Researchers from Kenya’s Egerton University and Makerere University in Uganda begin a pilot program to mass breed desert locusts as a sustainable, protein-rich food source for animals and humans. The locusts are grown in giant domed-shaped, temperature- and humidity-controlled greenhouses equipped with wire gauze cages to stop them escaping. The Locust4Industry project aims to enable industrial exploitation

Voranigo (vorasidenib), made by French drugmaker Servier Pharmaceuticals, was approved in August by the US Food and Drug Administration. The small-molecule isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1) and isocitrate dehydrogenase-2 (IDH2) inhibitor has the go-ahead to treat patients with grade 2 astrocytoma or oligodendroglioma with IDH1 or IDH2 mutations. The approval follows a successful phase 3 trial showing

Macromolecular drugs have limited applications in the brain because they cannot cross the blood–brain barrier. A parasite that does have the natural capacity to travel to the brain is Toxoplasma gondii. In a study in Nature Microbiology, Bracha et al. make use of this feature, engineering T. gondii to deliver large proteins to the brains of mice. The authors targeted several proteins with different

Genentech, part of Roche, has signed an exclusive license with Sangamo Therapeutics to develop genomic treatments for two neurodegenerative diseases. Sangamo will receive $50 million up front and could earn up to $1.9 billion in development and commercial milestone payments plus tiered royalties for its proprietary zinc finger repressors directed to the gene encoding the tau protein, which is involved

Nearly a century later, in a bungalow three blocks from the sun-baked crowds of Rockaway Beach, New York, Karen Ingram meticulously paints portraits of flower blossoms in a Petri dish using a medium of yeast. She calls her series “Biogenetic Blooms”: blue roses, yellow and orange daffodils, red tulips, pink orchids, columbines, snapdragons, irises, black-eyed Susans. The process is surprisingly tricky

Specific microbial communities in the female genital tract are linked to health outcomes; for example, a microbiome deficient in Lactobacillus is observed in bacterial vaginosis. However, available therapies may not effectively promote the growth of beneficial bacterial species that could prevent the recurrence of disease. Writing in Cell, Zhu et al. propose that targeting unsaturated long-chain fatty

On this episode, our Associate Editor Cláudia Vilhena interviews Nicoletta Cieri, the first author of a great story on how a devised analytic framework can aid in the prevention of post-transplant disease recurrence. Join us as Nicoletta and Cláudia explore the highlights of the story, discuss the future of individualized medicine and touch base on future career opportunities following the postdoc

Recent patents relating to compositions and methods for the remediation of polluted and contaminated environments.

A historic law that negotiates price discounts for Medicare prescription drugs has led to the selection of the first ten drugs to be covered by these negotiations. From January 2026, enrollees will pay between 38% and 79% less for the ten commonly prescribed outpatient drugs. The negotiated prices are expected to save taxpayers billions of dollars. The biopharma industry, however, argues that the prices

Although stem-cell derived organoids are useful tools for studying epithelial functions in health and disease, they generally lack the immune compartment critical for modeling organ-level processes. In a paper published in Nature, Recaldin et al. now integrate tissue-resident memory T (TRM) cells into human intestinal organoids and show how this model can be used to gain insight into drug-induced intestinal

A semiannual snapshot of job expansions, reductions and availability in the biotech and pharma sectors.

Spreading powdered basalt on farmland traps CO2 from the atmosphere, a technology that is cheap, requires no huge steel reactors and, with a biotech boost, may even reduce fertilizer use.

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

Scientists are using ever more sophisticated AI algorithms trained on vast, unlabeled datasets to develop models that can ‘interpret’ biological data to help guide biomolecule design.

We have learned many lessons from COVID-19, but how to get vaccines to low- and middle-income countries effectively isn’t one of them.

Each year, Nature Biotechnology highlights companies that have received sizeable early-stage funding in the previous year. Atomic AI generates the structure data it needs for its AI model with the aim of RNA drug discovery.

Each year, Nature Biotechnology highlights companies that have received sizeable early-stage funding in the previous year. A rescued chimeric antigen receptor from Cargo Therapeutics for hard-to-treat lymphomas shows promise in patients while a trispecific advances toward human testing.

Bacterial strains and genes within the microbiome are increasingly being linked to human health. Exploring these interactions in detail could open the door to microbiome-based therapies. However, modifying specific bacterial populations in vivo without killing them has not yet been achieved. Writing in Nature, Brödel et al. address this challenge by engineering a phage-derived particle to deliver a

Governments and big agbiotech players are betting on plant-symbiotic bacteria to improve crop growth without the need for chemical fertilizers. Syngenta Biologicals and Intrinsyx Bio have entered a collaboration to exploit endophytes — naturally occurring symbiotic bacteria discovered living in trees thriving in unusually harsh conditions. The endophytes developed by Intrinsyx benefit plant health

To make its animal-free egg alternative, Every engineered the yeast Komagataella phaffii (formerly named Pichia pastoris) to express egg proteins. The yeast grows in bioreactor tanks and secretes protein into the broth, which is then filtered. Because the genetically engineered yeast is no longer present in the final product, Every Egg is not considered bioengineered. It has received Generally Recognized

Mapping small-molecule drugs that bind DNA or protein on chromatin is fundamental for understanding their function. Studying these binding dynamics within the epigenetic landscape could improve our understanding of cell-type-specific drug actions. A paper in Nature Methods by Dong et al. introduces scEpiChem, a method that combines small-molecule drug binding with multimodal epigenetic profiling in

A drug has completely prevented HIV infections in a phase 3 trial, the first time this has been achieved. Gilead’s antiretroviral drug lenacapavir was tested in over 5,300 young women in South Africa and Uganda, and none of them developed HIV infection. The HIV-1 capsid inhibitor was delivered by subcutaneous injections twice a year for pre-exposure prophylaxis. In the group of women who were instead

On this episode, our Associate Editor Cláudia Vilhena interviews Sean Johnson, the first author of a great story on how to experimentally evaluate the performance of AI-generated enzymes. Sean and Cláudia discuss the timely topic of AI for protein design and the implications for future research, and also touch base on how it was to transition from academia to industry.

1. DENMARK Novo Holdings partners with DLG Group to advance sustainable agriculture and food systems by acquiring 25% of the shares in Horsens-based Sejet Plant Breeding, a DLG subsidiary. Sejet uses new genomic technologies to breed new crop varieties adapted to current and future growing conditions.

The gene editing toolbox is still lacking systems that are capable of precise kilobase-scale DNA modifications. Mobile elements found in bacteria, such as insertion sequences (IS), can orchestrate such large genomic rearrangements, but it has been difficult to reprogram their associated enzymes to target sequence-specific genomic sites. Two papers in Nature now report an RNA-guided recombinase that

Recent patents relating to compositions, methods and systems for single-cell analysis.

Companies are moving therapeutic testing from plastic wells into pooled in vivo screening, generating physiologically relevant data by screening many drug candidates at once in a single animal.

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

The resurrection of strings of extinct molecules raises intriguing questions of patentability and bioethical considerations in an emerging area of patent law.

Companies are targeting poison exons embedded in mRNA transcripts as a strategy to restore wild-type protein abundance and cell fitness in severe pediatric epilepsy and other genetic diseases.

Comparative studies that integrate genetically diverse mouse models and in vitro cell-based assays will accelerate drug discovery for precision medicine.

As cultivated meat begins to enter grocery stores, governments should promote the field’s development in line with broad public goals of sustainability and accessibility.