Top Stories of 2025: AI for Research, Innovative Practices, Digital Twins
By Bio-IT World Staff
December 29, 2025 | In the Bio-IT World year, focus continues to be paid to pharma’s research choices and the latest in sequencing technologies. AI models for protein structure prediction have had a good year, and natural materials, psilocybin in particular, have garnered attention.
Read more for our list of the most-read articles of 2025.
Bio-IT World has named the 2025 Innovative Practices Awards winners, choosing to honor four entries. Winners this year include: Genmab nominated by Genedata; NHS England nominated by IQVIA; Pistoia Alliance; and Regeneron. The judging panel also highlighted two entries for Honorable Mention: a separate entry from Pistoia Alliance and Quris-AI. Read more.
A multi-generational family tree is helping researchers dramatically improve the accuracy of genomic variant calling, according to a new study published in Nature Methods. The research, led by scientists at Pacific Biosciences, introduces a comprehensive benchmarking dataset that could reshape how genomic technologies are trained and validated. The study uses the latest versions of several leading sequencing technologies—PacBio’s HiFi sequencing, Illumina, and Oxford Nanopore—to sequence a four-generation family pedigree from Utah—CEPH-1463. Read more.
Researchers at MIT and Recursion today announced the release of Boltz-2, an updated artificial intelligence model that can predict protein structure (building on Boltz-1) and also binding affinity—how strongly potential drugs bind to their target proteins—in just 20 seconds with a single GPU. Boltz-2 was developed in Regina Barzilay’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT in conjunction with researchers at Recursion. The model is available today under an MIT license for commercial and non-commercial use. Read more.
The placenta is a temporary but critical organ everyone needs to initiate their life, yet it remains one of the most understudied organs in human biology despite the possible lifelong health implications if anything it is supposed to do goes awry. “Nowadays, it is getting pretty tough to find an adult-onset disease that isn’t related to something that happened during pregnancy,” says Helen Jones, Ph.D., co-director of the Center for Research in Perinatal Outcomes at the University of Florida (UF). Conditions tied to placental problems decades earlier include obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular complications in both men and women, says Jones, whose research focuses on better understanding the placenta and treating its dysfunctions. Her latest, back-to-back research feats were to demonstrate the safety of a nanoparticle-mediated gene therapy approach to boosting the placenta in normal pregnant macaques (Molecular Human Reproduction) and another in guinea pigs with fetal growth restriction where the treatment was given multiple times in late pregnancy and found to fully restore fetal weight while reducing both fetal and maternal stress levels (Gene Therapy). Read more.
At last week’s Venture, Innovation, and Partnering Summit at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, Derek Lowe, Director, Chemical Biology & Therapeutics at Novartis BioMedical Research, and John Keilty, venture partner at Third Rock Ventures, sat down for a candid conversation on the pharmaceutical industry and the current state of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in drug discovery. Lowe, known for his long-running industry commentary at the In the Pipeline blog, reflected on the cycles of hype that have accompanied new technologies over the decades—from the early days of computer-aided drug design in the late ’80s to sequencing to antisense to the current AI boom. “There have been times that I thought, ‘Ok, the hype has peaked,’ but it hasn’t peaked,” Lowe said. Read more.
Earlier this week at the ViVE conference in Nashville, Tenn., Bio-IT World editor, Allison Proffitt, sat down with Andrea Abell, Eli Lilly’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), whose mission is to protect the integrity of pharmaceutical research from inception to patient delivery. Together they discussed the critical role cybersecurity plays in Lilly’s broader goal of bringing life-changing medicines to market. Read more.
Although not often counted among the major chronic diseases, myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and long COVID are both highly prevalent and uniquely challenging because the underlying causes are not fully understood, treatment needs to be personalized, and the often-invisible nature of the symptoms can be stigmatizing. Long COVID alone—barely a recognized disease five years ago—affects about 400 million patients’ lives and has an annual economic impact equivalent to about one percent of the global economy (Nature Medicine). Read more.
Pacific Biosciences announced a chemistry upgrade and SMRT cell reuse capability last month at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) meeting. CEO Christian Henry said the moves targeted dramatic price reductions for customers and to compete with short-read sequencing. Henry told Bio-IT World that the launch of the SPRQ-Nx chemistry and SMRT cell reuse capability will bring genome sequencing prices down to $300-$350 per sample—with potential for even lower costs on large-scale projects. Henry described the SPRQ-Nx launch as, “a transformational moment for the company,” marking the culmination of a multi-year effort to “productize this technology from sample extraction through automation through new platforms through informatics.” Read more.
A large segment of the population holds negative views towards psychedelics, even in therapeutic contexts. Up until a few years ago, those people included Kosuke Kato, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. His perspective changed when he and Louise Hecker, Ph.D., then working at Emory University, began reading up on the experimental use of psilocybin—the naturally occurring psychedelic compound produced by hallucinogenic mushrooms—in treating various psychiatric and age-related neurodegenerative diseases. Their scientific curiosity was sparked by a seemingly simple question from Hecker’s friend at the gym about why psilocybin has such profound, long-lasting effects. Read more.