Editorials

The scientific integrity of US government agencies is under attack from the Trump administration. Agency senior executives and industry leaders need to continue pushing back.

The pandemic has highlighted long-standing, deep-rooted challenges to the sharing of biological samples. Greater attention is needed to mechanisms for incentivizing materials transfer.

As preliminary research findings are shared more widely and at an increasing pace, action is needed to counter the spread of misinformation.

As CRISPR–Cas9 enters human testing, the blistering pace of progress in preclinical research is offering a bewildering array of options for therapeutic gene editing.

A slew of national COVID-19 exposure apps have failed because of poor public engagement and acceptance. Apps from the workplace may offer a partial solution if privacy can be guaranteed.

Insufficient SARS-CoV-2 testing has left many nations flying blind as they reopen their economies. Without adequate testing, new infections could outrun control measures.

COVID-19 has reinforced the importance of preprints as an indispensable means for rapid research dissemination.

In the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, the open sharing of materials, information and data is gaining increasing importance in biotech.

In the post-Brexit era, Britain must rapidly harmonize national and European law, secure unfettered access to global talent and address funding shortfalls to ensure continued leadership in the life sciences.

The US Food and Drug Administration is sticking to its plan to carry out mandatory premarket review of all gene-edited livestock, irrespective of trait risk. It should rethink.

Was the public re-release of data excerpts from an unpublished manuscript on human germline gene editing ethically justified?

150 years after its founding, Nature has not only published some of biotech’s seminal papers, but also profoundly influenced the sector’s impact on society.

China is set to challenge the pre-eminence of the US drug market. If it can address gaps in its R&D ecosystem and clinical infrastructure, it may even become a home for biotech innovators.

What would a world look like in which biohackers had access to automated drug-production platforms?

To capitalize on progress in neuromodulation, funders and clinicians should promote not only translational research, but also data sharing.

Heavy-handed targeting of ethnic Chinese researchers, students and investors by US funding, intelligence and immigration agencies poses a threat to the American life-sciences sector.

Sky-high-priced gene therapies face slow uptake and market failure unless healthcare payers and drug makers can find common ground in ‘pay-for-performance’ reimbursement.

Nature Biotechnology’s peer review trial with Code Ocean highlights the importance of ‘containers’ in enhancing software usability, reproducibility and code-writing in academia.

The outgoing FDA commissioner’s comments on the slow integration of data from mobile platforms into clinical research highlight the challenges facing real-world applications of wearables.