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Proposed US legislation aiming to expand and expedite patient access to novel drugs represents a good start, but is unlikely to strongly boost approval numbers.
US biotech seems reenergized, but unsettled policy questions take a back seat to pending national elections, particularly with the presidency at stake. Jeffrey L Fox reports.
Securing a partner is only the beginning—you then have to put substantial effort and resources into keeping the collaboration functioning and productive.
The provision of a patent system that protects innovators and researchers while ensuring reasonable access to emerging technologies and medical treatments are the key objectives of the Australian government's response to three important reports concerning Australia's patent system and gene patents.
A new statistical method called MIC can find diverse types of correlations in large data sets. Nature Biotechnology asked eight experts to weigh in on its utility.
Vaccination with a virus-expressed cDNA library derived from normal prostate cells can cure established prostate cancer in mouse models. Pulido et al. extend this approach and identify specific tumor-associated antigens from tumor-derived virus-expressed cDNA libraries that can be used in combination to cure established melanoma in mice.
A key obstacle to sequencing DNA as it passes through a nanopore is that the translocation rate is too fast to resolve individual bases. Cherf et al. solve this problem with an improved method for ratcheting DNA forward and backward through the nanopore using a DNA polymerase.
Protein nanopores are being developed as sensors that could perform rapid, electronic sequencing of long single molecules of DNA. Manrao et al. report the first demonstration of single nucleotide–resolution current traces from a nanopore, and show that these data can be mapped to known DNA sequences.
Expressing heterologous pathways in cells can create detrimental metabolic imbalances. Zhang et al. increase the yield of a biofuel by engineering regulators in Escherichia coli that sense and adjust pathway expression based on the presence of key intermediate metabolites.
Salinization of cultivated land and the need to increase agricultural productivity make the development of salt-resistant crops imperative. Field trials show that a durum wheat containing a sodium transporter derived from an ancestral wheat relative produces substantially more grain than a commercial durum wheat lacking this transporter on saline soil.
Professional master's degrees have a proven record of benefitting science-oriented individuals, reorienting their career towards nontraditional fields.