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Stones traversing Death Valley in California; innovations in biomedicine often stall or die traversing the funding lacuna between basic research and product development (the so-called Valley of Death). Credit: Georg Gerster/Photo Researchers, Inc.
This Cambridge, Massachusetts–based startup aims to use oligonucleotides to downregulate long noncoding RNAs in epigenetic disorders and to modulate crop traits.
There was a time when academia viewed industry simply as a cash cow; today, it's all about sharing common goals and mutual respect for cultural differences.
New data indicating underreporting of federal funding in academic biomedical patents highlight the pressing need for greater transparency under the Bayh-Dole Act.
Metagenomics reveals the identities of the microorganisms that make up the endophytic and rhizosphere microbiomes of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
The authors propose that the increasing risk of biopharma investing can be reduced through megafunds that support many biomedical programs and attract investment from large institutions such as pension funds.
Komori et al. show that hepatocytes, pancreatic islets and thymocytes flourish in the mouse lymph node, suggesting that lymph nodes could serve as a transplantation site for cell therapies.
By combining two metabolic labeling techniques, Eichelbaum et al. detect and quantify large numbers of secreted proteins, including low-abundance proteins such as cytokines.
Bacchus et al. describe the first experiments in mammalian cells that distribute complex behavior across several types of engineered cells, thereby mimicking natural multicellular systems.
The present system for commercializing biomedical research remains woefully inefficient and underpowered. This issue of Nature Biotechnologycollects several articles that describe alternatives to current pathways for clinical translation of academic discovery.