Clarivate plc has unveiled the 2025 Citation Laureates. Widely considered a predictor of the Nobel Prizes, this recognition has highlighted the discovery of biomolecular condensates in chemistry and the innate immunity signaling pathway in physiology or medicine, as well as the identification of leukemia stem cells and ghrelin, the so-called hunger hormone.
Clarivate plc has unveiled the 2025 Citation Laureates. Widely considered a predictor of the Nobel Prizes, this recognition has highlighted the discovery of biomolecular condensates in chemistry and the innate immunity signaling pathway in physiology or medicine, as well as the identification of leukemia stem cells and ghrelin, the so-called hunger hormone.
Bayer AG has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Dewpoint Therapeutics Inc. for a heart disease program to treat dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) patients characterized by specific mutations.
Dewpoint Therapeutics Inc. and Chemify Ltd. have partnered to develop a suite of digitally discovered and automatically synthesized novel molecules on Chemify’s programmable chemistry platform against condensate targets of interest in Dewpoint’s oncology and neurodegeneration pipeline.
A deal worth $745 million for two small-molecule programs, with a lucrative option to expand into other modalities, brings together the diabetes and metabolic disease expertise of Novo Nordisk A/S with an artificial intelligence technology platform from Dewpoint Therapeutics Inc. Boston-based Dewpoint signed on with Bagsvaerd, Denmark-based Novo Nordisk to use the former’s biomolecular condensates discovery engine to find new drugs for diabetic complications. The drugs will target condensates that contribute to the mechanisms of insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance, a key driver of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
Gut bacteria used liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) to organize themselves into condensates, which allowed them to adapt to nutrient deprivation, enabling them to colonize the gut. In experiments reported in the March 17, 2023, issue of Science, investigators showed that a mutant of the beneficial gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron was “highly defective in competitiveness, in its ability to colonize the mammalian gut,” senior author Eduardo Groisman told BioWorld. “Our paper provides the first example in which [LLPS] matters in bacterial host interactions.”
Targeting viral condensates could be a valuable strategy for developing fast-acting, specifically targeted drugs with a potential broad spectrum of activity against pathogenic viruses, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), by targeting proteins critical for condensate formation, according to an international collaborative study.
Startup Faze Medicines Inc. launched in early December with a series A funding of $81 million, and an A list of investors, led by Third Rock Ventures – an indicator of the attention condensates are attracting from the biopharma industry. Faze CSO Rachel Meyers, though, named another indicator for condensates’ blue-ribbon status: rumors have it that the 7th edition of Molecular Biology of the Cell – a workhorse textbook for 30 years’ worth of students in the field – will be the first to include information on condensates.
