A review of 2025's noteworthy advances in medical research, including GLP-1 receptor agonists as anti-aging drugs, tumor-agnostic therapies and xenotransplants.
In October, the Nobel Committee awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Shimon Sakaguchi, Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell for their discoveries in the field of autoimmunity. As has become typical for the scientific Nobel Prizes, the award-winning research is by now several decades old. But the discoveries were the basis for ongoing research into how to prevent autoimmunity that notched significant wins in 2025, in both basic research and in the clinic.
Advances in antiretroviral therapy (ART) now allow people living with HIV to lead normal lives with undetectable and nontransmissible levels of the virus in their blood. Yet that reality is limited to those with access to treatment. More than 40 million people worldwide live with HIV, with over a million new infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, underscoring that major challenges remain.
Investigators at the Netherlands Hubrecht Institute have developed a novel gut organoid model, and used it to gain insight into the functions on human microfold (M) cells. Their experiments, which were published in the Dec. 10, 2025, issue of Nature, showed that M cells present gluten-derived antigens to T cells, which suggests a role for this cell type in the onset of celiac disease.
Seventy-three pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies from mainland China filed for IPOs in Hong Kong this year, a review by BioWorld found. In the second half of 2025, 43 new securities reports were filed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, increasing from the 30 applications in the first half.
By transplanting a pig kidney into a brain-dead person, researchers have been able to conduct the first long-term study of the physiological processes occurring in both the transplant recipient and the pig organ for 61 days. The findings were published in the Nov. 14, 2025, issue of Nature in two papers – one focusing on physiological and immunological measurements, the other on multiomics.
South Korean researchers led by Lee In-suk of Yonsei University have reported the most complete oral microbiome catalog to date, with more than 72,000 genomes. Detailed in Cell Host & Microbe on Nov. 12, 2025, the database is expected to serve as a universal platform for academia and enable “precision microbiome medicine” for the industry, Lee told BioWorld.
As the many challenges facing cell therapies are being addressed, the CAR T field continues to evolve beyond its original design of T cells engineered to target hematological malignancies. During the 32nd Annual Congress of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ESGCT), held in Seville Oct. 7-10, several studies showed how this technology is being redefined as programmable and adaptable immune cells with expanded functional versatility.
The Nobel Committee announced today that it has awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to three scientists for their discovery of regulatory T cells, which are a critical part of the way the body prevents autoimmune attacks.
Is there a link between cellular senescence and multiple sclerosis (MS) progression? Several presentations at this year’s European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis 2025 (ECTRIMS 2025) conference, in Barcelona, which ended Sept. 26, addressed this question
RSS
