标签：#Biotechnology and health

I knew I’d officially become a ‘longevity influencer’ this month when a company called Generation Lab reached out to offer me the chance to write about—and even receive—their new rejuvenation treatment, an injectable combination of two existing drugs which they call 1 Generation. This wasn’t just any antiaging treatment, either. A company fact sheet says that…

Counting the creatures in the world around us is critical for a raft of conservation efforts. It helps scientists gauge biodiversity, track migration, and spot invasive species. That census-taking, though, often requires humans to tabulate what they see, trap, or otherwise sense—a potentially laborious, costly process that can still leave gaps. But developments over the…

When the biotech company Insilico Medicine used its computer models to propose a promising drug for pulmonary fibrosis, it enthusiastically claimed in a press release that the molecule had been “discovered by” its generative AI platform. Insilico leads a pack of companies using AI to rapidly come up with drug ideas humans might never think…

This week I spoke to scientists who have found a way to turn male mouse embryos female. They’ve developed a CRISPR-based approach to essentially cut out the Y chromosome. It allowed them to create female clones of male mice. That’s right: female animals that are genetically identical to males, except for the missing Y chromosome.…

In 2017, Deanne Taylor attended a presentation at the University of Pennsylvania, just a short walk from her office. A researcher was there to unveil the Human Cell Atlas, an ambitious project that aimed to map every cell in the human body. Taylor was floored, and then concerned. As details emerged, she discovered that the…

Scientists have deliberately turned male mouse embryos into females for the first time. A team based in Japan used a CRISPR-based approach to remove the Y chromosome from male cells and create female clones of male mice. “No one has done this before,” says Monika Ward, a reproductive biologist at the University of Hawaii, who…

Kris DeVault is desperate. His son, Brody, was born in March 2023. It wasn’t long before he started to show signs of developmental delay, says DeVault. As time went on, Brody started missing key milestones in speech, movement, and coordination, he says. When Brody was around two and a half years old, a genetic test…

As of this week in Montana, any biotech company with an experimental drug has a clear path to selling it to consumers. Companies whose drugs have been through preliminary testing—sometimes in as few as 10 healthy people—can pay $12,500 to apply to a newly established review board for approval. Once its treatment is rubber-stamped, the…

This week, I covered a fascinating effort to preserve organs outside the body. There’s a huge shortage of donor organs, and one of the main reasons is time—they survive only a matter of hours outside the body, even when they’re kept on ice. Doctors dream of organ banks—stores of human organs that can be preserved…

When it comes to organ donation, time is everything. As soon as an organ has been carefully removed from a donor’s body, it starts to deteriorate. Surgeons have a matter of hours to get it into a recipient. Leave it too long and the organ will become unusable. In most cases, organs will be kept…

Perimenopause has entered the chat. Perimenopause—and its better-known relative, menopause—used to be considered taboo. Not anymore, thanks at least in part to TV doctors and social media influencers. Perhaps it’s my age, but these days, both my algorithm and my conversations with friends increasingly swing toward perimenopause. Menopause is defined as the life stage that…

Ties van der Meer doesn’t know how many siblings he has. The 47-year-old was conceived at a private fertility clinic in the Netherlands using sperm provided by an anonymous donor. After the Netherlands banned anonymous donation in 2004, the doctor who ran the clinic destroyed records that might have identified those donors, he says. He…

It’s not easy to transplant a whole human eye. The surgery is difficult. And the eyes themselves start to degenerate as soon as they’ve left the body. When surgeons attempted it a few years ago, the newly-transplanted eye wasn’t able to see. But researchers believe they might have a solution: a device that maintains and…

As the parent of two little girls, I often think about how their childhood is different from mine. The seven-year-old is learning about AI at school. The five-year-old is given internet-based homework every week. And they are both absolutely repulsed by the idea of smoking. That was not the prevailing sentiment when I was young.…

Listen to the session or watch below Billions of dollars are flooding into efforts to reverse aging as scientists explore ways to return cells to a younger state. But how far off are these experimental treatments? Will they really work? Watch a conversation exploring longevity’s new focus. Speakers: Mary Beth Griggs, science editor and Jessica…

It’s been hot in London this week. Really hot. A dangerous heat wave has hit Western Europe. Yesterday, the UK recorded its highest ever June temperature at 36.1 °C (about 97 °F). But as the weather app on my phone confirmed, it felt like 39 °C. It’s frightening that we are seeing such temperatures in…

The common cold comes for us all—often more than once a year. And there is no way to prevent it. The best you can do is take vitamin C and stay away from people with the sniffles. Now, the payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new…

This week, I covered the story of Casey Harrell—a man with ALS who is “the first power user” of a brain implant, according to the researchers who worked with him. Harrell is paralyzed and unable to speak coherently without the device. He has now spent almost three years using a brain-computer interface (BCI) that enables…

Casey Harrell has had a set of electrodes embedded in his brain for almost three years. Harrell, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and is paralyzed, first used his brain-computer interface (BCI) to “speak” sentences with the help of a research team in 2023. Since then, Harrell has clocked thousands of hours of use. He…

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of science and technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. Your brain lives in the dark space of your skull. Yet it knows when the wind lifts the hairs on your skin, when your heart is…