• Follow the Money: Teaching AI Physics, AI-Powered Digital Twins of Cells, More

    Bio-IT World | AQEMIA intends to teach its generative AI platform quantum-inspired, atomic-scale physics to transform drug discovery; DeepLife plans to develop AI-powered models of human cells, known as digital twins of cells, for drug discovery; and more.

    Dec 23, 2024

  • Researchers Call for an Open AI Virtual Cell, Outline Challenges to Overcome

    Bio-IT World | In a Perspectives paper published last week in Cell, researchers from Stanford University, Genentech, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative issued a call for AI to build a virtual cell. Technology is ripe for a biologically-valuable virtual cell, they say, outlining their views of the priorities and opportunities.

    Dec 18, 2024

  • Renee Iacona on Why Future Scientists Need to Learn About Data Science

    Bio-IT World | It has been a momentous year for artificial intelligence and machine learning. AI models can simulate clinical trials, diagnose diseases early, and detect biomarkers, and there is still no shortage of innovative ideas. However, there are some concerns surrounding AI/ML that have also been at the forefront of the industry. The latest episode of Trends from the Trenches covers one of these concerns.

    Dec 17, 2024

  • Ingredient in Children’s Glue Helps Tumors Retain Cancer Drug

    Bio-IT World | Japan has long taken a leadership role in the pursuit of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) as a treatment for cancer. The approach involves injecting patients with a boron-containing compound that accumulates in tumor cells and acts as an exclusive target for neutrons to kill and was the research focus of a pair of Harvard scientists throughout the 1950s.

    Dec 13, 2024

  • Some Gut Bacteria Can be Transmitted Through Close Social Contact

    Bio-IT World | An intriguing new study suggests that the people we interact with socially influence the bacteria populating our gut. The implication is that some diseases considered nontransmissible may have a component that makes them contagious.

    Dec 11, 2024

  • Russia Launches Comprehensive Study Genomes Of Living Organisms In Arctic Region

    Bio-IT World | A project to study the genomes of living organisms in the Arctic region, known as “A Thousand Arctic Genomes,” has been launched in Russia. As part of the project, scientists will create genetic data banks and perform whole-genome sequencing of Arctic inhabitants in order to assess biodiversity and use the data obtained to preserve it.

    Dec 10, 2024

  • ‘Therapeutic EVs’ in a Nasal Spray Could One Day Treat Alzheimer’s Disease

    Bio-IT World | It sounds too good to be true: a nasal spray that delays Alzheimer’s-related behavioral and cognitive problems a decade or more after initial diagnosis. But promising first steps in that direction have already been taken using “therapeutic EVs” (extracellular vesicles) restricting the activation of inflammatory cytokines in the brain of mice.

    Dec 5, 2024

  • Building Tiny Biocompatible Batteries with Heart-Defibrillating Power

    Bio-IT World | In a paper published last week in Science, researchers from the University of Oxford, UK, demonstrate how microprocessors can be created from soft, biocompatible, nanoliter-scale hydrogel droplets. This work builds on a study published last month in Nature Chemical Engineering introducing poppyseed-sized droplet batteries that can be used to power such systems for various bionic and biomedical applications.

    Dec 4, 2024

  • Barcelona Research Institutions Launch Joint Program on Evolutionary Medical Genomics

    Bio-IT World | Three research institutions in Barcelona have teamed up to launch the world’s first Joint Program on Evolutionary Medical Genomics. The initiative, launched last month at an inaugural symposium in Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), is a collaboration between the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva

    Dec 3, 2024

  • Follow the Money: Seaport Therapeutics Glyph Platform, Pathos AI Expansion, More

    Bio-IT World | Seaport nets funds for its Glyph technology platform; Pathos AI plans to accelerate its AI-powered drug development platform; Alentis Therapeutics pursues antibody drug conjugates; and more.

    Nov 26, 2024

  • Answer ALS, Cedars-Sinai Collaboration, Single-Cell Protein Profiling, ChapsVision Acquires Sinequa, More

    Bio-IT World | Answer ALS and Cedars-Sinai have announced the completed availability of the largest ALS patient-based induced pluripotent stem cell and bio data repository; Scale Biosciences and Revvity’s business, BioLegend, announced the availability of a first-of-its-kind TotalSeq Phenocyte single-cell protein profiling solution that supports customers by more easily identifying and characterizing rare cell subtypes; ChapsVision has acquired Sinequa; and more.

    Nov 25, 2024

  • How Digital Chemistry Will Improve Cross-Functional Collaboration In The Biopharma Industry

    Bio-IT World | Digital chemistry is the term given to recent developments in using digital control and big data approaches for designing molecules, optimizing and controlling chemical reactions, and performing complex chemical processes under digital control with sensor feedback. A fundamental development in digital chemistry is the evolution of the concept of chemputation, which allows chemical reactions to be easily done robotically using a general purpose programming language for chemical synthesis.

    Nov 22, 2024

  • ‘Secret Shares’ of Patient Health Data Enable Secure Multiparty Research

    Bio-IT World | Scientists in Europe collaborated on the first international-level clinical study using secure multiparty computation (MPC), which enabled cross-border cooperation without sharing any personalized health data. The cryptographic method traces back to the late 1970s but has been “severely underused” up until now because it’s computationally complex and few data security experts are familiar with the technology.

    Nov 20, 2024

  • Recursion, Novo Nordisk Release New Chemistry Foundation Model

    Bio-IT World | In a paper published last week in Nature Communications, teams from Recursion and Novo Nordisk created a new foundation model for chemistry called MolE. Benchmarked for absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) using the Therapeutic Data Commons, MolE outperformed previous models.

    Nov 19, 2024

  • Much Like a Crime Scene, Cancer’s Evolution Can be Reconstructed

    Bio-IT World | Investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine have combined several powerful technologies to reconstruct how cancer spreads from the prostate to metastatic sites elsewhere in the body. Bioluminescence imaging, CRISPR/Cas9-based barcoding, and innovative computational methods for tracing the movement of cancer from tissue to tissue were used in creating a roadmap revealing the small number of aggressive cells that seed cancer’s often deadly migration.

    Nov 14, 2024

  • Blueprint of the Human Spliceosome Could Help Find Cancer’s Achilles’ Heel

    Bio-IT World | The spliceosome, the cellular machinery that catalyzes the process of splicing in genes, was discovered nearly five decades ago and has been successfully leveraged in the development of therapies for rare diseases such as spinal muscular dystrophy where concerns about side effects tend to be secondary to correcting the underlying pathology. The question now is how to move the strategy to more complex diseases involving more than a single gene and splicing mutation.

    Nov 13, 2024

  • New Diagnostic Tool for Identifying the Effects of Antifibrotic Therapy in Breast Cancer

    Bio-IT World | In recent research, scientists at the University of Arizona have developed a diagnostic tool, the MeCo Score, which evaluates metastatic risk in early-stage breast cancer by analyzing how cancer cells respond to the stiffness of surrounding tissue. This tool leverages RNA sequencing data from tumor samples to identify a "mechanical conditioning" (MeCo) signature, giving insights into cancer cell adaptations within the tumor microenvironment.

    Nov 12, 2024

  • Foundations for Change: A Framework for Transforming R&D Outcomes With AI

    Bio-IT World | For AI and data-driven drug discovery to have a tangible impact on R&D success, a change in the culture is as important as any investment at a data, model, and validation level. Until quite recently, the perceived value of AI in drug discovery and development failed to match the hype.

    Nov 8, 2024

  • PacBio’s Pink Desktop Platform, $500 Genome Chemistry

    Bio-IT World | This week at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting, Pacific Biosciences unveiled both its new SPRQ chemistry—pronounced “spark”— and its newest sequencing platform, Vega, a desktop, long-read sequencer with all the compute on board. Also it’s pink.

    Nov 7, 2024

  • New Data Suggests a More Expansive View of Heart Health Lipids

    Bio-IT World | The traditional LDL and HDL cholesterol tests may soon be obsolete as new research suggests they provide an incomplete view of heart health compared to other lipid molecules circulating in the blood. This shift stems from a recent study led by Dr. Cristina Legido-Quigley, a systems medicine expert at King’s College London and Steno Diabetes Centre, which analyzed lipids in children with obesity.

    Nov 4, 2024