The Bio Report

• Harnessing Myeloid Cells to Attack Cancer

  The advent of immunotherapies is transforming cancer care. While early efforts have focused on enabling T cells to attack cancers, Myeloid Therapeutics is developing next-generation immunotherapies that use mRNA to train myeloid cells to attack cancer. We spoke to Daniel Getts, founder and CEO of Myeloid Therapeutics, about the limitations of existing immunotherapies, the role myeloid cells play in the immune system, and the benefits of the company’s therapeutic approach.

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• Drawing Lessons from the COVID Pandemic

  Despite having taken steps to prepare for a possible pandemic, the United States fared poorly during the COVID outbreak relative to other developed nations. It also sharpened political divides as conspiracy theories and misinformation spread on social media. In “COVID Wars: America’s Struggle Over Public Health and Personal Freedom,” tech entrepreneur-turned-historian Ronald Gruner takes a deep dive into the public data surrounding the pandemic. We spoke to Gruner about putting the pandemic in historical perspective, what the data showed, and the lessons to be learned.

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• A Bet that Myostatins Can Muscle Out Obesity

  GLP-1 agonists have been a breakthrough for the treatment of obesity, a global problem with serious health risks. While the benefits of these therapies are seen as outweighing the risks, there have been some concerns about the loss of muscle mass, particularly in older people using these drugs. iBio is developing next-generation obesity therapies that may be able to be used in combination with GLP-1 agonists or by themselves. Its lead experimental therapy is a myostatin inhibitor, part of a class of therapies that have been of interest to treat muscle wasting. We spoke to Martin Brenner, CEO and chief scientific officer of iBIO, about obesity, the limits of GLP-1 agonists, and the potential for myostatin inhibitors alone or in combination with GLP-1 agonists.

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• Making Whole-Eye Transplantation a Reality

  At the end of 2024, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health awarded a team led by the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and including the Foundation Fighting Blindness and six other research groups, up to $46 million to advance research to enable human eye transplants to restore vision in people who are blind. The goal of the project is to make whole eye transplantation a reality by 2030. We spoke to Kia Washington, the project’s principal investigator and professor of surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine; and Chad Jackson,  senior director of preclinical translational research at the Foundation Fighting Blindness about why no one has been able to restore vision through whole eye transplantation yet, the technological advancements that now put the goal in reach, and why maintaining and restoring the optic nerve remains a central challenge.

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• Synbio Companies Come to Grips with the One “Omic” that Matters

  Synthetic biology companies have faced a difficult few years as share prices have been battered and investment in the sector has waned. As investors and companies are readying to gather for the annual SynBioBeta conference in San Jose May 5 through 8, a new report from the bipartisan National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology warns that the United States is at risk of losing its leadership to China and is calling for a $15 billion investment into biotech over the next five years to support startups that strengthen national security. We spoke to John Cumbers, founder and CEO of SynBioBeta, about the state of synthetic biology, the policy landscape, and the upcoming SynBioBeta 2025 conference. (Listeners of The Bio Report wishing to attend SynBioBeta can use the discount code “thebioreport” to save on their registration at synbiobeta.com.)  

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