Want to stay on top of the science and politics driving biotech today? Sign up to get our biotech newsletter in your inbox. Hello! Don’t recognize the avatar above? I’m Elaine, the new co-author of this newsletter. I’m very excited to be here. Scroll down to the last item for more about me. The need-to-know this morning Novartis raised its financial outlook for the year after reporting better-than-expected sales and earnings for the first quarter. The Swiss drugmaker nominated Giovanni Caforio, the former CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb, as its new chairman to replace&nbs ..read more

The ambitious idea of using CRISPR to cure genetic diseases before birth is one step closer to reality. Scientists reported on Monday that they used a form of the technology known as “base editing” to alter the DNA of laboratory monkeys in the womb, substantially reducing the levels of a toxic protein that causes a fatal liver disease before the animals had even been born. The research, by a team at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), will be presented next month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, potentially p ..read more

Want to stay on top of the science and politics driving biotech today? Sign up to get our biotech newsletter in your inbox. Hello, everyone. Damian here with an update on the biotech market, a look at the future of genome editing, and the evolving definition of “insider trading.” Read the rest ..read more

The world’s first recipient of a kidney transplant from a genetically modified pig experienced a rejection episode before recovering and leaving the hospital last week, a Massachusetts General Hospital doctor told STAT. But in his first few days back at home in Weymouth, Mass., the patient — 62-year-old Richard Slayman — had shown no further signs of organ distress. Rather, he was doing things he hadn’t done in more than a year, like eating whatever he was craving and taking a long, hot shower. Read the rest ..read more

Humans have long tinkered with the evolutionary trajectories of other species. Thousands of years ago we tamed wolves into dogs and transformed a wild grass into the agricultural wonder wheat. Within the past few centuries, we exterminated the Tasmanian tiger and doomed the dodo bird to oblivion. Now, we stand on the brink of an ambitious new era in how humans may transfigure life around us: by pursuing the science of de-extinction, or the resurrection of species once lost to this world. Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary biologist, an ancient DNA adventurer who has collected fossilized bison bon ..read more

Want to stay on top of the science and politics driving biotech today? Sign up to get our biotech newsletter in your inbox. Hi, it’s Meghana. Today, Illumina finally finds an advocate in the EU, a CRISPRed pig kidney is transplanted into a living human, and more. Read the rest ..read more

Is there a cure for allergies? Has the FDA become too flexible? And which drugs make you muscular? We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. Recorded live from from the STAT Breakthrough Summit East in New York City, we discuss some event highlights, including words from CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals head scientist George Yancopoulos. We also discuss the latest news in the life sciences, including a twist in the GLP-1 story, the cost of gene therapy, and, of course, pie. Read the rest ..read more

CRISPR is no longer a promising but unproven technology — it is a reality. But for this powerful gene-editing tool to reach its full potential, researchers and disease advocates say they’ll have to solve a thorny problem: connecting patients suffering from devastating diseases with therapies that could help them. Experts pointed to lab-developed tests, or LDTs, as one important element that could help make this connection during a panel at the STAT Breakthrough Summit East in New York on Thursday. These tests, which are performed by certified labs using clinical samples, are playing an increas ..read more

When the first biotech companies emerged to capitalize on the revolutionary genome-editing technology CRISPR, Editas Medicine seemed like the pacesetter. It locked up some of the crucial IP, and had behind it the pioneering scientist Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute as one of its founders. But now, a decade later, Editas is seen as lagging behind its peers. CRISPR Therapeutics, in partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, won the race to get the first CRISPR-based medicine across the finish line. Intellia Therapeutics was the first to show that CRISPR editing could be performed inside the body ..read more

In a new test of xenotransplantation, a medical team at Massachusetts General Hospital announced Thursday that, for the first time, it had transplanted a kidney from a CRISPR gene-edited pig into a living patient. Surgeons performed the milestone procedure over four hours on Saturday, March 16, without complications. The organ recipient, a 62-year-old man named Richard Slayman, had previously received a human kidney transplant, but it failed after about five years, requiring him to resume kidney dialysis in 2023. As of Thursday morning, Slayman, a manager with the Massachusetts Department of T ..read more