An explosion started a fire at a Russian research center that houses smallpox and Ebola, blowing out glass windows and inflicting third-degree burns on one worker, although state-run media said that there is no danger to the general population.

The State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, also known as the Vector Institute, is one of only two places in the world that still houses the smallpox virus, after the WHO declared the disease eradicated in 1980. The other is — somewhat controversially — the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.

Versant is once again stepping off the beaten track in biotech to see if they can blaze a trail of their own in a field that has looked too thorny to many investors for years.

The venture group and their partners at Apple Tree are bringing their latest creation out of stealth mode today. Born in Versant’s Inception Sciences’ Chinook Therapeutics is betting that its preclinical take on kidney disease can get an early lead among the companies starting up in the field.

AC Immune, the Swiss biotech known for its tau approach to Alzheimer’s, is shining light on another misfolding protein believed to be responsible for other neurodegenerative diseases in a new research pact with the University of Pennsylvania.

The transactive response (TAR) DNA binding protein, or TDP-43 in short, is found in most human tissues but its misfolded form was identified in 2006 as a common pathologic substance linking frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Researchers have since suggested that when in the wrong shape, the protein activates the “cell autophagy gene” ATG7, which prompts neurons to decompose.

Back in 2016, Adrian Hayday and his colleagues at King’s College London — together with some collaborators in Germany and Estonia — made a splash in the immunology world with a paper, published in Cell, suggesting that patients with a particular genetic defect produce more autoantibodies than previously known. These self-generated antibodies, they proposed, offered therapeutic potential for autoimmune diseases, most prominently Type 1 diabetes.

Boris Johnson may have pledged to continue building on Britain’s “enormous strengths” in life science as he blazes a path toward Brexit, but one of the country’s top funders of biomedical research is demanding more.

In a letter to the UK’s new Prime Minister, Wellcome Trust warned that “the final months of 2019 could be a tipping point for UK science” and leaving the EU without a deal is a threat to the thriving sector. Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, who chairs the charity, urged Johnson to make a significant statement on science to lay out his vision in the face of global health emergencies and the looming loss of access to collaboration with European peers.

At PACT Pharma, the lofty goal to unleash a “tsunami” of T cells personalized for each patient has hinged on the ability to correctly identify the neoantigens that form something of a fingerprint for each tumor, and extract the small group of T cells primed to attack the cancer. It still has a long way to go testing a treatment in humans, but the biotech says it has nailed that highly technical piece of the process.

Roche’s Genentech has just completed the latest in a string of discovery deals with a lineup of much, much smaller companies looking to do new things in drug development.

Right on the heels of the news of Sosei’s coup bringing Genentech on board as a partner for its GPCR platform, the prolific dealmakers at Skyhawk — run by Bill Haney — have just added the storied biotech subsidiary as its latest partner in the world of drugging RNA.