#55 - Of mice, cats, and medicine
The coffee break biotech roundup, by SomX.
Hello you curious cats,
This week’s news bounds from Petri dish to purring patient: eight babies have been born through three-parent IVF, AstraZeneca is betting big on blood pressure, ScienceMachine’s AI agent may just outwork your busiest postdoc, a microbiome booster for cancer therapy has shown effectiveness in mice, and pet cats with long‑COVID‑like symptoms are giving researchers fresh clues on immune recovery.
Miaow for now,
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Discover 🔍
👶🏻 Eight healthy babies born after IVF using DNA from three people (The Guardian): The UK's pioneering Mitochondrial Donation Therapy has just delivered eight healthy babies, born to seven women, with one pregnancy still brewing. The brilliant IVF technique combines genetic material from three people to cleverly sidestep severe inherited mitochondrial diseases. Newcastle University reports all little ones show zero signs of the life-threatening conditions, with genetic tests revealing barely any mutant mitochondrial levels.
Our take: A genetic ménage à trois with spectacular benefits! Mutations in mitochondria can lead to developmental issues in babies, and impacts all the eggs a mother will produce. By replacing the nucleus of a donor’s fertilised egg with the nucleus of the parent’s fertilised egg, MDT allows babies – with a full set of parental chromosomes – to grow alongside non-mutated mitochondria, dramatically reducing the risk of mitochondrial disease. Who knew three really could be the magic number?
🩸 AstraZeneca’s $1.3B bet on CinCor’s blood pressure med appears to pay off with Phase 3 win (Fierce Biotech): Baxdrostat has nailed its Phase 3 trial, hitting its primary endpoint in 796 patients with stubborn high blood pressure and delivering statistically significant drops in systolic readings. This aldosterone synthase inhibitor boasts a novel mechanism targeting aldosterone dysregulation – a fancy way of saying it tackles the hormonal culprit behind salt retention and vascular stiffness, with a reassuringly clean safety profile to boot.
Our take: A solution without cortisol as collateral damage! Baxdrostat’s party trick selectively inhibits CYP11B2 (aldosterone's maker) while leaving CYP11B1 (cortisol's maker) alone – no easy feat given how similar these enzymes are. This upstream approach could shift cardio-renal medicine from reactive symptom management to addressing the hormonal puppet master. Phase 3 trials are also in swing for primary aldosteronism, and in combination with Farxiga for chronic kidney disease.
🦾 ScienceMachine raises $3.5M for leading autonomous AI in biotech research (Tech.eu): Meet Sam, the autonomous AI bioinformatician that never sleeps. The London-based AI startup built Sam to tackle the industry's headaches of data overload and dwindling scientists. The aim is for Sam to plug into lab workflows and continuously crunch experimental data to spot patterns, automating entire analysis pipelines. The company claims that users get results in 1/3 of the time, with lower costs AND higher quality outcomes.
Our take: Small biotech companies have long been locked out of sophisticated data analysis due to prohibitive costs. If Sam delivers, it could flip the competitive landscape by giving scrappy startups access to enterprise-level analytical firepower. This shifts the bottleneck from talent acquisition to data quality and experimental design – a much more scalable problem to solve.
🐭 Found: a human gut microbe that makes cancer therapy more effective in mice (Nature): Enter Hominenteromicrobium mulieris, a humble gut bacterium that's been boosting cancer checkpoint inhibitor drugs in mice. Checkpoint inhibitors only seem to work for a fraction of patients – a major clinical headache – but, by stimulating dendritic cells, this cheeky little microbe helps the drugs activate more cancer fighting T cells. The team at Tokyo's National Cancer Center found this strain after analysing faecal samples from 50 cancer patients.
Our take: Previous studies waved hands about "gut diversity" affecting immunotherapy, but this research delivers a specific microbial hero with defined mechanisms. What’s more, the shift from correlative microbiome studies to functional strain discovery opens doors for targeted live biotherapeutic products rather than messy faecal transplants. If human trials succeed, microbial strains could deliver consistent immunotherapy enhancement where broad-spectrum approaches have failed.
And finally…
🐈 Feline fever: Cell therapy in cats sheds clues on long COVID (GEN): Mesenchymal stromal cell therapy (MSC) has given an immune boost to cats suffering from FIP, a coronavirus disease that mirrors human Long COVID through widespread inflammation and immune chaos. Amir Kol's UC Davis team studied real cats in vets, rather than laboratory models, combining MSCs with FDA-approved FIP antiviral GS-441524. The therapy perked up immune recovery and improved long-term immune memory.
Our take: Veterinary clinical trials are a research sweet spot. These cats aren't lab-bred animals with artificially induced disease but real patients with naturally occurring illness, making findings more relevant to human complexity than typical rodent studies. As regulators increasingly frown upon preclinical animal testing, veterinary trials cleverly bridge the discovery-to-human gap with better predictive power and fewer ethical headaches.
Tune in 🎧
👑 Prophets of Technology – the OG influencers: Explore AI's transformative impact through in-depth conversations with tech visionaries, futurists, and innovators who are predicting and actively shaping our digital future.
🎂 Why are we living so long? Global lifespan has dramatically increased. This episode dives into the reasons why, and explores future longevity possibilities and their ethical implications.
💰 What science is the UK government funding? The UK's £22 billion research investment includes ocean conservation efforts, groundbreaking dinosaur discoveries, and the latest scientific breakthroughs from laboratories worldwide.
Apply ✍️
🎓 PhD student in 3D-Printed Drug Delivery “Microbots” for Personalised Healthcare, University of Nottingham: Fancy designing shape-shifting drug couriers? This PhD explores 3D-printed microbots that respond to pH, light or temperature for personalised delivery, built in world-class biofabrication labs.
🍎 Lecturer in Biotechnology, University of Bath: Got research that packs a punch? Contribute to a thriving biotech department while leading work in areas like synthetic biology, drug resistance or plant and microbial therapeutics.
⚙️ Pharmaceutical Operator Specialist I, Evotec: Comfortable in the pilot plant? Operate large-scale chemical syntheses for developmental and commercial products in a GMP environment with kit most chemists only dream of.
RSVP 📆
🇹🇼 23-27.07 | BIO Asia Taiwan 2025 | Taipei, Taiwan: Co-organised by BIO and Taiwan BIO, this flagship forum draws biotech leaders from 50+ countries.
🧫 29-31.07 | Designer Biology 2025 Conference | Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Scientists spotlight the latest in bioengineering, synthetic biology and biomaterials – from protein design to functionalised materials.
🇵🇱 29-31.07 | BioTech 2025: International Conference on Biotech Innovation | Krakow, Poland: Global experts, entrepreneurs and policymakers convene to map out the newest cross-industry biotech advances.
We’re SomX – a communications and creative agency trusted by biotech, pharma and healthtech pioneers. We craft strategy, content, PR and design that translate complex biology into compelling stories and investor‑ready excitement. Get in touch to amplify your science beyond the lab bench.