• Many Looming Unknowns About AI Policies of Incoming Administration

    Bio-IT World | Looming uncertainties tied to the upcoming U.S. administration change will affect many key areas of artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025, according to Mark Dredze, interim deputy director for the Data Science and AI Institute at Johns Hopkins University. While a focus on deregulation appears likely, exactly how things will play out for AI governance and policy is anyone’s guess.

    Jan 9, 2025

  • Medicines for Placental Disorders Working Their Way up the Species Ladder

    Bio-IT World | The placenta is a temporary but critical organ everyone needs to initiate their life, yet it remains one of the most understudied organs in human biology despite the possible lifelong health implications if anything it is supposed to do goes awry.

    Jan 8, 2025

  • Trendspotting: Predictions for Bio-IT World in 2025

    Bio-IT World | 2024 was full of innovative ideas and achievements. We spoke with industry experts and leaders about what to anticipate in the new year. Here are the full trends and predictions, including more on AI/ML, multimodal data, drug discovery, new policies, spatial biology, and more.

    Jan 7, 2025

  • Top Stories of 2024: Illumina, Pistoia Alliance, Generative AI, Sequencing, More

    Bio-IT World | Last year, the world of biotech achieved much with AI, sequencing, treatment development, and more. The Trends from the Trenches podcast also covered data management strategies, embracing change, and the technologies driving data-intensive science. To kick off the new year, here are the top stories and top podcast episodes of 2024 from Bio-IT World and Trends from the Trenches.

    Jan 3, 2025

  • AI Can’t Fix Bad Data: Why Semantic Technologies Are Key to R&D Acceleration

    Bio-IT World | What role will AI play in the future of drug development, especially as novel therapeutic approaches such as precision medicine drive up the complexity and cost of research? Some industry headlines hype AI as a magic bullet, capable of cutting through the headwinds of slow development cycles, shifting regulations, and high rates of failure. For companies racing to reach the market with safe and compliant new drug products, this vision of AI is compelling—and it’s driving heavy investment.

    Dec 30, 2024

  • BC Platform, University of Nottingham Partnership, Certis Oncology Launches AI Assistant, More

    Bio-IT World | BC Platforms enters an extended joint partnership with the University of Nottingham and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust to provide data sharing platforms and tools; Certis Oncology Solutions launches CertisOI Assistant, an innovative chatbot tool ; and more.

    Dec 27, 2024

  • 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