Volume 39 Issue 9, September 2021

Nature Biotechnology’s annual survey highlights university startups that are, among other things, rethinking how to deliver gene-editing therapy and tackling various metabolic conditions, immune disorders and cancer with microbiome treatments or immunotherapy. Michael Eisenstein, Ken Garber, Esther Landhuis, Caroline Seydel and Laura DeFrancesco report.

A historical analysis of oncology deals can help bioentrepreneurs navigate the right time for partnerships and exits and can inform on the type of investors likely to be interested.

A study of the seasonality and overall quantity and quality of Chinese patenting, including international comparisons, suggests that government planning and annual targets encouraged gaming of the system, which increased patent counts but negatively affected patent quality.

Recent patents relating to methods of making and using organoids.

An implanted device in the brain enables wireless neural monitoring and stimulation for up to 15 months following implantation.

DNA methylation is efficiently profiled in non-coding regulatory sequences in single cells.

Cell-ID facilitates the analysis of cell-type heterogeneity and cell identity across multiple samples at the single-cell level.

A comprehensive comparison of 20 single-cell RNA-seq datasets derived from the two cell lines analyzed using six preprocessing pipelines, eight normalization methods and seven batch-correction algorithms derived from four different sequencing platforms at different centers.

Reliable detection of mutations below 0.5% variant allele frequency remains a key challenge for circulating tumor DNA sequencing assays.

Next-generation sequencing platforms are benchmarked using human, bacterial and metagenomics reference materials.

Recommendations are given on optimal read coverage and selection of calling algorithm to maximize the reproducibility of cancer mutation detection in whole-genome or whole-exome sequencing.

Tumor–normal paired DNA samples from a breast cancer cell line and a matched lymphoblastoid cell line enable calibration of clinical sequencing pipelines and benchmarking ‘tumor-only’ or ‘matched tumor–normal’ analyses.

Community building should be integrated into the graduate classroom to foster the development of a professional identity and build connections between students and faculty.

Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.