<strong>Background:</strong> Adolescents waiting for mental health treatment often experience significant unmet psychological needs, including severe psychological distress, increased use of maladaptive coping strategies, and feelings of abandonment. However, current wait time support offerings across the mental health sector are sparse and lack clear evidence of effectiveness. <strong>Objective:</strong> Using design thinking, this early report describes the development of a service blueprint for a new model of care (<i>While We Wait</i>) designed to address the psychological needs of adolescents during the wait time for mental health treatment in Australia through targeted support from general practitioners (GPs) and brief, self-directed digital interventions. <strong>Methods:</strong> In partnership with health service designers from Deloitte Digital Australia, we conducted a rapid 6-week health service design sprint. This industry-led methodology involved iterative weekly activities, including the development of service user personas and service experience principles, consultation sessions with 12 youth with lived experience experts (aged 18 to 20 years) and 15 GPs, insight synthesis, and service blueprint development. <strong>Results:</strong> The design sprint produced a service blueprint anchored in 5 service experience principles: “I’m never alone,” “It’s for me,” “I’m in control,” “It’s easy to use,” and “It lifts me up.” The proposed service model incorporated a five-stage service journey: (1) recognition (the adolescent acknowledges the need for support), (2) initial consultation and onboarding with the GP, (3) support and monitoring, (4) preparation for treatment, and (5) transition to specialist care and follow-up. Key adolescent service outcomes included uptake, acceptability, self-advocacy, mental health and well-being, perceived quality of care, and help seeking intentions and behaviors. For GPs, outcomes included uptake, feasibility, acceptability, and confidence in supporting adolescents during the wait time. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> This work demonstrates that a rapid, industry-led design thinking approach may help identify priorities for developing services that address adolescents’ needs during the wait time for mental health treatment. The project also highlights the value of co-designing mental health services with lived experience experts and service providers. Together, these findings suggest that the wait time may represent an important opportunity for early therapeutic engagement rather than a passive delay before treatment.
Tracking microbes is challenging, particularly when there are coexisting strains of the same species within metagenomic data. However, overcoming that challenge is important for inferring transmission of both pathogenic and commensal microbes.
A new tool, called TRAnsmision Clustering of Strains (TRACS), distinguishes between closely related bacterial strains. The “highly accurate algorithm” can be used for “estimating genetic distances between strains at the level of individual single nucleotide polymorphisms, which is robust to intra-species diversity within the host.”
Researchers used the TRACS tool to map the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Plasmodium falciparum (the causative agent of malaria) across different populations. The tool may play an important role in infection prevention, outbreak response, and the development of treatments designed to help the human microbiome fight infection. They note that this tool can be used across microbial kingdoms to uncover strain dynamics.
“Traditionally, this has been very difficult for us to achieve, yet it is incredibly important to know, as people can carry several slightly different versions or strains of the same species at once, which makes it challenging to understand how microbes move between individuals,” notes Gerry Tonkin-Hill, PhD, group leader at the the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the Peter Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. “Using this new technology, we can now overcome this challenge and gain a clearer picture of how microbes are shared between people. This will give us a better understanding of how microbes spread to help us prevent infection in vulnerable populations, like our cancer patients.”
Being able to track the spread of pathogens using genomics has become a major tool in public health and can help inform new ways to prevent transmission. Additionally, it can help understand more about how lifestyle and environmental factors are involved in the transmission of these pathogens, and their role in the microbiome.
Currently, genomic tools used to track multiple bacterial species do not have the speed and flexibility required for routine public health monitoring and can struggle to distinguish between samples transmitted recently and those transmitted years ago. Furthermore, it can be difficult to continuously add in new samples, making real-time surveillance difficult.
The TRACS algorithm identifies and analyzes Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) to estimate how closely related the pathogens are, and if they are likely to have recently been transmitted. This approach allows for the continuous integration of new samples, making it an ideal tool for accurately identifying transmission networks and ruling out transmission events in ongoing public health applications.
In this new study, the team used TRACS to map pathogen transmission networks across three different populations, all of which had different genomic data. They applied it to SARS-CoV-2 data from U.K. hospitals, deep population sequencing data of Streptococcus pneumoniae and single-cell genome sequencing data from malaria patients infected with Plasmodium falciparum. They found that the tool was able to identify different pathogens in one sample and infer where these were each transmitted.
They also used TRACS to study how microbes are passed from mothers to infants and found that one beneficial bacterium, Bifidobacterium breve, persisted in infants longer than previously recognized, something that previous methods have missed.
More superficially, the authors note that “applying TRACS to gut metagenomic samples from a mother–infant cohort revealed species-specific transmission rates and identified increased the persistence of Bifidobacterium breve in infants, a finding previously missed owing to the presence of multiple strains.”
“This research could support the development of new treatments that use beneficial microbes to improve health,” notes Trevor Lawley, PhD, group leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. “By understanding exactly how microbes move between people and which of them are more likely to thrive in their microbiome, we could design better ways to increase helpful gut microbes and investigate whether there are ways to use these to help prevent infections, opening the door to safer healthcare environments and new microbiome-based therapies.”
Smack dab between Australia and South America, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel Rainier is currently on a mission to map more than 8,000 square nautical miles of the Pacific seafloor in search of critical mineral deposits. But it isn’t doing it alone; for a month starting this week, it will deploy two oblong neon submersibles as the project’s special agents, sending them nearly 6,000 meters down to hop along the seafloor.
The submersibles, built by the young company Orpheus Ocean, are designed to explore just this environment: a squelchy substrate that teems with life of all kinds, from tiny microbes to worms and snails, along with egg-size “nodules” of metals—such as copper, cobalt, nickel, and manganese—that are crucial for technologies worldwide.
Scientists and companies have long sought to probe the deep sea and bring such treasures to the surface. Orpheus, which spun off from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in 2024, could be well positioned to make those possibilities a lot more economical. The company has designed its vehicles on a simple philosophy: “deep for cheap,” says Jake Russell, Orpheus’s cofounder and CEO, who is a chemist by training. The vehicles cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars each to build, whereas existing options can range from $5 million to $10 million. And unlike most autonomous ocean vehicles, they can push into the seafloor and capture cores of sediment—and the creatures within.
Orpheus’s engineers have been tinkering with their deep-sea designs for years, much of the work taking place at WHOI and in collaboration with NOAA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Its prototype vehicles were rated capable of diving to 11,000 meters—the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. They’ve completed two commercial deployments, but this new expedition marks the submersibles’ biggest test yet: operating over large ranges for multiple weeks and with multiple instruments at play. Using Rainier as their home base on the ocean’s surface, the vehicles will swim out for 10 kilometers at a time, taking one high-resolution image every second and up to eight physical samples from the seafloor apiece.
If all goes well, the test could help establish the vehicles as a tool for government agencies, scientists, and companies that hope to probe the vastly understudied deep sea and the resources it holds. And while they’re not the only option on the market, Orpheus hopes their size and low building cost will soon make them one of the most accessible.
At present, to reach these depths scientists must wait for time on a limited and expensive set of submersibles owned by government agencies and research institutes. That formula lends itself better to capturing snapshots of the deep sea than it does to probing its interconnected ecological and biogeochemical systems. “A lot of this region that we’re surveying … has really never been explored in any kind of detail,” says Russell. “Anything we see is going to be new to NOAA and new to science.”
A sediment specialist
The Orpheus subs are classified as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which operate on a mix of preprogrammed commands and live decision-making and without being tethered to a ship. But unlike traditional AUVs engineered for long-distance, high-speed gliding, these submersibles are short and stout with little legs—better for making soft landings on the seafloor and then pushing into the mud to suck out sediment cores for scientists. When they do land, the submersibles can lift off the surface, thrust a few feet, and settle once more in a “hopping” fashion.
Their bodies are made mostly of a buoyant material known as syntactic foam, with the important electronics encased in a thick sphere of glass. The same kind of foam, which is interspersed with hollow microspheres of glass to prevent it from collapsing under high pressures, went to the deep in the vehicle that carried the filmmaker James Cameron to the Mariana Trench in 2012; he even donated leftover material for use in earlier Orpheus prototypes.
At less than two meters in length and under 600 pounds (270 kilograms), Russell says the Orpheus robots are the smallest—and correspondingly the least expensive—ocean vehicles on the market capable of descending to 6,000 meters. They’re designed to populate future fleets of robotic explorers.
The approach stems from a fundamental challenge, says Victoria Orphan, a geobiologist at the California Institute of Technology, who has previously worked with an Orpheus vehicle on a science campaign: “Anytime you do things in the deep ocean, you always run this risk, when you put something over the side [of a ship], that it might not come back.” With existing fleets of large, expensive vessels operated by groups like NOAA, WHOI, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), losing a vehicle can be disastrous, not least because scientists must already compete for their limited time.
In the spring of 2024, Orphan and her colleagues put an Orpheus sub through its paces during an expedition to study deep-sea methane seeps off the coast of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. They hoped to use the vehicle to create maps of the area before the team sent down a human-crewed submersible called Alvin to study specific areas—and the microorganisms and animals that live there—in more detail.
But as with any sort of new type of technology, “there’s always growing pains,” recalls Orphan. Frigid temperatures and steep topography added unseen challenges, and it took the full three weeks for the sub to get high-resolution photographs of the seeps.
The setback didn’t dull Orphan’s excitement about the potential of these machines. “There’s a lot of real, unknown science right at that interface between the sediment and the ocean surface,” she says. “The Orpheus-type class of instrument, with the right kinds of sensors and samplers, could be a very enabling tool.”
Russell envisions pairing the vehicles with specially designed payloads that can sense the heat of chemical seeps and detect plumes of sediment, DNA shed from ocean life-forms, or the magnetic tug of buried cables.
The vehicles are the “the best of both worlds,” says Andrew Sweetman, a deep-sea ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, who has not worked with Orpheus. While they can roam large areas like an AUV, they can also carry out precise sampling maneuvers like a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), a robot connected to a ship via cables that fulfills real-time human commands.
In addition to the low price tag, says Sweetman, the small size of the vessels means they don’t require a large research vessel to ferry them out to sea. That might make exploration more accessible for smaller or poorer countries without such ships, he says: “It will, in a way, help democratize deep-sea science.” He imagines using the sediment cores the submersibles gather to probe how seafloor-dwelling animals cycle nutrients—a crucial element of the ocean’s role as a carbon sink.
The mining push
As much as smaller, cheaper ocean vehicles have caught scientists’ eye, they have also piqued the interest of companies. Russell says inquiries come in weekly from businesses involved in deep-sea mining, defense, offshore wind, telecommunication, and oil and gas. He notes that Orpheus is merely a “service provider,” helping collect data where needed but not making decisions about how to use the seafloor. And he says that better data—such as information on the shape of the seafloor, the sediment quality, and the presence of life—also “raises the bars” that governments and regulators are only beginning to set.
But many scientists are far from eager about the growing push for seabed mining, which an executive order from President Donald Trump stoked further last week by mandating that the US government rapidly develop mineral exploration and processing. And earlier last month, the administration announced the creation of a new government office: the Marine Minerals Administration.
A view of an Orpheus vehicle from below.
ORPHEUS OCEAN
Given the current dearth of information on the deep sea, says Sweetman, “I think the push for deep-sea mining is happening way too fast.” And deep-sea communities are “probably the most stable environment on our planet,” adds Orphan. “The organisms that live there are really not adapted to a lot of disturbance, and it takes a really, really long time for them to recover, if at all.”
One mining method that governments and companies propose involves a machine that essentially operates like a giant bulldozer, trawling the seafloor, sucking up a trail of material, and leaving scar marks and sediment plumes in its wake. Brett Hobson, an ocean engineer at MBARI, says that Orpheus-like technology might enable companies to “take samples in a more surgical way, instead of just grossly scooping everything up off the seafloor and filtering through it.”
Hobson, who has run MBARI’s work on ocean vehicles for decades, also notes that Orpheus submersibles won’t be the only option available. Companies and government agencies—including those in Norway, France, Japan, China, and the UK—are developing similar deep-sea vehicles, he says: “What we really need [as] a society is just more of these systems out there.”
As Orpheus’s neon vehicles plunge into the Pacific over the next few weeks, their readiness for future scientific and resource surveys should become clearer. Each time they dive, they will get a little bit more data—“just the smallest of postage stamps of our planet,” says Orphan. “There’s still so much to learn.”
Genomic screening is increasing rapidly, but insurance protections globally are outdated. Australia’s new law offers the clearest model yet for safeguarding public trust while supporting population genomics.
Eli Lilly has agreed to acquire Kelonia Therapeutics for up to $7 billion, the companies said today, in a deal that would bolster the buyer’s oncology pipeline with an early clinical phase lentiviral in vivo chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy under study in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.
Kelonia’s lead program KLN-1010 is a one-time intravenous gene therapy designed to generate anti-B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) CAR T cells, targeting the BCMA protein expressed on the surface of multiple myeloma cells.
In December at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2025 Annual Meeting, Kelonia presented positive early clinical data for KLN-1010 from the Phase I inMMyCARTM trial (NCT07075185). The data showed the CAR T therapy to have 100% minimal residual disease (MRD)-negative response rate across four patients, all of whom remained in response through the longest follow up of five months.
Those and other results, according to the company, provided initial clinical validation of KLN-1010 and demonstrated promising tolerability. In January, Kelonia won FDA clearance for an investigational new drug (IND) application for KLN-1010, enabling the trial to expand from Australia into multiple clinical sites across the United States.
“The early clinical data for KLN-1010 are highly encouraging, both as a potential step forward for patients with multiple myeloma and as proof of concept for Kelonia’s platform,” Jacob Van Naarden, executive vice president and president of Lilly Oncology and head of corporate business development, said in a statement.
Investors appeared more sanguine about the Kelonia acquisition as Lilly shares were all but flat in early Monday trading as of 11 a.m. ET, to $927.16 from Friday’s close of $927.03. Kelonia is privately held.
KLN-1010 applies the company’s in vivo gene placement system (iGPS®), which uses engineered lentiviral-based particles designed to efficiently and selectively enter T-cells inside the body, enabling a patient’s own body to generate CAR T therapies designed to treat underlying disease.
Lilly and Kelonia reason that KLN-1010 could transform treatment of multiple myeloma by eliminating challenges associated with both ex vivo patient-specific cell therapy manufacturing, and pre-administration chemotherapy.
“Autologous CAR T therapies have meaningfully improved outcomes for patients with various cancers, but significant manufacturing, safety, and access barriers mean that only a fraction of eligible patients actually receive them,” Van Naarden added. “Kelonia’s in vivo platform has the potential to change that by delivering rapid, durable responses in a far simpler, off-the-shelf format.”
Kelonia marks Eli Lilly’s fourth announced acquisition of a smaller biotech this year:
And in January, Lilly inked a $1.2 billion acquisition of Ventyx Biosciences, an NLRP3-targeting oral drug developer focused on inflammatory diseases.
Behind the deals
Behind all the deals is the pharma giant’s desire to capitalize on the billions of dollars it is generating from sales of its obesity and diabetes drugs based on glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor analysts alone or in tandem with a glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP). Lilly markets tirzepatide, a GLP-1/GIP dual agonist, in obesity as Zepbound® ($13.542 billion in 2025 sales) and in diabetes as Mounjaro® ($22.965 billion).
Lilly stands to generate even more in obesity-related sales in coming years once it brings to market its oral obesity drug Foundayo (orforglipron), a small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist—though analysts predict the drug’s 2026 sales will likely be lower than once expected because of the price war Foundayo faces competing head to head with Lilly’s arch-rival in obesity drugs, Novo Nordisk. In December, Novo Nordisk got a jump on Lilly when the Danish biotech giant won FDA approval for oral Wegovy® (semaglutide), a once-daily 25 mg GLP-1 receptor agonist tablet indicated for chronic weight management.
A Lilly buyout of Kelonia could compel Johnson & Johnson to take a closer look at acquiring Legend Biotech, Kostas Biliouris, PhD, a managing director on the biotechnology research team of Oppenheimer, wrote Sunday in a research note. He cited the fact J&J’s Janssen Biotech successfully partnered with Legend to develop Carvykti® (ciltacabtagene autoleucel), a B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-directed CAR T-cell therapy indicated for adults with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior line of therapy. Carvykti generated $1.877 billion in sales last year, up nearly double (96%) from $963 million in 2024.
Also, Biliouris cited the presence in Legend’s pipeline of LUCAR-G39D, a clinical in vivo CAR T program designed to treat B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by targeting CD19xCD20. LUCAR-G39D showed positive first-in-human safety and efficacy data from a Phase I trial (NCT06395870) at ASH last December.
“We believe in vivo CAR T technology has strong potential, as treatment process is fast and circumvents the need for lymphodepletion, but think it will likely take ~6-8years before safety/durability questions are addressed, and regulatory approval is granted,” Biliouris predicted.
Lilly has agreed to acquire Kelonia for $3.25 billion upfront plus up to $3.75 billion in future payments tied to achieving specified clinical, regulatory, and commercial milestones. The acquisition deal is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the second half of 2026.
Upon closing, Lilly said, it will determine how to account for the transaction in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), then reflect the deal in future financial results and financial guidance.
“Kelonia’s leadership in advancing the immense promise of in vivo cell therapy is unmatched, extending its reach and impact beyond the traditional boundaries of personalized medicine,” Kelonia CEO Kevin Friedman, PhD, stated. “We have demonstrated the ability to achieve deep multiple myeloma remissions with significantly reduced complexity and cost relative to ex vivo CAR T-cell approaches.”
“In combination with Lilly’s strengths, our in vivo iGPS platform is positioned to broaden the reach of cell therapy beyond the current CAR T landscape in hematologic malignancies and to transform treatment across a far wider range of cancers and other serious diseases,” Friedman added.
Despite its small size—it could sit in the palm of your hand—the zebra finch is a remarkable learner. A songbird native to Australia, it’s renowned for its ability to pick up new songs. That talent has made it a favorite of scientists studying how animal brains imprint new skills, particularly vocal learning, or the capacity to perfect new sounds.
Researchers at Boston University, working with scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, have now discovered another quirk to the zebra finch brain—one that could also have implications for understanding our own. In a study that looked at the bird’s brain in unprecedented detail, the scientists uncovered new insights into neurogenesis—the birth, migration, and maturation of neurons—that may help the brain learn, add new skills, and restore and repair itself.
Observing the finch brain using a high-powered microscope, the researchers watched as new neurons made their way through the brain en route to bolstering existing circuits and connections. The expectation was that these neurons would step around established brain structures, including more mature brain cells, to better preserve them. Instead, the investigators saw the neurons tunnel right through. According to the BU-led team, the findings could help explain human vulnerability to a range of brain disorders. The researchers also noted that cell tunneling is used by some metastatic cancer cells.
“We found that in songbirds, new neurons in the adult brain behave like explorers forging a path through a dense jungle,” said Benjamin Scott, PhD, a BU College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences and the study’s corresponding author. That may help them learn new things or repair damage, but it could come with a cost to existing cells and memories—and that might be why neurogenesis is, in humans, something that doesn’t seem to extend beyond the womb. “This potentially disruptive behavior may help explain why humans and other mammals have limited capacity to regenerate brain tissue in adulthood,” commented Scott, “leaving us more vulnerable to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.”
Scott is senior and corresponding author of the team’s published paper in Current Biology, titled “Songbird connectome reveals tunneling of migratory neurons in the adult striatum,” in which the researchers commented that their collective findings “… suggest that migrating neurons may physically reshape the mature circuit to reach their targets, revealing an unexpected degree of structural and functional plasticity in the adult brain.”
At birth our brains have pretty much all the neurons they are ever going to have. Other organs—from your skin to your heart—might get frequent cell updates, but the brain is working on version 1.0. That’s true for most mammals, but not for fish, reptiles, and birds—their brains get a regular refresh.
“This raises two questions,” said Scott, who’s also affiliated with BU’s centers for neurophotonics, photonics, and systems neuroscience. “Why do other species have high rates of neurogenesis throughout life and why is it so restricted in humans? And is there something we can learn from their biology that we might be able to harness in future?”
Scott typically studies the neural circuits that control behavior in humans and other mammals, but chose the zebra finch to investigate neurogenesis because it has a reputation as a champion species—it’s really good at generating new neurons. “Songbirds are valuable model organisms for the study of neuron migration in the adult brain,” the authors wrote. “In these species, new neurons integrate into brain regions that control complex learned behaviors, where they establish synapses with mature neurons and respond to sensory stimuli.”
However, the team pointed out, a key question is how these new neurons interact with mature circuit structures in the brain. “It is not known whether neurons pursue migratory routes that flexibly avoid these structural obstacles or deform surrounding tissue to reach their targets,” they wrote. “While prior studies have examined the molecular mechanisms and functional consequences of adult neurogenesis, few have investigated the physical interactions between migrating neurons and their surrounding microenvironment.”
For their newly reported study the team used electron microscopy (EM)-based connectomics to examine how migrating neurons interact with mature circuit elements. “We applied a new tool to study this process [neurogenesis] called electron microscopy-based connectomics—basically a really high-powered microscope—to image these cells at a very high resolution,” Scott explained. “Our first hope was just to say, what does this look like at a detail we couldn’t see before?”
Their resulting data revealed intricate interactions between migratory neurons in the adult striatum and their environment, but also showed up the tunneling neurons. “Our findings support a model in which migrating neurons disperse throughout dense neural tissue in multiple directions, making various contacts with surrounding structures,” the team wrote in summary. “In addition, our data reveal a previously undescribed form of neuron migration in which new neurons cause deformities in nearby neurons and synapses.”
The authors say that, to their knowledge, tunneling migration by neurons hasn’t previously been reported in the vertebrate nervous system. It’s possible that this is due to the constraints of study methods used, but it’s also possible that tunneling is a specialization of neurogenesis in birds.
If these new neurons are deforming brain tissue, commented Scott, are they also disrupting memories along the way? And, if neurogenesis comes with a cost, how does that balance against the brain’s capacity for learning new things and repairing after injury? And as the authors pointed out, “Interestingly, tunneling-like behavior has been described in metastatic cancer cells, which navigate confined spaces by actively deforming their microenvironments. Tunneling may therefore reflect a conserved strategy adopted by specialized migratory cell types in dense tissues.”
Scott has two—as yet untested—hypotheses for what the findings might mean for the human brain. The first is that our brains evolved to limit neurogenesis after birth as a form of protection—a way of making sure determined neurons couldn’t barge through mature connections and damage memory storage. “There is an alternative framing that is more optimistic,” he also noted. “Our discovery of tunneling shows how cells can move without glia scaffolds.”
These are the structures that operate as highways for migrating neurons. “Most glia scaffolds are lost in humans after birth, and this loss was thought to be an obstacle for neurogenesis in the adult brain,” says Scott. “However, our work shows that new neurons in the bird do not need this glia scaffold. This is exciting because it means that brain repair may not require specialized glia scaffolds.” That opens the door for scientists to explore potential stem-cell therapies that would spark neurogenesis in humans.
In summary, the authors wrote, “These results reveal the value of applying EM connectomics to adult neurogenesis and suggest that migratory neurons may dramatically perturb the existing functional circuits as they migrate and integrate. Furthermore, they reveal the remarkable structural flexibility of mature neural circuits.”
In current studies, Scott and the team in his BU Laboratory of Comparative Cognition are digging into the biology driving neurogenesis to uncover which genes are regulating the process. Much of the work merges ideas and tools from biomedical engineering and neuroethology, the study of the mechanisms underpinning animal behavior.
“Right now, we’re using a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing to identify genes that are expressed by these new neurons as they migrate,” said Scott. “We want to know what other cells they’re talking to as they move and how they are speaking to these different cells.” That’ll help them figure out whether neurons warn other cells they’re traveling through and how they know where to stop and integrate with a current circuit.
“We share a lot with our animal relatives on this planet,” noted Scott. And, while the term “bird brain” might be an insult, by learning more about the biology of songbird brains, he says, we could learn some remarkable things about our own.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals plans to expand its pipeline into radiopharmaceutical therapies through an up to $4.3 billion collaboration with Telix Pharmaceuticals to co-develop and co-commercialize precision oncology treatments and companion diagnostics.
The companies have agreed to partner on next-generation radiopharmaceutical therapies aimed at up to eight solid tumor targets from Regeneron’s portfolio of antibodies, generated from VelocImmune® technology, which uses the company’s own mouse platform engineered with a genetically humanized immune system.
Regeneron and Telix also said they plan to develop radio-diagnostics designed to support patient selection and treatment response assessment.
The collaboration is intended to combine the biologics expertise of Tarrytown, NY-based Regeneron, including bispecific antibody discovery, with the radiopharmaceutical development platform, global manufacturing capabilities, and supply chain infrastructure of Telix, which is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.
“Regeneron is excited to enter the targeted radiopharmaceuticals space and explore the utility of these agents either as monotherapy or rationally combined with our immunotherapy platform, particularly in areas of high unmet patient need such as lung cancer, where our PD-1 inhibitor is a global standard of care,” Israel Lowy, MD, PhD, Regeneron’s senior vice president and clinical development unit head, oncology, said in a statement.
Lowy referred to Libtayo® (cemiplimab-rwlc), a programmed death receptor-1 blocking antibody approved for multiple oncology indications including forms of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma. Libtayo finished 2025 with $1.453 billion in worldwide net product sales, up 19% from $1.217 billion in 2024. Figures include $425 million in Q4 2025 global net product sales, up 16% from $367 million in the year-ago quarter.
‘An ideal partner’
“In our view, the deal with Regeneron validates Telix’s differentiated capabilities in radiopharmaceutical development and handling of complex supply chain logistics,” Andy T. Hsieh, PhD, a partner and biotechnology analyst with William Blair, wrote Monday in a research note. “Furthermore, given Regeneron’s track record of developing successful commercial therapeutics, we believe it is an ideal partner in bringing forth antibody-based theranostic assets.”
Telix investors appeared to somewhat agree with that analysis. The company’s ordinary shares traded on the Australian Stock Exchange climbed nearly 8% from A$14.64 ($10.34) to A$15.77 ($11.13). Telix’s American depositary shares traded on NASDAQ rose about 7%, from $10.56 to $11.24.
Hsieh reiterated William Blair’s “Outperform” rating for Telix shares based on several potential value-creating inflection points, including:
Continuing gains in market share gains within the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) positron emission tomography (PET) diagnostic imaging market, based on rising sales and price stability as payers have offered clarity on reimbursement—factors he said enable Telix to expand its precision medicine franchise “from a position of strength.”
Therapeutic franchise potential, as supported by recent positive preliminary data from part 1 of the ongoing Phase III ProstACT GLOBAL trial (NCT06520345) assessing TLX591 in metastatic androgen pathway modulation resistant prostate cancer.
Potential approvals of two PET imaging agents—TLX250-CDx (Zircaix®, 89Zr-DFO-girentuximab), designed to non-invasively detect and characterize clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC); and TLX101-Px (Pixclara®, Floretyrosine F 18 or 18F-FET), designed to image glioma. Both could “meaningfully” contribute to Telix’s profit-and-loss statement next year, the analyst predicted.
The FDA rejected both Zircaix and Pixclara last year via separate complete response letters. The agency held in April 2025 that Zircaix required additional confirmatory clinical evidence, which the company agreed to provide. On Friday, Telix said the FDA accepted its resubmitted New Drug Application (NDA) for Pixcara, assigning a target decision date of September 12 under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).
In August 2025, the FDA rejected Zircaix via complete response letter, alleging deficiencies relating to its chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) package—deficiencies the company said were “readily addressable.”
“We look forward to additional updates pertaining to efficacy parameters, such as progression-free survival, an approvable endpoint, likely later this year,” Hsieh added.
Growth through acquisitions
Telix has built up its radiopharma infrastructure in recent years through acquisitions, spending $13.6 million to purchase IsoTherapeutics, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) focused on providing services to Telix and other radiopharmaceutical companies—followed by an up to $82 million buyout of radioisotope production technology firm ARTMS, which stands for alternative radioisotope technologies for medical science.
In September 2024, Telix expanded its manufacturing footprint by acquiring RLS Radiopharmacies for up to $250 million, part of an investment strategy focused around creating vertically integrated supply chain, manufacturing, and distribution.
The global radiopharmaceuticals market is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.1%, more than doubling from $14.2 billion this year to $31 billion in 2032, then soaring again to $54.6 billion by 2040, according to a Roots Analysis report issued in January.
Telix briefly pursued a U.S. initial public offering, which it withdrew in June 2024. The company cited market conditions as biotech IPOs met with chilly receptions on Wall Street and asserted that the offering was not predicated on the need to raise capital.
Regeneron has agreed to pay Telix $40 million in upfront cash for access to its radiopharmaceutical manufacturing platform for four initial therapeutic programs, with Regeneron holding an option to expand the collaboration to include four additional programs with additional upfront payments.
Telix and Regeneron have agreed to share equally their global commercialization costs and potential profits, with Telix retaining the option to co-promote certain potential products. However, if Telix were instead to opt out of the co-funding model for any of the original four programs, it would then be eligible to receive up to $535 million in development and commercial milestone payments, plus low double-digit royalties on future net sales, for that program.
If Telix opts out of co-funding for all four, company could achieve $2.14 billion in payments tied to achieving milestones.
For the diagnostics to be covered by the collaboration, Telix and Regeneron have agreed to jointly develop diagnostic assets, with Telix leading commercialization and Regeneron receiving a set percentage of profits.
“The collaboration with Regeneron reflects a highly complementary set of capabilities and a unique opportunity to explore what true ‘next gen’ biologics-based radiopharmaceuticals can potentially do for patients,” added Christian Behrenbruch, DPhil, managing director and group CEO at Telix. “We are well positioned to work toward the shared goal of advancing next-generation precision radiopharmaceuticals for patients with hard-to-treat cancers.”
Background: Translation of medical consultation summaries is essential for equitable health care communication in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. While machine translation (MT) tools and large language models (LLMs) are widely accessible, their feasibility and safety for health care contexts remain underexplored. Objective: This pilot study investigates the feasibility and limitations of using LLMs and traditional MT tools to translate medical consultation summaries from English into the most common languages other than English spoken in Australia—Arabic, Chinese (simplified written form), and Vietnamese. Methods: Two simulated summaries—a simple patient-facing summary and a complex clinician-oriented interprofessional letter—were translated using 3 LLMs (GPT-4o, Llama-3.1, and Gemma-2) and 3 MT tools (Google Translate, Microsoft Bing Translator, and DeepL). Translations were benchmarked against professional third-party interpreter translations using Bilingual Evaluation Understudy, Character-level F-score, and Metric for Evaluation of Translation with Explicit Ordering metrics. Results: The translation performance varied across languages, tools, and summary complexity when assessed using automatic evaluation metrics. Traditional MT tools outperformed LLMs on surface-level metrics, while LLMs showed relative strengths in semantic similarity for Vietnamese and Chinese. Arabic translations improved with complex input, suggesting morphological advantages. The metric-based evaluation highlighted feasibility but also risks, particularly in Chinese clinical contexts. Conclusions: This pilot study provides formative evidence of opportunities and limitations in applying artificial intelligence translation for health care communication. Findings underscore the importance of human oversight; domain-specific evaluation metrics; and further formative and clinical research to guide the safe, equitable use of artificial intelligence translation tools.
<img src="https://jmir-production.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/thumbs/b86925d16f121fdeb31e2fefcf1227ba" />
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Is fake grass a bad idea? The AstroTurf wars are far from over.
In 2001, Americans installed just over 7 million square meters of synthetic turf. By 2024, that number was 79 million square meters—enough to carpet all of Manhattan and then some. The increase worries folks who study microplastics and environmental pollution.
This story is from the next issue of our print magazine, packed with stories all about nature. Subscribe now to read the full thing when it lands on Wednesday, April 22.
Mustafa Suleyman: AI development won’t hit a development wall anytime soon—here’s why
—Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO and Google DeepMindco-founder
The skeptics keep predicting that AI compute will soon hit a wall—and keep getting proven wrong. To understand why that is, you need to look at the forces driving the AI explosion.
Three advances are enabling exponential progress: faster basic calculators, high-bandwidth memory, and technologies that turn disparate GPUs into enormous supercomputers. Where does all this get us? Read the full op-ed on the future of AI development to learn more.
Desalination technology, by the numbers
—Casey Crownhart
When I started digging into desalination technology for a new story, I couldn’t help but obsess over the numbers.
I knew on some level that desalination—pulling salt out of seawater to produce fresh water—was an increasingly important technology, especially in water-stressed regions including the Middle East. But just how much some countries rely on desalination, and how big a business it is, still surprised me.
This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter on the tech that could combat the climate crisis. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Meta has launched the first AI model from its Superintelligence Labs Muse Spark is the company’s first model in a year. (Reuters $) + The closed model brings reasoning capabilities to the Meta AI app. (Engadget) + It’s built by Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, the unit led by Alexandr Wang. (TechCrunch)
2 Anthropic has lost a bid to pause the Pentagon’s blacklisting An appeals court in Washington, DC denied the request. (CNBC) + A California judge had temporarily blocked the blacklisting in March. (NPR) + The mixed rulings leave Anthropic in a legal limbo. (Wired $) + And open doors for smaller AI rivals. (Reuters $)
3 New evidence suggests Adam Back invented Bitcoin The British cryptographer may be the real Satoshi Nakamoto. (NYT $) + Back denies the claims. (BBC) + There’s a dark side to crypto’s permissionless dream. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Gen Z is cooling on AI The share feeling angry about it has risen from 22% to 31% in a year. (Axios) + Anti-AI protests are also growing. (MIT Technology Review)
5 War in the Gulf could tilt the cloud race toward China Huawei is pitching “multi-cloud” resilience to Gulf clients. (Rest of World)
6 Meta has killed a leaderboard of its AI token users It showed the top 250 users. (The Information $) + Meta blamed data leaks for the shutdown. (Fortune) + It encouraged “tokenmaxxing,” a growing phenomenon in Big Tech. (NYT $)
7 Did Artemis II really tell us anything new about space? Or was it primarily a PR exercise? (Ars Technica)
8 Israeli attacks have brutally exposed Lebanon’s digital infrastructure It’s managing a modern crisis without modern technology. (Wired $)
9 AI models could offer mathematicians a common language They hope it will simplify the process of verifying proofs. (Economist)
10 A “self-doxing’ rave is helping trans people stay safe online It’s among a series of digital self-defenses. (404 Media)
Quote of the day
“I feel like anything that I’m interested in has the potential of maybe getting replaced, even in the next few years.”
—Sydney Gill, a freshman at Rice University, tells the New York Times why she’s soured on AI.
One More Thing
A view inside ATLAS, one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider.
MAXIMILIEN BRICE/CERN
Inside the hunt for new physics at the world’s largest particle collider
In 2012, data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) unearthed a particle called the Higgs boson. The discovery answered a nagging question: where do fundamental particles, such as the ones that make up all the protons and neutrons in our bodies, get their mass?
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ Enjoy this tale of the “joke” sound that accidentally defined 90s rave culture. + Take a nostalgic trip through the websites of the early 00s. + One for animal lovers: sperm whales have teamed up to support a newborn. + Here’s a long overdue answer to a vital question: can the world’s largest mousetrap catch a limousine?
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Desalination plants in the Middle East are increasingly vulnerable
As the conflict in Iran has escalated, a crucial resource is under fire: the desalinization technology that supplies water in the region.
President Donald Trump has threatened to destroy “possibly all desalinization plants” in Iran if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. The impact on farming, industry, and—crucially—drinking in the Middle East could be severe. Find out why.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains, our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here.
AI is changing how small online sellers decide what to make
For small entrepreneurs, deciding what to sell and where to make it has traditionally been a slow, labor-intensive process. Now that work is increasingly being done by AI.
Tools like Alibaba’s Accio compress weeks of product research and supplier hunting into a single chat. Business owners and e-commerce experts say they’re making sourcing more accessible—and slashing the time from product idea to launch.
The gig workers who are training humanoid robots at home
When Zeus, a medical student in Nigeria, returns to his apartment from a long day at the hospital, he straps his iPhone to his forehead and records himself doing chores.
Zeus is a data recorder for Micro1, which sells the data he collects to robotics firms. As these companies race to build humanoids, videos from workers like Zeus have become the hottest new way to train them.
Micro1 has hired thousands of them in more than 50 countries, including India, Nigeria, and Argentina. The jobs pay well locally, but raise thorny questions around privacy and informed consent. The work can be challenging—and weird. Read the full story.
—Michelle Kim
This is our latest story to be turned into an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Anthropic’s new model found security problems in every OS and browser Claude Mythos has been heralded as a cybersecurity “reckoning.” (The Verge) + Anthrophic is limiting the rollout over hacking fears. (CNBC) + It’s also launching a project that lets Mythos flag vulnerabilities. (Gizmodo) + Apple, Google, and Microsoft have joined the initiative. (ZDNET)
2 Iranian hackers are targeting American critical infrastructure Their focus is on energy and water infrastructure.(Wired) + They’re targeting industrial control devices. (TechCrunch)
3 Google’s AI Overviews deliver millions of incorrect answers per hour Despite a 90% accuracy rate. (NYT $) + AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Elon Musk is trying to oust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a lawsuit As remedies for Altman allegedly defrauding him. (CNBC) + Musk wants any damages given to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm. (WSJ $)
5 ICE has admitted it’s using powerful spyware The tools that can intercept encrypted messages. (NPR) + Immigration agencies are also weaponizing AI videos. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Greece has joined the countries banning kids from social media Under-15s will be blocked from 2027. (Reuters) + Australia introduced the world’s first social media ban for children. (Guardian) + Indonesia recently rolled out the first one in Southeast Asia. (DW) + Experts say they’re a lazy fix. (CNBC)
7 Intel will help Elon Musk build his Terafab in Texas They aim to manufacture chips for AI projects. (Engadget) + Musk says it will be the largest-ever semiconductor factory. (Engadget) + Future AI chips could be built on glass. (MIT Technology Review)
8 TikTok is building a second billion-euro data center in Finland It’s moving data storage for European users. (Reuters) + Finland has become a magnet for data centers. (Bloomberg $) + But nobody wants one in their backyard. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Plans for Canada’s first “virtual gated community” have sparked a row The AI-powered surveillance system has divided neighbors. (Guardian) + Is the Pentagon allowed to surveil Americans with AI? (MIT Technology Review)
10 The high-tech engineering of the “space toilet” has been revealed Artemis II is the first mission to carry one around the world. (Vox)
Quote of the day
“This case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants. His lawsuit remains nothing more than a harassment campaign that’s driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor.”
—OpenAI criticizes Musk’s legal action in an X post.
One More Thing
USWDS
Inside the US government’s brilliantly boring websites
You may not notice it, but your experience on every US government website is carefully crafted.
Each site aligns an official web design and a custom typeface. They aim to make government websites not only good-looking but accessible and functional for all.
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ Rejoice in the splendor of the “Earthset” image captured by Artemis II. + Meet the fearless cat chasing off bears. + This document vividly explains what makes the octopus so unique. + Revealed: the rhythmic secret that makes emo music so angsty.
(orforglipron), a small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist—though analysts predict the drug’s 2026 sales 
