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A month ago, Richard Slayman became the first living person to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. Now, a team of researchers from NYU Langone Health reports that Lisa Pisano, a 54-year-old woman from New Jersey, has become the second. Her new kidney has just a single genetic modification—an approach that researchers hope…

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.  CAR-T therapies, created by engineering a patient’s own cells to fight cancer, are typically reserved for people who have exhausted other treatment options. But last week, the FDA…

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Justin Graves was managing a scuba dive shop in Louisville, Kentucky, when he first had a seizure. He was talking to someone and suddenly the…

The headlines are, at a minimum, a bit sensational: “Alzheimer’s can be transmitted between people.” “What you need to know about Alzheimer’s spreading between humans.” “First evidence of human-to-human transmission of Alzheimer’s disease.” The nuance, thankfully, is far less frightening, at least from a public heal...

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I have a mystery for you. It’s the story of how a team of researchers traced a covid variant in Wisconsin from a…

Alex Zhavoronkov has been messing around with artificial intelligence for more than a decade. In 2016, the programmer and physicist was using AI to rank people by looks and sort through pictures of cats. Now he says his company, Insilico Medicine, has created the first “true AI drug” that’s advanced to a test of whether…

On a bright chilly day last December, a crowd of doctors and scientists gathered at a research institute atop a hill in Novato, California. It was the first time this particular group of healthy longevity specialists had met in person, and they had a lot to share. The group’s goal is to help people add…

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. As dengue cases continue to rise in Brazil, the country is facing a massive public health crisis. The viral disease, spread by mosquitoes, has sickened more…

A Montana man was charged with selling the DNA and offspring of a cloned Marco Polo sheep, a breed known for its horns, in violation of the Lacey Act.

The idea of 3D bioprinting is like that of conventional 3D printing. However, it is premised on the use of organ regenerative actions which involve the manufacturing and development of organs, tissues, and body parts such as the liver, skin, heart, eyes, bones, etc.

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I wrote about a team of researchers who managed to grow lung, kidney, and intestinal organoids from fetal cells floating around in the amniotic…

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The diabetes medication metformin has been touted as a miracle drug. Not only does it keep diabetes in check, but it can reduce inflammation, curb cancer,…

For the first and so far only time, the SEC filed a case that accuses an executive of using secret information from his own company to trade in the stock of a rival.

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. A ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court last week that frozen embryos stored in labs count as children is sending “shock waves” through the fertility…

This spring I am looking forward to growing some biotech in my backyard for the first time. It’s possible because of startups that have started selling genetically engineered plants directly to consumers, including a bright-purple tomato and a petunia that glows in the dark. This week, for $73, I ordered both by pressing a few…

On a warm, sunny day in Montevideo, Uruguay, the air is smogless and crisp. Inside a highly secured facility at the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) are a sophisticated gene gun, giant microscopes, and tens of thousands of gene-edited flies, their bright blue wings fluttering against the walls of their small, white, netted cages.…

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Welcome back to The Checkup! Today I want to talk about … mRNA vaccines. I can hear the collective groan from here, but wait—hear me out!…

Brian Wang and Randy Kirk discussed the expected biggest science and technology stories of 2024. The potentially biggest development in 2024 could be antiaging science reaching a milestone of doubling the remaining lifespan of a mouse. The Longevity Escape velocity program has take four promising anti-aging treatments and applied them in various combinations to a ... Read more