Life Science

At its “Research to Reality” media event on Thursday, Google showcased DeepSomatic, an AI tool that accurately identifies cancer-causing genetic mutations, outperforming current methods according to a study published in Nature Biotechnology on October 16.”DeepSomatic is an AI tool that helps scientists find genetic variants in cancer cells that could enable personalized treatment,” said Yossi…

Thermo Fisher Scientific beat Wall Street expectations in the third quarter of 2025, reporting $11.12 billion in revenue and adjusted earnings of $5.79 per share. The results signal resilience for lab infrastructure demand even as U.S. research budgets face headwinds and the U.S. government shutdown is in its 22nd day. The Waltham, Mass.–based company’s Laboratory…

Anthropic today announced Claude for Life Sciences, an AI platform that reportedly exceeds human performance on laboratory protocol comprehension. A press release notes that it scores 0.83 versus a 0.79 human baseline on the Protocol QA benchmark. In addition, the platform integrates directly with scientific tools like Benchling and 10x Genomics. The announcement noted that…

Healthcare data is often incomplete and inconsistent, limiting efforts to improve patient outcomes and operational efficiency. A 2021 report from Sage Growth found that only 20% of healthcare organizations fully trust their data. Because records follow patients across providers with shifting identifiers and coding schemes, the same encounter often appears multiple times or partially, breaking…

Google Cloud and multiple healthcare partners announced production deployments of AI agents on Oct. 16, timed to the release of Google Cloud’s second annual ROI of AI in healthcare & life sciences report and the start of HLTH 2025, held October 19–22 in Las Vegas. The announcements include clinical-note summarization at scale at Hackensack Meridian…

Thermo Fisher is entering a collaboration with OpenAI to “help to improve the speed and success of drug development,” the company announced today. Thermo Fisher is embedding OpenAI Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) into product development, service delivery, customer engagement and operational efficiency, the company said.  Thermo Fisher said the collaboration will shorten the cycle time…

Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for immune system research that has contributed to medical advances in cancer and autoimmune treatments.  The researchers identified a class of cells called regulatory T cells and the genes that control them. Their work revealed how…

Obesity is a risk factor for many diseases, from diabetes to heart disease to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). While researchers have long suspected a link between insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s, giving rise to the research term type 3 diabetes (not a clinical diagnosis), the epidemiologic signal appears to be strongest for midlife obesity and insulin resistance.…

Researchers from Oregon Health & Science University produced human egg cells from skin cells, they reported in Nature Communications. Once fertilized, the eggs were able to form early embryos. The researchers removed the nucleus from a human egg cell and replaced it with the nucleus of a type of skin cell called a fibroblast, a…

In 1982, Joy Milne detected her husband’s Parkinson’s disease with her heightened sense of smell. She wouldn’t realize the source of the scent until after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s over a decade later. The couple attended a support group, and Milne smelled the disease on almost every person there.  The Milnes’ case was…

The U.S. plans to impose 100% tariffs on imported branded/patented drugs starting Oct. 1, 2025, with exemptions for manufacturers that have ‘broken ground’ or are ‘under construction’ on U.S. plants. Whether specific products are hit will depend on company-by-company status and any carve-outs the administration grants. President Trump’s Truth Social post says companies ‘building’ or…

EpiEarth predicts the number of disease cases, disease risk and the impact of mitigations on potential epidemics. The software can predict on a day, season or decadal timescale, giving officials the necessary time to plan. The modular design enables the substitution of different models, diseases or vector species, making EpiEarth generalizable across vector-borne diseases that…

Years after the pandemic, parts of biopharma remain in a slump: scarce capital, steady layoffs, and surplus lab space in key hubs. Among the outliers is Insilico Medicine, which closed an oversubscribed $123 million Series E in June 2025 and is advancing an AI-built fibrosis drug; its pipeline includes more than 30 assets. Over the…

The Lasker Awards were recently granted to scientists studying cell biology and cystic fibrosis. Dick Gӧrlich and Steven L. McKnight won the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for their work studying low-complexity domains in protein sequences. Michael Welsh, Jesús González and Paul Negulescu were awarded the Lasker-DeBackey Clinical Medical Research Award for their roles…

Biotech and medtech VC funding isn’t flowing these days. Venture activity has cooled in 2025, with fewer deals and more selectivity, but megarounds persist. Two outsized rounds set the 2025 pace: Neuralink ($650M, Series E) and Isomorphic Labs ($600M, first external round). Neuralink is moving from cursor control to thought-to-text trials. The firm, which is…

Researchers from the University of Montpellier published a paper in Nature earlier this month that reveals a species of ant can lay eggs from two distinct species.  It has long been assumed that all animals, apart from hybrids like a mule which are sterile, will have offspring of their own species. This study proves that…

In July, the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva highlighted current uses of artificial intelligence (AI) across sectors including agriculture, education, and health. In medicine, several sessions and demos focused on applications that are already being piloted or deployed in defined settings. While much of the technology on display remains in development, healthcare featured…

Researchers at ETH Zurich published a study in Nature Cancer showing that cancer cells exploit a mechanism meant to repair damaged cells in order to provide healthy cells with additional mitochondria and reprogram them to assist in tumor growth.  The team found that cancer cells use tubes made of glycerophospholipids, which make up cell membranes,…

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…

Scientists at Guangzhou Medical University transferred a genetically modified pig lung into a brain-dead man, the team reported last week in Nature Medicine. Researchers have previously transferred the hearts and kidneys of genetically modified pigs into human patients with varying rates of success, but this is the first pig-to-human lung transplant.  The lung, which had…

A late-July U.S.-EU trade deal capped most EU imports, including pharmaceuticals, at 15%, easing fears of triple-digit levies and supporting a rebound in life-sciences tools shares. On July 23, Thermo Fisher raised the lower end of guidance and said the tariff situation was improving, reinforcing the risk-relief trade. Danaher and Agilent also have reported their…

AI isn’t some shiny new kid on the drug discovery block. In one way or another, it’s been lurking in labs for decades under aliases like computational chemistry and cheminformatics. The term ‘artificial intelligence’ itself dates back to the 1950s. Alister Campbell, vice president and global head of science and technology at Dotmatics, chuckles at…

The official 2025 R&D 100 Awards have been announced by R&D World. This worldwide science and innovation competition, now in its 63rd year, received entries from organizations around the world. This year’s judging panel included industry professionals from across the globe who evaluated breakthrough innovations in technology and science. The Winners are listed below by…

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…

R&D World has announced the winners of the 2025 R&D 100 Professional Awards. The honorees were selected by a panel of 54 prestigious industry experts from around the globe. The list of 2025 winners follows, along with highlights from their nomination letters. These winners will be formally awarded at the R&D 100 Awards Banquet at…