Evolution’s ancient remedies could offer new starting points for scientists designing treatments that supplement or replace antibiotics that no longer work, said research lead Matt Barber, PhD, evolutionary biologist at the UO College of Arts and Sciences. “For anybody who studies pathogenic bacteria, it’s always in the back of our minds that antibiotics are one of the most important breakthroughs in medicine in the 20^th century. But bacteria are, and have been for a long time, evolving resistance to them. We’re definitely interested in whether by resurrecting or engineering some enhanced antimicrobial peptides, we could use these as therapeutics down the road.”

Barber is senior author of the researchers’ published paper in PLOS Biology, titled “Retracing the origin and evolution of a cryptic antimicrobial peptide within mammalian lactoferrin.”

Some 160 million years ago, near the end of the Jurassic period, the ancestor of all placental mammals emerged and so did lactoferrin, an immune protein found in nearly every body fluid (except blood), including breast milk, tears, saliva, and various types of mucus. The main function of lactoferrin is to withhold iron from pathogens. Bacteria in the body need iron to fuel their advances, but lactoferrin acts as a vault, tightly sealing the key resource away.

In addition to securing iron from bacterial reach, lactoferrin has evolved built-in tools to fight against pathogens. Most notably, it has an antimicrobial peptide (AMP), lactoferricin, that punches holes in the membranes of bacteria, rupturing the cell. “Antimicrobial peptides are a key part of the body’s first line of defense,” said first author Titas Sil, a doctoral student in Barber’s lab. “They can target a broad range of pathogens, and due to their potency, scientists have been trying to synthesize a variety for therapeutic uses.”

None of lactoferrin’s close protein relatives have that bacteria-killing ability, suggesting that the property arose sometime after lactoferrin emerged in the mammalian lineage. To find out when and how it has evolved since, the researchers worked backward through its evolutionary history and resurrected its ancestors. “Here we retrace the origin and evolution of the abundant mammalian protein lactoferrin and it embedded AMP, lactoferricin,” they wrote.

A look at the past might give ideas for a healthier future, Barber said. “Evolution is essentially a billions-year-old science experiment, right? We’re seeing the results of what worked and what didn’t work. Looking at how traits are naturally produced and selected through evolution, you can get information that could be useful for designing new antimicrobial tools.”

To resurrect the extinct antimicrobial peptide, Sil first compared the gene sequences of lactoferrin in present-day humans and cows. Mapping their evolutionary relationships, she statistically inferred the most likely sequences of their common ancestors, reaching back about 160 million years. That state-of-the-art technique is known as ancestral sequence reconstruction, which was pioneered by Joseph Thornton, a former UO scientist whose previous lab space is now home to Barber’s group. “To retrace the mutations that led to the emergence of a novel antimicrobial function, we reconstructed ancestral lactoferrin and transferrin sequences across diverse mammals,” the researchers noted. “Ancestral sequence reconstruction (ASR) provides a powerful approach to characterize the function of ancient proteins.”

After synthesizing the predicted gene and regenerating the ancient protein in cells, Sil then tested their potency against several pathogens associated with human diseases, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Streptococcus. The earliest resurrected antimicrobial peptides disturbed the bacterial membranes, but the pathogens were somehow able to repair the damage and tolerate the peptide. But peptides of later mammalian ancestors, about a few million years old, displayed progressively stronger antimicrobial activity, sometimes outperforming the modern, human versions.

“Leveraging mammalian lactoferrin and its embedded AMP lactoferricin as a model, we observed that even the earliest lactoferricin ancestor possessed the ability to permeabilize bacterial membranes and alter membrane potential, a property that was further enhanced in later ancestors,” they stated. The collective findings, they added, “… indicate that the lactoferricin domain initially possessed membrane permeabilizing activity, which intensified during evolution to produce potent bactericidal effects.”

That difference came down to a small structural change: a single mutation in the amino acid chain, that made the antimicrobial peptide more potent. “What was surprising and unexpected was how small changes in these domains could have such large effects,” Barber said. “There have been clinical trials using derivatives of human lactoferrin peptides to treat infections. But there were several instances where (Sil) showed that you don’t need a lot of changes for evolution to enhance the activity of these peptides beyond the human versions.”

Barber and Sil caution that the development of new drugs with extinct antimicrobial peptides is unlikely to be immediate. Compared to conventional antibiotics, the peptides are structurally less stable and quickly broken down in the body.

Even so, tracing their history matters, Barber said. Understanding how antimicrobial peptides evolved in the past is one of the best ways to inspire new treatment designs that pathogens can’t attack. “Similar to antibiotics, pathogens are going to be able to evolve against antimicrobial peptides,” he said. “But if we understand and can anticipate how they become resistant to these molecules, we can hopefully find better ways to target them or develop combination treatments that better avoid resistance.” In their paper the authors concluded, “Together, our study illustrates how novel immune protein functions can arise, evolve, and diversify to strengthen host defense against microbial pathogens.”

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Scientists now provide insights into these unique characteristics in the new study published in Nature entitled, “Insights into longevity and virus-driven adaptation from Myotis bat genomes.”

The team generated cell lines and near-complete genome assemblies for eight closely related Myotis bat species. They collected tissue from Myotis bats in the American West using a novel sampling approach. Instead of harvesting organ tissue, the scientists biopsied tiny circular patches from the wings akin to an ear piercing. The tissue was used to grow cell lines and build genomes for the eight species. Using genome-wide screens of positive selection, analyses of structural variation, and experiments, the team identified patterns of adaptation contributing to longevity, cancer resistance and viral interactions.

“Pathogen adaption, longevity, and cancer resistance—they are fundamentally linked,” says Elise Lauterbur, PhD, assistant professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Vermont. “Many of the genes that have adapted to viruses in bats are genes that are also involved in longevity and cancer resistance.”

The team discovered that bats exhibit a unique gene copy mechanism for DNA-repair. And more specifically, they write that their findings show “distinct modes of adaptation to DNA and RNA viruses compared with all other mammals, with bats exhibiting genome-wide over-representation of positive selection for DNA-virus-interacting proteins and elevated rates of copy-number variation for RNA-virus-interacting proteins.”

Characterization of Myotis-specific duplications led the research team to home in on the key immune factor EIF2AK2 (also known as PKR) found in every mammal to understand what made the Myotis bat’s antiviral response so different.

They show that the recurrent evolution of longevity seen in Myotis is associated with positive selection in cancer pathways and demonstrate a unique response to DNA damage in primary cells of the long-lived Myotis lucifugus. “In every single other mammal that has been looked at, there is one copy of this gene,” Lauterbur explains. “That means there is some important pressure keeping it at one copy. In our very special Myotis bats, there are two copies—or so we thought.” When she teased apart the genome, Lauterbur found some Myotis bats had one, two, or even three copies of PKR, suggesting additional copies have a protective effect that promote longevity.

Collaborators conducted experiments on the various cell lines, splicing copies of PKR into different species and then introduced the cells with a pox virus to gauge their reaction and dosed the cells with chemotherapeutic drug to test how they tolerate and repair damage. The team found little brown bats—the longest living bats of the group—responded differently at high doses where cell damage would most likely occur.

This adaptation could be critical for curbing the spread of cancer. As organisms age and cellular processes decline, some particularly long-lived species have developed specialized responses from repairing damaged cells, isolating the damage, to throwing cells out upon damage detection.

While it may be too early to use the unique immune adaptations of bats to solve human pathology, some lessons may be particularly valuable. Moving forward, Lauterbur wants to explore underappreciated adaptations such as changes in gene copy number, she says. “Those kinds of changes can give evolution additional ways to generate diversity and respond to changing environments, and I think we’re only beginning to understand their importance.”

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“The virus is going to be our product, and we want to have the deepest understanding we can have of that,” explains Kristen Kellar, a scientist working in analytical development at Kite.

“Given how new and nascent the in vivo lentiviral vector delivery space is, we’re trying to understand what the methods are by which we can more robustly characterize our products,” adds Priti Hegde, PhD, senior vice president of research and development, also at Kite.

According to Kellar, the new technique will be of interest to everyone in gene and cell therapies based on enveloped viruses like lentiviruses. “As reagents are developed,” she says, “more people will be on board with how powerful this technology can be.”

The new technique is based on flow virometry and involves individual particles passing a detector where attributes, such as their size and proteins on the surface, can be characterized, she says.

This allows for, as an example, the mapping of protein distribution as differences in protein abundance between particles are not lost during averaging. As Kellar explains, if one vector particle has, for example, 10 times more of a specific protein than another, a Western blot would characterize both particles as the average of five times for both particles.

According to Kellar, while flow virometrry has been used in the past, new instruments focused on analysis of nanoparticles allow for deeper characterization.

“They’ve brought the technology to a place where we feel very confident that we’re seeing all the particles and they seem the right size,” she says. “What’s relatively new is we’re able to stain the protein on the surface, and there’s one abundant protein we can see.”

Going forward, Kite Pharma hopes to use the technology throughout the development process, including during the final stages to assess the consistency from batch-to-batch. They’re also investigating some quantitation bead sets, which will allow them to quantify viral proteins on the vector surface, she says.

Hegde adds, “Given how nascent the field [of in vivo cell therapy] is, what’s exciting for us is we’re already seeing clinical proof of concept and, so, the next challenge at Kite is knowing how to scale robustly.”

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In biopharmaceutical manufacturing, endonucleases are used to digest any unwanted DNA and RNA that is released when the host cells of the expression system are lysed during the protein harvesting process.

The problem for manufacturers is that endonucleases have the same effect in the cells in which they are produced, says lead study author Ramakrishna Vadde, PhD, a professor from Yogi Vemana University in Andhra Pradesh, India.

“It is very difficult to express recombinant endonucleases using the bacteria Escherichia coli as the expression system,” he tells GEN. “This problem is mainly attributed to the fact that both DNA and RNA, the natural substrate molecules of these enzymes, play an important role in the growth and survival of the host bacteria themselves.”

A further complication is that endonuclease production puts a heavy burden on host cell metabolism. Vadde says, “Overexpression of these proteins may impair cellular processes such as proper protein folding, leading to protein aggregation, inclusion body formation, and enhanced protein degradation by host cell proteases.

“These combined challenges make recombinant endonuclease production in E. coli technically demanding and require carefully optimized expression and purification strategies.”

Extracellular secretion

A potential solution—presented in the new study—is to use an expression system that ensures the endonucleases are transported outside the cell, where they cannot degrade any host genetic materials.

Vadde says, “Our solution is based on the use of a proprietary secretion-based expression platform, BacSec, which directs the recombinant nuclease out of the cytoplasm and into the extracellular medium during production.

“By physically separating the enzyme from the host cell’s genomic DNA, plasmid DNA, and RNA, the risk of intracellular nucleic acid degradation is significantly minimized. This allows the production host to maintain normal growth, replication, and protein synthesis while expressing the endonuclease at high levels.

In addition to reducing toxicity, extracellular secretion offers several manufacturing advantages, according to Vadde, who cites reduced contamination risk as an example.

“The enzyme is produced directly in the culture supernatant, eliminating the need for cell disruption and reducing contamination from host-cell proteins and intracellular components. This simplifies downstream purification, improves product recovery, and lowers production costs. Furthermore, secretion often promotes proper protein folding and activity, avoiding the challenges associated with inclusion body formation and complex refolding procedures commonly encountered with intracellular expression of toxic proteins,” he says.

The approach can also reduce the cost of goods sold (COGs), according to Vadde, who adds, “Our platform enables the cost-effective production of active recombinant endonucleases such as Serratia marcescens endonuclease and bovine DNase I while overcoming the host-cell toxicity limitations that have traditionally hindered their manufacture.

“It represents a significant commercial opportunity, as these enzymes are essential consumable reagents used routinely by biologics manufacturers, vaccine developers, gene therapy companies, cell therapy producers, and contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) worldwide,” he says.

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The challenge is that high schools and community colleges typically can’t afford advanced equipment such as bioreactors to provide the hands-on experience that leads to such understanding.

To help address that challenge, BioMADE, Novonesis, and Iowa State University (ISU) have designed a simple bioreactor to produce enzymes and other proteins, which they are adapting into an educational kit. The bioreactor’s eventual price target, estimated at roughly $200, is designed to be budget-friendly, even for rural schools. The goal is to make biomanufacturing as integral to the curriculum as typing and drafting once were and in doing so, help sustain the industry.

“By allowing each student to build their own reactor and see the awesome power of biology to create novel catalysts, materials, and small molecules, there will be more creative minds choosing this career path to support the burgeoning biomanufacturing economy,” Nigel Reuel, PhD, professor of chemical and biological engineering, Iowa State University, and CTO for the NSF RuralSTAMINA Biomanufacturing Engine of Iowa and Nebraska alliance.

Reuel is working to make the BioReactor Educational Activity Kit (BREAK) a robust educational tool under continued support from BioMADE and Schmidt Sciences, a science-focused philanthropic organization. BREAK will include labs and curriculum co-developed with Julie Gonzalez, PhD, the biotechnology program chair at Des Moines Area Community College, and will be initially disseminated through the NSF RuralSTAMINA Biomanufacturing Engine coalition to provide the hands-on learning experiences needed to stimulate a robust workforce.

Offshoot of sensor work

BREAK is an offshoot of sensor and AI control strategies development by Reuel and his team. One of Reuel’s recent papers explores the use of substrate-wrapped single-walled carbon nanotube-based photoluminescent probes in a circulating flow cell system. Reactions are accelerated by agitation and therefore can’t be accurately measured in a static microplate.

“Rather than buying multiple bioreactors to prove [his sensors] work in the real world, Reuel built an array of low-cost reactors his team could scale for machine learning,” David Nathan, program director, BioMADE, tells GEN.

Novonesis is developing that bioreactor for student use. “It’s designed so students can basically build it and know the ins and outs.  A lot of ingenuity went into using common components rather than bespoke technology,” Mike Hess, PhD, senior manager of regional technical strategy, Novonesis, elaborates.

“It can’t do everything a million-dollar bioreactor can,” Hess says, but it measures multiple indicators, such as enzyme activity and cell concentration, in real time, thus lessening reliance on surrogates.

It also employs a reinforcement learning agent—another feature from Reuel. “This speeds the learning loop,” Hess says. Rather than extracting process knowledge offline over weeks or months, the machine learning component “lets you do it in real time so you can optimize [the culture] in a matter of minutes.”

“We’re at the proof-of-concept stage,” Nathan says. “We’re bringing ISU’s testing kit to Novonesis for at-line and on-line work.” The next steps are to design a wireless control system that controls the basic parameters such as temperature, mix speed, and feed, and to link the operating system to pilot-scale reactors before developing a kit for high school and community colleges.

Novonesis is also exploring expanded options to make this basic bioreactor industrially relevant for the biotechnology industry, Hess says. “The application of the machine learning control system will be critical going forward, to help biotechnology manufacturers increase output and, therefore, profits.”

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Steam-in-place systems have long been the standard for keeping bioprocessing equipment sterile. They are proven, familiar, and infrastructure-intensive. Large installations can require extensive networks of hygienic piping and valves, along with substantial boiler capacity and specialized reactor vessels.

“Aseptic design is a critical constraint on biomanufacturing capacity and a major cost driver,” said Arye Lipman, COO and co-founder of Biosphere.

Biopharmaceutical manufacturers have spent roughly the past 15 years adopting disposable, single-use bioreactors that can sidestep some of the complexity associated with traditional sterilization. Their economics, however, are difficult to translate to industrial biotechnology, where production volumes can be orders of magnitude larger and margins substantially thinner. So, industrial producers are often left with conventional steam-based infrastructure.

“The industrial sector has been largely abandoned by biopharma equipment vendors,” Lipman said, arguing that producers frequently have to assemble bespoke systems around decades-old approaches.

The implications go beyond equipment costs. Complex aseptic systems can take longer to design, construct, validate, and commission. Maintaining sterile conditions at commercial scale also remains a persistent operational challenge, meaning advances in strain engineering do not necessarily translate into economical production. That mismatch is putting renewed attention on alternative sterilization technologies.

Several approaches are being investigated, including ultraviolet radiation, vaporized hydrogen peroxide, chlorine-dioxide gas, ozone, and supercritical carbon dioxide. Each presents different engineering trade-offs, but they share an objective: reducing dependence on the sprawling steam infrastructure traditionally needed to maintain aseptic operations.

Biosphere, for example, is developing a reactor architecture that uses UV radiation for sterilization. Lipman said the system is intended to dramatically reduce steam piping and boiler requirements while lowering the energy required for fluid sterilization.

If alternative approaches can prove reliable at industrial scale, the larger effect could be a change in the economics of where—and how—biomanufacturing plants are built. Facilities requiring less supporting infrastructure could potentially be constructed faster and at lower capital cost. That question is particularly relevant as the United States looks to strengthen domestic biomanufacturing capacity.

Lower capital requirements could also change how manufacturers manage technology risk. Instead of committing enormous sums to a single product and facility, companies could potentially distribute investment across smaller plants and expand the most successful processes later. Still, displacing steam will not be easy.

Alternative sterilization methods must demonstrate consistent performance from bench scale through commercial operation. They also need to integrate with downstream purification and other unit operations while delivering economics compelling enough to justify replacing familiar equipment.

“The chemicals industry is notoriously reluctant to adopt new technology,” Lipman said.

That conservatism means the next biomanufacturing breakthrough might not come solely from a better organism. Scaling the bioeconomy could depend just as much on redesigning the infrastructure surrounding it, and reconsidering a sterilization paradigm that has endured for generations.

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Supported by Innovate UK, the £375,000 ($510,000) project, including £250,000 ($340,000) in grant funding, combines Centrix’s pharma development expertise with the University of Sussex’s research in data science to create “more reliable” approaches to product development.

As pharmaceutical development becomes increasingly data-rich, companies generate extensive formulation, analytical, and process data throughout development programs. However, this information is often fragmented across projects and systems, limiting its use in identifying trends, predicting outcomes and informing future development strategies.

Through the KTP, Centrix says it will develop new capabilities to analyze and interpret these datasets, initially focusing on early-stage product development. The project aims to create new data-driven tools and methodologies that help identify development risks earlier, reduce unnecessary experimentation, improve confidence in decision-making and accelerate the progression of promising medicines from development to clinical evaluation.

The partnership will also establish in-house data science expertise by recruiting a dedicated KTP Associate, strengthening Centrix Pharma’s research and development capabilities, and enhancing its service offering for customers.

“The pharmaceutical industry generates an enormous amount of valuable data throughout product development, but there is still significant untapped potential to use that information more effectively,” says Chris Davison, CEO of Centrix. “We recognized an opportunity to combine our pharmaceutical expertise with advanced data analytics to make better-informed decisions throughout the development process.

“The Knowledge Transfer Partnership gives us access to specialist academic expertise while embedding those capabilities within our business. This project represents an exciting opportunity to apply advanced data science techniques to a real-world pharmaceutical development challenge. Beyond the immediate project, we’re creating a long-term capability that will benefit both our team and our clients, helping us deliver more efficient development programs.”

“Knowledge Transfer Partnerships bring together academic expertise and real-world industrial challenges,” adds Kate Thorpe, head of innovation and business partnerships at the University of Sussex. “Our ambition is not only to solve today’s challenges but also to establish new ways of working that continue delivering value and innovation long after the project has concluded.”

Centrix Pharma Solutions’ new KTP Associate will lead the project, working across both organizations to embed new analytical approaches and act as a bridge between academic research and industrial application.

“The partnership showcases how collaboration between industry, academia and government can accelerate innovation across the UK’s life sciences sector, create skilled jobs, and help pharmaceutical companies bring new medicines to patients more efficiently.”

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Part of the challenge is that Zika does not circulate alone. The virus belongs to the same mosquito-borne family as dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, and Japanese encephalitis viruses, and it is especially similar to dengue, which spreads in many of the same regions.

That resemblance matters because antibodies raised against one virus can sometimes recognize another without fully neutralizing it. In some cases, those cross-reactive antibodies can make infection worse through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), raising concerns that a conventional Zika vaccine could complicate later dengue infection—or that prior dengue immunity could reshape responses to Zika. That concern has prompted some researchers to look beyond antibodies and toward another arm of immunity: virus-killing CD8+ T cells.

Now, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have shown that an experimental Zika vaccine can protect mice by leaning heavily on those T cells rather than on neutralizing antibodies. The study, published in Nature Microbiology, is titled “A Zika virus vaccine with E protein fusion loop mutations protects via CD8+ T cells.”

Led by senior author Sujan Shresta, PhD, the team compared two experimental Zika vaccines in mice bred to be susceptible to the virus. Both vaccine candidates were built around Zika’s outer envelope proteins, which are common targets for antibody-based vaccines. But one vaccine carried mutations in a small region of the envelope protein called the fusion loop—a site known to generate many of the cross-reactive antibodies implicated in ADE.

The unmodified vaccine worked as expected, producing both antibodies and T cell responses. When the researchers transferred CD8+ T cells from vaccinated mice into unvaccinated animals, those cells alone reduced Zika levels, suggesting that T cells were contributing meaningful protection even when antibodies were also present.

Although the fusion-loop mutant vaccine’s antibodies looked similar to those generated by the unmodified vaccine in cell-based and test-tube assays, they did not protect animals when transferred to unvaccinated mice. Removing CD8+ T cells, however, eliminated the vaccine’s protection. “This vaccine wasn’t protecting via antibodies,” Shresta said. “It was protecting via T cells.”

The finding points to a possible way around one of the thorniest issues in Zika vaccine development: how to avoid antibody responses that might worsen later infection with a related virus. But the approach also revealed a limitation. Twelve weeks after the final dose, mice that received the fusion-loop mutant vaccine were no better protected than unvaccinated animals, while mice that received the unmodified vaccine remained protected.

In other words, the mutation reduced a potential antibody liability but also cost the vaccine its staying power. Shresta and colleagues are now investigating how to build a more durable pool of Zika-fighting T cells that could persist for years after vaccination.

“Our study highlights the importance of considering T cell-mediated immunity alongside neutralizing antibodies,” said first author Kantinan Chuensirikulchai, PhD. “This concept may inspire new vaccine strategies for other orthoflaviviruses, particularly in situations where antibody responses alone are insufficient or may contribute to unwanted immune effects.”

The work may also have implications beyond Zika. Because T cells can recognize features shared across related orthoflaviviruses, the researchers say the findings could help guide efforts toward broader vaccines that protect against Zika, dengue, and other mosquito-borne threats without relying solely on antibodies.

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In a report released Tuesday, life sciences group Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MassBio) found that companies based in the Bay State, especially at growth stages, are reaping the fruits of growth in venture capital (VC), the initial public offering (IPO) market, and merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity.

But Massachusetts—whose nation-leading cluster is centered in Boston and neighboring Cambridge, MA—is seeing three challenging trends unfolding in recent months. One is a 39% decline in seed-stage venture capital awarded to startups in the first half of this year vs. H1 2025, to $4.65 million from $7.65 million—even though Massachusetts saw 21 seed deals during Q1-Q2 2026, from 15 a year ago.

Another concerning trend for the industry was a 1.3% dip in NIH grant funding for the research that underpins biopharma, to $3.413 billion in 2025 from $3.458 billion a year earlier—and especially a six percent drop in the number of grants awarded, to 5,423 from 5,782.

Even worse, Massachusetts’ biopharma workforce shrank three percent or 3,605 jobs in 2025 compared with a year earlier, sliding from 117,108 to 113,503 jobs. And the state’s biopharma community is assessing the competitive challenge posed by China’s biopharma ecosystem.

“In the big picture, things look good. But when you drill a little bit deeper, there’s some places that are potentially worrisome,” Ben Bradford, MassBio’s head of external affairs, told GEN.

‘Fewer shots on goal’

“A one percent drop in NIH funding is not great, but also not the end of the world. The more concerning number for me is seeing the 6+% drop in number of awards. That’s just fewer shots on goal,” Bradford said. “And in an industry that has such a high failure rate, we need as many shots on goal as possible.”

He said MassBio is working to address the need for further NIH funding through talks with Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation and building relations with delegations of U.S. lawmakers from other states. The effort faces a political hurdle, however: Massachusetts’ delegation consists entirely of Democrats while Republicans control both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives heading into November’s elections.

“We need to spread the wealth of these grants as much as we can, so that we get as many shots at good science as possible,” Bradford said.

He said MassBio was committed to supporting startups, citing the Drive accelerator program through which MassBio partners with South Carolina’s life-sci industry group SCbio to advance the breakthrough science and technology of pre-seed companies, as well as equip their founders with the tools for long-term success. Drive is intended to enable startups to access the knowledge of industry experts, the guidance of experienced mentors, and the connections essential for life-sci success.

“We have been approved by our board to take some of our reserves and give non-dilutive grant funding to some of the graduates of that program. And we’re trying to pull in other organizations to provide non-dilutive capital to really well-vetted early-stage companies as well,” Bradford explained.

The job contraction, he said, reflected pipeline reprioritization by biopharma giants plus contraction by smaller companies, with R&D jobs dropping significantly between Q2 and Q3 of 2025, then starting to bounce back by Q4. The mid-year drop explains last year’s overall 3.9% or 2,563-job decrease in R&D employment statewide, which fell to 62,991 from 65,554 jobs.

Of the 20 largest biopharma industry employers whose headcounts were included in the report, eight showed year-over-year job declines—Takeda Pharmaceutical, Moderna, Bristol Myers Squibb, EMD/MilliporeSigma, Merck & Co., Foundation Medicine, Lantheus, and Sarepta Therapeutics. Another two employers (Novartis and AstraZeneca/Alexion) showed no change from 2025.

Reducing headcount

Takeda, which is Massachusetts’ largest biopharma employer, was reported as reducing its Massachusetts headcount by three percent or 181 jobs this year, shrinking to 5,628 from 5,809 in 2025. That total will likely shrivel further next year, since Takeda announced plans in May to shed 4,500 jobs worldwide, about 10% of its total workforce. In March, Takeda eliminated 247 jobs in Massachusetts, where the company has facilities in Lexington, MA, and Cambridge, part of a $1.3 billion restructuring that cut 634 jobs nationwide.

Among companies that expanded their workforces, the biggest creator of new jobs was Eli Lilly, whose headcount nearly tripled, zooming 164% to 1,423 from 540 jobs. The pharma giant has carried out a companywide expansion fueled by more activity in genetic medicines—Lilly opened its $700 million Institute for Genetic Medicine in Boston’s Fort Point section in 2021—plus blockbuster-level sales for its obesity and type 2 diabetes drugs. In June, for example, Lilly agreed to partner with Ascidian Therapeutics to develop RNA exon editors intended to treat inherited kidney diseases, through a collaboration that could generate more than $1.9 billion for Boston-based Ascidian.

And twice so far this year, Lilly has agreed to acquire Massachusetts-based oncology and autoimmune drug developers among the 11 biopharmas it has announced plans to buy out. In April, Lilly said it was shelling out up to $7 million for Kelonia Therapeutics, while in February Lilly announced it would spend $2.4 billion for genetic medicine developer Orna Therapeutics. Among Massachusetts-based buyers, the biggest dealmaker was Cambridge-based Biogen, which in May completed its up to $5.6 billion purchase of Apellis Pharmaceuticals, a Waltham, MA-based developer of immunology and rare disease treatments.

China watch

MassBio’s report included for the first time a “China Watch” section devoted to the world’s most populous country’s biopharma industry, citing its numerous successes of recent years. They include a 36% year-over-year jump in clinical pipeline drugs, to 7,105, compared with Massachusetts’ nine percent growth for its pipeline of 2,175 treatment candidates. China has more than double the state’s number of candidates in advanced modalities such as cell and gene therapies (1,322 to 561) and has racked up $79 billion in out-licensing deal value compared with just $10.9 billion for the Bay State.

China’s advantage over Massachusetts is most pronounced in numbers of ongoing clinical trials, including Phase IV (17,150 to 2,690).

China’s pipeline grew 36.2% year over year, surpassing Europe’s for the first time; China out-licensed roughly $79 billion in disclosed potential deal value in 2025, up from about $1 billion in 2019; and China now runs more early-stage clinical trials than any geography analyzed.

“The companies being impacted most are really those early-stage companies,” Bradford acknowledged. “Right now, we need to make sure that clinical trials can be faster in the U.S., so that companies don’t want to go to China to do it. We need to make sure that we have a full incentive package to help companies grow in the U.S. So it’s not just walling off China; it’s creating a full suite of competitiveness programs, that allow the U.S. to maintain our leadership.”

Can Massachusetts act alone? Or must it wait for an American biopharma-first policy to emerge from Washington?

“Does some of that take waiting for D.C.? Yes. Do we need our voice in D.C. to make sure that those programs are created for what the U.S. needs? Yes, we do. And do we need industry to step up, like we’re doing through our Drive program? Absolutely,” Bradford added. “It’s all of the above, really.”

Boston, Cambridge, and their suburbs comprise the nation’s top biopharma cluster as ranked in GEN’s nationally- and regionally-cited A-List of Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters. As of June when the updated ranking was published, Boston/Cambrdge scored lowest in jobs, placing just fifth—while finishing third in patents, second in VC and NIH funding, and tops in lab space.

No lab space growth

MassBio recorded no growth in the amount of lab and biomanufacturing space this year. It remained at a nation-leading amount of 63.2 million square feet as developers scrambled to fill a glut of available space. Despite no increase, the statewide vacancy rate for life-sci space climbed year-over-year to approximately 31% by mid-2026, up from about 28% a year earlier. MassBio contrasted the current inventory size with the 21.5 million square feet it recorded in 2015.

Also on the positive side, Massachusetts biopharma startups raised $3.45 billion in VC in the first half of 2026, the largest amount for a half-year period since 2023 and an increase of 25% from $2.75 billion last year. Parabilis Medicines raised the largest VC award of the half, a $305 million Series F round in January completed five months before it completed the largest-ever IPO to date by a drug developer, raising an eye-popping $770.5 million in gross proceeds.

Massachusetts-based biopharmas completed eight IPOs in the first half of 2026—compared with two in all of 2025 and six in all of 2024. Going public between January and June were Kailera Therapeutics ($719 million); Generate: Biomedicines ($400 million); Hemab Therapeutics ($347 million); Aktis Oncology ($318 million), Avalyn Pharma ($300 million), Odyssey Therapeutics ($279 million); and Seaport Therapeutics ($255 million). This year’s eight IPOs accounted for about two-thirds of the 13 total biopharma IPOs carried out in U.S. markets so far in 2026.

Beeline Medicines, a developer of precision autoimmune and inflammatory disease therapies, closed in June on a $126.3 million VC extension that boosted its total Series A round to $426.3 million, inclusive of a $300 million financing commitment announced last year and led by Bain Capital.

Massachusetts accounted for 25% of the nation’s total VC haul and placed second only to California’s $5.979 billion among individual states. Massachusetts also attracted $7.63 billion in VC last year, 3% below the $7.89 billion recorded for 2024.

The post In Massachusetts, Latest Annual Snapshot Shows a Tale of Two Biopharmas appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

Selected vectors have been shown to achieve over 4x higher antibody productivity, with titers exceeding 2 g/L in a simple fed-batch flask model, he continues, while pointing out that the synthetic promoter pools also contain a higher proportion of high-expressing cells, increasing the likelihood of isolating top-performing clones.

“CHO cells are the pharmaceutical industry’s gold-standard cell factories, and CHO cell-specific synthetic promoters provide an elegant solution to overcoming key productivity limitations in the industry,” says Racher. “We are excited to release this latest update and to continue providing solutions that address evolving biomanufacturing needs.”

The CHO.SET Promoter Library will be displayed at BioProcess International next month as part of Biotech Week Boston.

The post Expanded Synthetic Promoter Library Introduced to Boost Biomanufacturing Operations appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.