The human brain has a waterfall around it, according to Tal Iram, a postdoc in neuroscience at Stanford.

That waterfall, the cerebrospinal fluid, is a salty and metallic stew of nutrients and proteins that are vital to the brain and nervous system, but is mostly known as the simple cushion that surrounds the brain and protects it from bumps and bruises.

However, a new study suggests that the cushiony waterfall stew may play an active role in aging and memory.

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After years of partnering with the pharma industry, Illumina is now making its own foray into drug discovery. The DNA sequencing company is entering a 5-year collaboration with Deerfield Management to use its genomic tools and AI-driven platform to identify new therapeutic targets and bend the curve on high failure rates.

The inklings of the partnership began in 2020 when Illumina bought BlueBee, a cloud computing company which was also in contract with Deerfield at the time, Matt Nelson, VP of genetics and genomics at Deerfield Discovery and Development, told Endpoints News.

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Researchers have identified a class of T cells with an unconventional tumor-homing mechanism that could point the way to new types of cancer immunotherapies.

In immune checkpoint therapy, monoclonal antibodies prevent PD-1, a “checkpoint protein” on certain tumors from binding to the T cell and turning the T cell off. The T cells can thus remain on and destroy cancerous cells presenting with certain tumor antigens.

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When Longxing Cao arrived as a postdoc at the University of Washington in 2017, David Baker’s lab was already known as the leader in a niche field of designing new proteins from scratch.

The idea was to replace, or supplement, the usual method for designing new proteins, i.e. borrowing from evolution. To come up with most new biologic therapies for cancer or infectious disease, for example, researchers generally filter out the best antibodies mice or humans develop against a virus or bits of a tumor. Maybe they’ll tinker with it a little.

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Moderna has spent the last year and a half, since their Covid-19 shots first neared authorization, steadily announcing new vaccine projects. Most of these have been welcomed by vaccinologists and public health researchers, who long struggled to get industry interested in certain pathogens such as Nipah or EBV, despite the threat they posed.

But on Tuesday, the mRNA biotech disclosed a new program that had some in the vaccine world scratching their chins.

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When the next pandemic hits, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Open Philanthropy and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation don’t want the world to be scrambling to develop oral antiviral drugs — or poor countries to be struggling to access them.

That’s why the three charity groups are pooling together $90 million to fund a new initiative called Pandemic Antiviral Discovery, or PAD.

The goal is simple: to help researchers identify and develop Phase II-ready antiviral candidates targeting “pandemic threat viruses, including coronaviruses, paramyxoviruses, and orthomyxoviruses.”

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