neighborhoods or niches. Here we introduce the covariance environment (COVET), a representation that leverages the gene–gene covariate structure across cells in the niche to capture the multivariate nature of cellular interactions within it. We define a principled
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De novo and somatic structural variant discovery with SVision-pro Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Songbo Wang, Jiadong Lin, Peng Jia, Tun Xu, Xiujuan Li, Yuezhuangnan Liu, Dan Xu, Stephen J. Bush, Deyu Meng, Kai Ye
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Branched chemically modified poly(A) tails enhance the translation capacity of mRNA Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Hongyu Chen, Dangliang Liu, Jianting Guo, Abhishek Aditham, Yiming Zhou, Jiakun Tian, Shuchen Luo, Jingyi Ren, Alvin Hsu, Jiahao Huang, Franklin Kostas, Mingrui Wu, David R. Liu, Xiao Wang
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Starfysh integrates spatial transcriptomic and histologic data to reveal heterogeneous tumor–immune hubs Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-21 Siyu He, Yinuo Jin, Achille Nazaret, Lingting Shi, Xueer Chen, Sham Rampersaud, Bahawar S. Dhillon, Izabella Valdez, Lauren E. Friend, Joy Linyue Fan, Cameron Y. Park, Rachel L. Mintz, Yeh-Hsing Lao, David Carrera, Kaylee W. Fang, Kaleem Mehdi, Madeline Rohde, José L. McFaline-Figueroa, David Blei, Kam W. Leong, Alexander Y. Rudensky, George Plitas, Elham Azizi
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Making genome editing a success story in Africa Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-19 Hussein M. Abkallo, Patrick Arbuthnot, Thomas O. Auer, Dave K. Berger, Johan Burger, Ereck Chakauya, Jean-Paul Concordet, Abdoulaye Diabate, Vincenzo Di Donato, Jan-Hendrik Groenewald, Amadou Guindo, Lizette L. Koekemoer, Florence Nazare, Tony Nolan, Fredros Okumu, Emma Orefuwa, Lily Paemka, Lucia Prieto-Godino, Steven Runo, Marie Sadler, Kassahun Tesfaye, Leena Tripathi, Charles Wondji
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A retrotransposon for site-specific gene transfer Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-18 Fred Dyda, Alison B. Hickman
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World’s first TIL therapy approved Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
Iovance Biotherapeutics has received a long-awaited go-ahead from the US Food and Drug Administration for its tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) cancer therapy. The approval for Amtagvi (lifileucel) for treating patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma is a milestone: it marks the first immune cell therapy approved for solid tumors, and it is also the first made from TILs. Amtagvi is a living
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Supercharging T cell therapy with cancer mutations Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Iris Marchal
T cell therapies are still hindered by poor T cell persistence and function, making them largely ineffective against solid tumors. Human cancerous T cells acquire mutations that increase their fitness and evade immune challenges in similar situations to those faced by therapeutic T cells. Writing in Nature, Garcia and colleagues exploit the fitness-enhancing abilities of these cancer mutations by incorporating
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US bill targets Chinese biotechs Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
The United States is seeking to prevent four Chinese biotech companies from doing business in the country, citing them as “companies of concern” that threaten national security. The Biosecure Act, introduced in both the Senate (S.3558) in December and House of Representatives (H.R.7085) in January, would prohibit the federal government from contracting with certain biotech providers connected to foreign
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Wearable technology and devices Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
Recent patents relating to wearable technology and devices for patient monitoring and treatment of health conditions.
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A synthetic antibiotic overcomes antimicrobial resistance Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Iris Marchal
Many small-molecule antibiotics function by disrupting bacterial ribosomes, but bacteria develop resistance by modifying ribosomes to reduce the binding affinity of these molecules. Writing in Science, Wu et al. present a solution to this challenge by engineering a synthetic antibiotic that remains locked in an optimal conformation that boosts ribosomal binding. The authors designed the molecule cresomycin
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In vivo CRISPR agent cuts HAE attacks 95% Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
A CRISPR–Cas9-based gene editing therapy from Intellia Therapeutics reduced monthly swelling attacks by 95% in people with hereditary angioedema (HAE). The results from a small phase 1 trial were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February. HAE is a rare genetic disorder characterized by recurrent bouts of subcutaneous and submucosal swelling that can be life threatening. Kallikrein
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Predicting the structure of large protein complexes Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Iris Marchal
Deep learning models like RoseTTAFold and AlphaFold2 allow highly accurate protein structure prediction, but large protein assemblies remain hard to predict because of their size and complex subunit interactions. In a study published in Nature Methods, Shor and Scheidman-Duhovny introduce CombFold, a combinatorial and hierarchical assembly algorithm that predicts structures of large protein complexes
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Cell-based coffee future-proofs world’s favorite brew Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
Lior Raviv, Pluri’s chief technical officer, says: “We hypothesized we could take the cells from the plant and put them in a bioreactor [to grow coffee].” Through their work in cell therapy and cultivated meat, the Pluri team knew that not all cells like the same growing conditions. Taking plant cell samples, they made cell lines and, instead of growing them swirling around in suspension culture, they
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Biotech news from around the world Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
Saudi Arabia announces a plan to become a biotech leader in the Middle East and North Africa region by 2030 and an international biotech hub by 2040. Its National Biotechnology Strategy aims to grow the country’s capabilities in vaccines, biomanufacturing, genomics and plant optimization to increase job creation and drive economic growth and diversification. The Ministry of Health and Welfare invests
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People Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.
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2H23 biotech job picture Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Michael Francisco
A semiannual snapshot of job expansions, reductions and availability in the biotech and pharma sectors.
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Lighting the match: how a student-led career mentorship program can blaze the way for non-academic careers Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Anna Bagnell, Alana MacDonald, Peter Espenshade, Mark Schenerman
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Biologic patent challenges under the America Invents Act Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Victor L. Van de Wiele, Aaron S. Kesselheim, S. Sean Tu
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Innovators want pills to treat sickle cell disease. Can they match gene therapy? Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-15
Although CRISPR-based gene therapy for sickle cell disease offers transformative outcomes, drugmakers are striving to develop treatments that are easy to manufacture and can reach much larger numbers of patients.
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Glia-enriched cortical organoids implanted in mice capture astrocyte diversity Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-14
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High-throughput evaluation of genetic variants with prime editing sensor libraries Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Samuel I. Gould, Alexandra N. Wuest, Kexin Dong, Grace A. Johnson, Alvin Hsu, Varun K. Narendra, Ondine Atwa, Stuart S. Levine, David R. Liu, Francisco J. Sánchez Rivera
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A small-molecule TNIK inhibitor targets fibrosis in preclinical and clinical models Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-08 Feng Ren, Alex Aliper, Jian Chen, Heng Zhao, Sujata Rao, Christoph Kuppe, Ivan V. Ozerov, Man Zhang, Klaus Witte, Chris Kruse, Vladimir Aladinskiy, Yan Ivanenkov, Daniil Polykovskiy, Yanyun Fu, Eugene Babin, Junwen Qiao, Xing Liang, Zhenzhen Mou, Hui Wang, Frank W. Pun, Pedro Torres Ayuso, Alexander Veviorskiy, Dandan Song, Sang Liu, Bei Zhang, Vladimir Naumov, Xiaoqiang Ding, Andrey Kukharenko, Evgeny
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Growing community across the C-suite Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-07
Women in biotech CEO positions now have resources and networks.
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Prediction of tumor-reactive T cell receptors from scRNA-seq data for personalized T cell therapy Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 C. L. Tan, K. Lindner, T. Boschert, Z. Meng, A. Rodriguez Ehrenfried, A. De Roia, G. Haltenhof, A. Faenza, F. Imperatore, L. Bunse, J. M. Lindner, R. P. Harbottle, M. Ratliff, R. Offringa, I. Poschke, M. Platten, E. W. Green
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Near-cognate tRNAs increase the efficiency and precision of pseudouridine-mediated readthrough of premature termination codons Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Nan Luo, Qiang Huang, Liting Dong, Wenqing Liu, Jinghui Song, Hanxiao Sun, Hao Wu, Yuan Gao, Chengqi Yi
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After obesity drugs’ success, companies rush to preserve skeletal muscle Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-05
A growing number of companies are testing muscle-building agents to counter the side effects of dramatic weight loss and potentially to preserve lean muscle into old age.
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Imbalanced single-cell data integration leads to loss of biological information Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-01
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Characterizing the impacts of dataset imbalance on single-cell data integration Nat. Biotechnol. (IF 46.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-01 Hassaan Maan, Lin Zhang, Chengxin Yu, Michael J. Geuenich, Kieran R. Campbell, Bo Wang