Volume 43 Issue 10, October 2025

After decades-long struggles with microRNA-based therapeutics, Regulus hits paydirt in the clinic and in the marketplace. Is it the beginning of a trend or a one-off?

Long considered undruggable, transcription factors have finally become fair game for a clutch of innovative biotechs who are combining biological insights with innovative chemistry to bring into play a vast number of new drug targets.

The COP16 decision established a multilateral mechanism for digital sequence information (DSI) benefit-sharing. This Comment brings together insights from academia and commercial DSI researchers to assess what has been accomplished so far, identify remaining challenges and describe elements under discussion to support collective goals.

Genome editing technology is evolving fast, and many labs worldwide are generating crop plants with improved traits. If transgenes were used to generate the edits, foreign DNA must be effectively removed by outcrossing. After an evaluation of various technologies, we show that long-read whole-genome sequencing (WGS) is at present the only reliable approach to confirm the absence of foreign DNA. We suggest using long-read WGS before requesting exemption from classification as genetically modified organisms and provide a guide for interpreting WGS data.

Research efforts to develop digital twins in medicine are rapidly increasing, with promising emerging applications in oncology, diabetes management and cardiovascular medicine. While medical digital twins hold great promise for personalized healthcare, their implementation is no easy feat. The field faces diverse challenges including collecting data, choosing computational model designs, ensuring safety and efficacy, and preventing biases. What can be learned from the successes achieved? Which are the most promising upcoming applications? We asked experts in the field for their thoughts.

A method for designing high-affinity, specific binders to peptide–MHC complexes may improve the next generation of antigen-specific T cell-based therapeutics.

Ancestral sequence reconstruction enables the identification and synthesis of ReChb, an ancient form of CRISPR–Cas12a with a highly versatile functionality. ReChb can target any nucleic acid, with minimal restrictions, making it a multipurpose tool for genome editing and genetic diagnostics.