Volume 29 Issue 3, March 2011

The author of the landmark book Science Business: the Promise, the Reality and the Future of Biotech discusses key challenges in life science commercialization.

A longtime investor, company founder, investment banker and industry observer discusses the factors shaping biotech financing.

The executive director of the Deloitte Center for Healthcare Solutions discusses how the changing policy and reimbursement environment is likely to affect the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors.

An industry veteran talks about the challenges facing a world-leading pharmaceutical corporation.

The man spearheading Pfizer's Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) initiative outlines how his company hopes to spur academia collaborations.

The former National Institutes of Health (NIH) director lays out the numerous challenges facing the translation of academic discoveries.

The executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore surveys the changing global landscape of healthcare provisioning.

The inventor of humanized monoclonal antibodies and cofounder of Cambridge Antibody Technology, Greg Winter, muses on the future of antibody therapeutics and UK life science innovation.

Lee Hood outlines his vision of personalized medicine for the next 10 years.

A decade after publishing the seminal “The hallmarks of cancer” paper in Cell with Doug Hanahan, Robert Weinberg reflects on where we stand in the fight against cancer.

A trailblazer in the field of antibiotics reflects on natural product discovery in the genomic age.

An authority on hematopoiesis talks about the difficulties encountered in commercializing stem cell therapies.

A research leader at a major agrochemical company comments on the application of biotechnologies in commercial crop science.

Reflecting on progress in the bioenergy sector, Lee Lynd considers the prospects of producing liquid biofuels on a scale sufficient to impact energy challenges.

Apart from a drug produced in rabbits, 2010 was in some ways an unremarkable year for biologic drugs coming onto the market. Emphasis on safety may be keeping the reins on new product registrations for some time to come. Jim Kling reports.

Applications of crowdsourcing in commercial biotech remain few and far between, but the approach is proving increasingly popular for solving challenges in basic research. Clare Sansom reports.

Technology pioneers trade views with a clinician and an entrepreneur on the likely impact of large-scale systems technology in healthcare.

Authors of the past five years' most highly cited research articles discuss their work and new directions in their respective areas.

A look back shows that broad patents are a thing of the past and biotech inventors face heightened requirements for patentability.

Analysis of a test set of cell lines shows that induced pluripotent stem cells perform as well as embryonic stem cells in differentiating to motor neurons.

The affinities of small molecules for proteins in megadalton complexes can be measured by mass spectrometry.

Implantable devices that measure the cumulative release of biomarkers promise new diagnostic options.

Human genome pioneer David Haussler talks about the evolving role of annotated data repositories.

Bantscheff et al. use chemoproteomics to measure the affinity of small molecules for megadalton protein complexes in cell extracts. Differences in the selectivity of HDAC inhibitors observed when native HDAC complexes are compared with their purified catalytic subunits suggest the limitations of using isolated recombinant proteins in certain drug screens.

Anterior foregut endoderm is the precursor of various tissues that might be amenable to cell replacement therapy, including thymus, thyroid, lung and trachea. Green et al. present a method for generating this endoderm subtype from human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells.

Profiles of biomarker accumlation may sometimes offer more clinically useful information than assays taken at discrete time points. Ling et al. use implantable sensors to show that cumulative measurements of three clinically relevant cardiac biomarkers correlate with infarct size in a mouse model of heart attack.

Previous work has suggested that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are inferior to embryonic stem cells (ESCs) with respect to in vitro differentiation, raising questions about the utility of iPSCs for disease modeling. Characterization of a test set of 16 human iPSC lines shows that they perform as well as ESCs in differentiating to motor neurons.

An innovative program supports the career development of women scientists in academia and industry.

Nature Biotechnology is 15! We have brought together a collection of commentaries, features and profiles from thought-leaders in the sector that touch upon the issues that are likely to be important in the coming years.