Biotech

A recent outbreak of the Andes (ANDV) strain of the hantavirus aboard a cruise ship has increased public interest in efforts towards a vaccine. However, a publicly available vaccine is likely still several years away. ANDV causes Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS), which has a 30% to 50% fatality rate. Some research also indicated that the…

While the Artemis II mission was primarily a test flight for future lunar missions, a small experiment aboard the spacecraft is investigating space’s effects on the human body. The A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response (AVATAR) experiment used organ-on-a-chip devices to study the effects of deep space radiation and microgravity on human health.  The experiment…

Researchers have developed an intracortical brain-computer interface (BCI) that could someday help paralyzed patients control devices such as wheelchairs and prostheses. They tested the technology in macaque monkeys and published the results in Science Advances.  The BCI system drew on neural signals from three regions of the macaque brain: the primary motor cortex and the…

Researchers have created an immune-capable “cervix-on-a-chip” that replicates the human cervical environment. The research, published in Science Advances, aims to model how infections develop and spread.  Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) of the cervicovaginal mucosa are among the most common global infections. Current monolayer cell culture and animal models fail to reproduce the multilevel complexity required…

Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible blindness, primarily driven by elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) inside the eye. Current treatments include eye drops and clinic visits to check eye pressure, meaning that doctors often miss pressure spikes between visits.  A research team from the Teraski Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI) has developed a smart contact…

Precision medicine has reached a turning point largely due to rapid technological advances. The constraint against future scale is no longer whether researchers can generate genomic data, but whether programs can turn that data into repeatable, clinically relevant insight at the pace and scale that modern healthcare systems and drug discovery pipelines demand. In many…

In mid-March 2026, Paul Conyngham’s story went viral: a Sydney-based AI consultant with no medical training reported using ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini and AlphaFold to help design a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine for his dying dog. The coverage spread fast with at times hyperbolic claim: CBS, Fortune, Newsweek and dozens more. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called…

Only one-third of major depressive disorder patients find relief with their first prescribed antidepressant. The current clinical standard involves 4 to 12 week observation periods per drug, leading to months or years of patient suffering and systemic healthcare costs.  NeuroKaire’s new CLIA-certified BrightKaire test could help healthcare providers determine which antidepressant could be most effective…

Droplet Biosciences, a diagnostics company using lymph-based liquid biopsy testing, is reducing genomic analysis time with NVIDIA AI infrastructure, improving test turnaround times.  Unlike blood tests, which are widely used for minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring, lymphatic fluid allows for earlier collection and increased sensitivity. Droplet has found that postsurgical lymphatic fluid has 130 times…

iDEL Therapeutics is developing a new method to deliver drug payloads directly into the cytosol, bypassing traditional cellular degradation pathways. The company is launching with a €9 million seed financing round led by BiomedVC to advance its Direct Cytosolic Transfer (DCT) technology.  Many current therapies that bind to receptors are internalized but become stuck in…

At least 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified. A 2023 UNODC assessment estimated 267,000 deaths per year from falsified antimalarials alone in sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly 170,000 more from counterfeit antibiotics. In the U.S., the problem is smaller in scale but growing: the CDC has warned about counterfeit…

Legionella culture, the internationally accepted reference method for detecting the bacteria behind Legionnaires’ disease in water systems, still relies on laboratories preparing their own selective media or sourcing it from multiple suppliers. The workflow is well-standardized (ISO 11731 defines it), but the media preparation step remains a source of variability and lab time that ready-to-use…

Quintessence Biotech is reinventing the bio-separation process with a biological reagent capable of reproducing natural processes while simplifying industrial workflows. The company’s technology improves therapeutic efficacy, reduces manufacturing costs while working with existing cell culture hardware, Quintessence said.  Cell therapies are based on the idea of using living cells as medicine instead of treating diseases…

Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Kentucky established a microbial platform that produces oxalic acid and purifies rare-earth elements. They published their findings in Nature Communications.  The current process for refining rare-earth elements is complex and intensive. The supply chain is dominated by China, as…

Scientists from the Tissue Engineering Group at the University of Granada (UGR) and the ibs.GRANADA Biomedical Research Institute have developed an artificial cornea based on fish scales. They published their research in Materials & Design.  Diseases that affect the cornea, the transparent part of the eye, are very difficult to treat because the cornea lacks…

Regenity Biosciences is tackling a long-overlooked challenge in orthopedic medicine. In this R&D 100 Award-winning interview, Natsuyo Shishido Lee (Director of R&D) and Chris Harris (Senior Integration Engineer) discuss RejuvaKnee—a purified, intact bovine meniscus implant made entirely of collagen, designed for segmental defects after partial meniscectomy. With no durable standard of care for years, the…

Thermo Fisher Scientific earned three 2025 R&D 100 Awards in the Analytical/Test category: the Stellar Mass Spectrometer, the KingFisher PlasmidPro Maxi Processor, and the SteriSEQ Rapid Sterility Testing Kit. According to Thermo Fisher, the Stellar Mass Spectrometer delivers 10x greater sensitivity while analyzing five times more compounds than traditional systems. The KingFisher PlasmidPro Maxi Processor…

In 1986, Leonard Rome and Nancy Kedersha discovered vaults, barrel-shaped particles made naturally by human cells, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Despite studying the particles since their discovery, Rome and other scientists have failed to find their purpose. Now, scientists at the Broad Institute are using the mysterious structures to record the…

Food allergies affect 250 million people worldwide, with one person admitted to the ER for food allergies every ten seconds. More than 60% of severe reactions occur outside of the home. Now, patients can have access to laboratory-grade food testing wherever they are with Allergen Alert’s new portable food testing device.  The device contains a…

Researchers at Chonnam National University in South Korea have engineered an enzyme cascade that converts formaldehyde into L-glyceraldehyde, a chiral compound used as a building block in pharmaceutical synthesis and in routes to specialty sugars. The one-pot process runs in water under mild conditions and reached roughly 94% conversion efficiency, pointing to a potential approach…

As climate change pushes disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks into new territories, public health officials face a challenge: how do you prepare for outbreaks in places that have never seen them? Los Alamos National Laboratory developed the EpiEarth platform, which earned a Gold Medal Special Recognition Award for Corporate Social Responsibility. “Most models before this focused…

Views from pharma execs J&J’s Duato: tariffs “can create disruptions in the supply chain, leading to shortages” and tax policy is a better tool to grow U.S. capacity. Healthcare Brew AstraZeneca’s chair: “medicines should be exempted from any kind of tariffs” because they harm patients and restrict health equity. Bloomberg Policy backdrop: Commerce launched a…

Last updated: October 3, 2025 The heaviest R&D job losses this year cluster in hardware and semiconductors, with sizeable single events at Dell, Microsoft and Intel’s Oregon sites, while biopharma cuts are smaller per event but frequent as firms triage pipelines. Federal labs have also reduced staff amid budget uncertainty, including the CDC, NIH and…

A stretch-sensing protein called Piezo1 (a membrane ion channel that lets calcium into skin cells when they are pulled) appears to coordinate the immune and metabolic programs that let skin grow under tension, Johns Hopkins researchers report in Nature Communications. In mice, chemically activating Piezo1 during tissue expansion significantly increased skin surface area and epidermal…

Meissner has launched its RMS (Rotary Impeller Mixing Solutions) portfolio, a line of biocontainer mixing assemblies designed for drop-in compatibility with existing bioprocessing equipment. The product line is designed to provide mixing assemblies compatible with industry-standard tanks and existing drive units, without requiring additional hardware or modifications. RMS assemblies use Meissner’s TepoFlex® polyethylene (PE) multi-layer…