The field of peptides is exploding, Perpetual Medicines Corp. co-founder, chairman and CEO Kerry L. Blanchard recently told BioWorld, “with a projected growth rate far surpassing large and small molecules, and gene therapies. The area is underinvested, too, so this is a good opportunity to focus on peptide therapeutics.”

Investigators at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have generated a chimeric monkey by injecting an embryonic stem cell into the morula, which is an extremely early embryo consisting of 16 to 32 cells. The animal survived for only 10 days, and it is not the first live birth of a chimeric primate. But it is the first such chimera with contributions from an embryonic stem cell, and that stem cell contributed a far higher proportion of cells in the newborn than have been achieved in previous attempts at creating chimeras.

Fledgling biotechnology company Automera has launched in Singapore with $16 million in series A funding to develop its autophagy-targeting chimera small molecules (AUTACs) platform technology. Automera co-founder and chief technology officer Loong Wang told BioWorld that he and his business partner, Taiyang Zhang, decided to move into the biotechnology space in 2021.

Some cancers with a poor prognosis have had no new treatments in decades. Advances in the genetic characterization of these tumors now offer a range of possibilities for the development of new therapies that could completely change the quality of life and survival of these patients.

Quantum dots, a phenomenon in quantum physics that alters the energy of electrons and changes the properties of particles, caught the attention of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) for the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Researchers who follow their instincts and achieve slow results while trying to break barriers have little support. They replace it with persistence. This is the story of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. What was once a dream in their minds was later a success.

KRAS-mutated tumors were once untreatable. In fact, KRAS was something of a poster child for so-called undruggability. Several laboratories are investigating strategies to address other mutations and uses beyond non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and colorectal cancer. If you can't bind KRAS to block it, use a glue or combine multiple weapons. This is the idea behind two new approaches that target cancers caused by this proto-oncogene.

The positively charged nanoparticle polyamidoamine generation 3 (P-G3) can be specifically targeted to either visceral or subcutaneous fat, and affects both types of fat in different ways, researchers from Columbia University reported in two papers recently published.

A computational platform that used single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data could quickly predict the best chemical compounds to use to convert cells from one type into another for use in research or cell therapies. The work, published in the Nov. 17, 2022, issue of Stem Cell Reports, was a collaboration between the lab of Hongkui Deng, a professor and director of the Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Differentiation at Peking University in Beijing, and the lab of Antonio del Sol, a professor at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine at the University of Luxembourg.

Diwali, the Festival of Light, marks different events depending on where it is celebrated. In some areas of India, it marks the return of Lord Rama to his birthplace of Ayodhya after defeating the demon Ravana.