Insilico Medicine founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov told BioWorld that he tries to spend as much time as possible in China, because that's where the artificial intelligence (AI) drug development company conducts synthesis and tests for early stage discovery. “And nowadays, not a day goes by without somebody launching an AI drug discovery company,” he said, noting that Chinese AI company Deepseek could be a huge disrupter.

A new multi-omics approach to unpicking how noncoding gene variants influence the development of common chronic diseases has identified tens of thousands of instances where variants have an impact on gene expression levels and gene splicing, the post-transcriptional modification that allows one gene to code for multiple proteins.

As U.S. regulatory uncertainty swirls around the vaccine space and health care in general, Vaxcyte Inc. stands poised for a readout of phase II infant data by the end of this quarter with VAX-24, the 24-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). The San Carlos, Calif.-based firm will offer top-line safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity data, to be followed by top-line data with the booster dose by the end of this year.

The map of cystic fibrosis (CF) research is being redrawn in the U.K. as improvements in treatment, and in particular the introduction of CF modulator drugs, mean people with the rare inherited disease are living much longer.

The lung and thrombosis may play a key role in cancer and metastasis progression, according to a collaborative study led by Cornell University scientists.

The longstanding ambition of developing an inhaled gene therapy for cystic fibrosis has taken a step forward, with the start of a phase I/II trial of a product using a novel pseudotyped viral vector that it is hoped will circumvent problems encountered in previous studies with other vectors.

Ligachem Biosciences Inc. landed another exclusive licensing deal to develop and commercialize antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), this time with T-cell receptor therapy specialist Daan Biotherapeutics Inc. for a cancer-targeting antibody.