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Tag: Science

  • FDA approves Vertex’s non-opioid painkiller, first new kind of pain medicine in decades

    FDA approves Vertex’s non-opioid painkiller, first new kind of pain medicine in decades


    A sign hangs in front of the world headquarters of Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston.

    Brian Snyder | Reuters

    The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Vertex Pharmaceuticals‘ non-opioid painkiller pill, a new alternative for pain relief that comes without the risk of addiction. 

    Vertex is now the first drugmaker in decades to gain U.S. approval for a new type of pain medicine. It’s a milestone after a long history of mostly unsuccessful efforts to develop painkillers without the destructive dependency of cheap and widely available opioids, which have caused a horrific epidemic of abuse and overdose in the U.S.

    Vertex’s drug, Journavx, is specifically approved for the treatment of moderate-to-severe acute pain, which is usually caused by injury, surgery, illness, trauma or painful medical procedures and likely eases with time. Around 80 million patients are prescribed a medicine for their moderate-to-severe acute pain every year in the U.S., according to Vertex. 

    Almost 10% of patients with acute pain who are treated initially with an opioid will go on to have prolonged opioid use, and roughly 85,000 people will develop opioid use disorder annually, Vertex said in a statement.

    “We have the opportunity to change the paradigm of acute pain management and establish a new standard of care,” Dr. Reshma Kewalramani, Vertex CEO, said in a statement.

    Vertex said Journavx will have a list price of $15.50 per 50-milligram pill. Wall Street analysts have said that the medication could become a blockbuster drug if it wins approval from regulators, estimating its annual sales could exceed $1 billion. 

    The experience of pain starts in a nerve ending, and the body detects the pressure and sends a signal to the spinal cord and then the brain. Vertex’s treatment works by blocking pain signals at their origin before they reach the brain. That’s different from opioids, which act directly on the brain to block pain, triggering the brain’s rewards centers in a way that can feed addiction.

    The approval underscores the “FDA’s commitment to approving safe and effective alternatives to opioids for pain management,” said Dr. Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a release.

    Vertex’s painkiller was more effective than placebo at reducing the intensity of pain after 48 hours in two late-stage studies on more than 1,000 patients who had abdominoplasties, also known as “tummy tucks,” and roughly another thousand in people who had bunion surgery. Those two procedures are commonly used in studies of people with acute pain.

    The painkiller, however, failed to meet the secondary goal in both trials of reducing pain when compared to a combination of the opioid drug hydrocodone, which is frequently abused, and acetaminophen, the basis for popular pain medications such as Tylenol.

    In both trials, rates of adverse side effects were lower in those who received Vertex’s drug compared to people who took a placebo. The most commonly reported adverse events among people who received Journavx were itching, muscle spasms and rash, among others, according to the FDA.

    In a separate phase three study, more than 83% of patients said in a survey that the drug was good, very good or excellent at easing pain. Those people had undergone various surgical or non-surgical procedures.

    The bigger opportunity for Vertex may be to win FDA approval in chronic pain. That’s an area where the risk of addiction to prescription opioids can be greater, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

    In 2023, the company’s painkiller produced positive results in a mid-stage trial in diabetes patients suffering from a chronic nerve condition.



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  • Planet lands $230 million contract for Pelican imagery satellites

    Planet lands $230 million contract for Pelican imagery satellites


    An animated rendering of a Pelican satellite in orbit.

    Planet

    Satellite imagery and data analysis company Planet announced it had signed a $230 million contract on Wednesday, with an anchor customer furthering the rollout of its next-generation Pelican satellites.

    “It is a momentum-building event. … It’s both our biggest deal ever and it’s a significant step for us into this satellite services business,” Planet CEO Will Marshall told CNBC.

    Planet’s deal will see it build Pelican satellites in service to a company in the Asia-Pacific region. Planet said the customer will be identified at a later date, but described the company as a long-standing partner. Marshall said the contract covers “a couple of years to construct” the satellites “and then five years of operation.”

    “They get dedicated access to the satellites that we’re launching for them within their [area of interest] in Asia, and then for the rest of the world, we get to license that data,” Marshall said.

    While the deal does not change Planet’s previous guidance for its fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter results, the company expects to begin seeing benefits to its balance sheet in fiscal 2026, with payments for building the satellites and providing services to be recognized over about seven years.

    Planet, which operates more than 200 satellites in orbit, in 2021 unveiled its plans for the more high-powered line of Pelican satellites. Intended to replace the SkySat satellites acquired from Google in 2017, Planet aims to deploy a constellation of as many as 32 Pelican satellites. The company launched its first operational satellite for the constellation, Pelican-2, earlier this month, with the spacecraft notably featuring Nvidia‘s Jetson edge artificial intelligence platform for improved data processing.

    “We only had financials to specifically build a subset of [those 32 Pelican satellites], and now we’ve got the financials to build more, and so we’re scaling much faster,” Marshall said.

    Shares of Planet rose as much as 14% in trading Wednesday before giving up early gains to trade little changed from its previous close of $5.46 a share. Planet late Tuesday announced a multiyear contract worth an unspecified amount with the European Space Agency.

    Read more CNBC space news

    Additionally, Marshall said the Pelican deal represents Planet’s entrance into the satellite services market, effectively selling its spacecraft as an adaptable base to specific customers. It is a market that Planet first dipped into with its Tanager satellite product line, the first of which it built and deployed for the nonprofit group Carbon Mapper.

    “These customers are often customers we’ve been working with for years, so they already know and trust our data and our ability to execute. They know we’ve got a vertically integrated stack of tech, so they know we can deliver satellites in space that work and operate,” Marshall said.

    “It’s synergistic with our data business,” he added.

    Planet went public in 2021 amid the SPAC boom. Similar to other space companies that went public at that time, Planet’s stock slid steadily in the years following — with company shares getting hit amid missed revenue targets and workforce layoffs — before bouncing back in 2024.

    While it lags top-performing space pure-play stocks over the past year, Planet shares have more than doubled over the past 12 months, according to FactSet data.



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  • FDA approves Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic to treat chronic kidney disease in those with diabetes, expanding its use

    FDA approves Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic to treat chronic kidney disease in those with diabetes, expanding its use


    The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved Novo Nordisk‘s Ozempic to treat chronic kidney disease in patients who also have Type 2 diabetes, expanding the use of the wildly popular injection in the U.S. 

    The drug is already widely used and covered to treat Type 2 diabetes. The FDA’s decision means Ozempic can now be used to reduce the risk of kidney disease worsening, kidney failure, and death from cardiovascular disease in patients with both chronic kidney disease and diabetes.

    The decision could transform how doctors treat patients with chronic kidney disease, which involves a gradual loss of kidney function and is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. Around 37 million American adults are living with chronic kidney disease, according to Novo Nordisk.

    Diabetes is a key risk factor for kidney disease. Roughly 40% of Type 2 diabetes patients have the condition, which can cause additional sickness such as increased risk of cardiovascular problems and death, Novo Nordisk said.

    “All chronic kidney disease is progressive. It’s a year-on-year, relentless decline in renal function,” Stephen Gough, Novo Nordisk’s global chief medical officer, said in an interview, referring to the kidney’s ability to filter waste from the blood.

    He noted that when the condition progresses to the point of kidney failure — also known as end-stage kidney disease — patients require long-term dialysis treatments to remove waste from the blood, or a kidney transplant. Both are burdensome, and death among patients with end-stage kidney disease is “very high,” particularly from cardiovascular disease, according to Gough.

    The approval also demonstrates that a blockbuster class of diabetes and weight loss drugs called GLP-1s have significant health benefits beyond regulating blood sugar and suppressing appetite. 

    Ozempic reduced the risk of severe kidney outcomes — including kidney failure, reduction in kidney function, or death from kidney or heart causes — by 24% in diabetic patients with chronic kidney disease compared with a placebo, according to results of a late-stage trial that the approval was based on.

    In patients who took Ozempic, kidney function declined more slowly, the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack dropped 18% and the risk of death from any cause fell 20% compared with the placebo. Ozempic also cut the risk of cardiovascular-related deaths by 29%.

    “We know that, unfortunately, cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease just go hand in hand,” Gough said.

    He added that the major treatments patients typically receive when they have the earliest signs of chronic kidney disease aim to reduce cardiovascular risk factors by paying attention to blood pressure.

    The rate of serious adverse side effects was 49.6% in patients who took Ozempic, lower than the 53.8% seen in the group that received a placebo. There was a slightly higher rate of discontinuations among Ozempic patients due to gastrointestinal side effects commonly seen with GLP-1s, such as nausea and vomiting.

    EU regulators approved Ozempic for the same use in December. 

    Novo Nordisk ended the phase three trial in October, a year earlier than expected, in response to positive results. At the time, the Danish company’s announcement caused shares of kidney dialysis companies to plummet about 20% in a single day. 

    The trial, called FLOW, started in 2019 and followed roughly 3,500 patients with diabetes and moderate to severe chronic kidney disease.

    “From my point of view as a doctor, you don’t get [diabetes, obesity, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease] in isolation,” Gough said. “These illnesses, unfortunately, co-segregate. They cluster within the same individuals. So if you have a medicine that can target each of these co-morbidities in one injection, then you’re addressing what really matters to the patient.”

    The approval comes after the Biden administration selected three of Novo Nordisk’s drugs with the active ingredient semaglutide for the second cycle of Medicare drug price negotiations. That includes Ozempic, its weight loss counterpart Wegovy and another diabetes treatment called Rybelsus.  

    The FDA’s decision also comes as Novo Nordisk faces increased competition from Eli Lilly and tries to win expanded insurance coverage for Wegovy.

    Last year, Wegovy won approval in the U.S. for use in slashing the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes. Novo Nordisk is also studying Wegovy as a potential treatment for fatty liver disease.



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  • CIA believes Covid-19 likely caused by lab leak, NBC News reports

    CIA believes Covid-19 likely caused by lab leak, NBC News reports



    “CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”



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  • A norovirus vaccine could be on the horizon as cases rise

    A norovirus vaccine could be on the horizon as cases rise


    A researcher works in the lab at the Moderna Inc. headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on Tuesday, March 26, 2024.

    Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Norovirus is raging across the U.S. this winter. Moderna might soon have a vaccine for it. 

    A large phase three trial of the shot is underway, with results expected as soon as later this year or 2026. Moderna needs to see a certain number of cases before it can analyze the data and determine how well its vaccine works, putting the timeline in flux. The 25,000-person study is enrolling ahead of schedule, said Doran Fink, Moderna’s clinical therapeutic area head for gastrointestinal and bacterial pathogens. 

    “I don’t know if it’s directly attributable to the increased incidence of norovirus this season, but we clearly have a lot of interest in participation in this trial,” Fink said. 

    Norovirus is a nasty stomach bug that causes vomiting and diarrhea. It’s highly contagious and can spread easily in nursing homes and daycares, and on cruise ships. It’s generally a seasonal illness that’s more common in the winter months. 

    This winter has been especially brutal. Twice as many norovirus tests are coming back positive this January than the same time last year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Norovirus outbreaks were up 36% so far this season as of Dec. 11, according to the CDC. 

    There’s currently no vaccine for norovirus. Like flu, there are many types of norovirus, making immunizing against it a challenge.

    Moderna’s vaccine candidate targets the three genotypes that the company says typically cause most infections. It works by showing the immune system something that looks like norovirus but isn’t infectious, so the body can learn how to fight back if the real thing hits.

    The company’s vaccine candidate does not include the genotype that’s causing the bulk of this year’s infections. One of the study’s goals is to see whether the vaccine protects against more types of norovirus than the shot specifically targets, Fink said. He said mRNA vaccines offer an advantage because they can easily be tweaked, if needed. 

    Moderna’s goal isn’t to prevent people from getting norovirus entirely. That’s a high bar for any vaccine, and one that’s especially difficult to achieve with norovirus because the symptoms start within 12 to 24 hours of exposure, Fink said. Instead, the goal is to make people feel a little less awful and keep them from needing to see a doctor or go to the hospital if they do get it. 

    The company sees the main opportunity in vaccinating seniors who are particularly vulnerable to norovirus complications like dehydration. People 65 and up make up the majority of the estimated 900 Americans who die from norovirus complications in the U.S., according to the CDC. 

    Moderna also sees health-care workers, daycare workers and other teachers who are exposed to young children as possible target populations, Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stephane Bancel said last week at the JP Morgan Health Care Conference. People going on cruises is another possibility, he said, since the virus can spread easily on ships where people are living in tight quarters. 

    Investors are questioning whether Moderna can make the shot a commercially viable opportunity – if, of course, the vaccine works, said RBC analyst Luca Issi. He sees the shot being used mostly to protect people living in nursing homes or going on cruises. 

    At this point, Moderna isn’t testing the vaccine in children, who are also vulnerable to norovirus. But if the shot works in adults, Moderna would be obligated to study it in children, Doran said.



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  • FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship after midflight explosion, reports property damage on Turks and Caicos

    FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship after midflight explosion, reports property damage on Turks and Caicos


    SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship launches for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on Jan. 16, 2025.

    Eric Gay | AP

    The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday that SpaceX’s Starship rocket is grounded until the company and regulator complete an investigation into the midflight failure of the most recent test flight, which forced airlines to divert flights.

    The regulator noted in a statement that, while there have been “no reports of public injury,” it has received “reports of public property damage on Turks and Caicos” islands in the Caribbean.

    SpaceX must complete the investigation and put in place any required corrective actions before the FAA issues the company with a new license to launch Starship again.

    The FAA diverted and delayed dozens of commercial airline flights — including several operated by American Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Delta Air Lines — after the Starship rocket exploded and rained down debris minutes after launching on Thursday.

    SpaceX said in a statement that it believes a fire in the vehicle led to Starship breaking apart. Videos posted on social media by people in the region showed the rocket detonating in space.

    Orange balls of light fly across the sky as debris from a SpaceX rocket launched in Texas is spotted over Turks and Caicos Islands on Jan. 16, 2025.

    Marcus Haworth@marcusahaworth | Marcus Haworth Via Reuters

    Notably, the FAA says it activated a “Debris Response Area” to warn aircraft of debris falling “outside of the identified closed aircraft hazard areas.”

    Before rocket launches, the FAA publishes “Aircraft Hazard Areas” that tell pilots where debris may fall if something goes wrong midlaunch.

    A map of the “aircraft hazard areas” published before SpaceX’s seventh Starship flight.

    Federal Aviation Administration

    SpaceX initially published a statement on its website Thursday that Starship debris fell “into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas,” seemingly contradicting the FAA’s explanation for why a “Debris Response Area” was activated.

    As of Friday morning, the latest SpaceX statement did not include that specific language. The company’s website said more broadly that “any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area” after the failure.

    The FAA, in response to CNBC’s request for clarification on whether Starship debris landed outside the predefined hazard area, reiterated that its “information is preliminary and subject to change.” SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

    Read more CNBC space news



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  • Watch SpaceX launch Starship flight testing how it will deploy satellites in space

    Watch SpaceX launch Starship flight testing how it will deploy satellites in space


    SpaceX is set to launch the seventh test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, as the company looks to push development of the mammoth vehicle further, including with a crucial test for how it will deploy satellites.

    The company has an hour window, from 5 p.m. ET to 6 p.m. ET, to launch Starship from its private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas. If SpaceX is unable to launch within that window for weather or technical reasons, the company will postpone the attempt to a later date.

    There will not be any people on board the Starship flight. However, Elon Musk‘s company is flying 10 “Starlink simulators” in the rocket’s payload bay and plans to attempt to deploy the satellite-like objects once in space. This is a key test of the rocket’s capabilities, as SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its much larger and heavier upcoming generation of Starlink satellites.

    While SpaceX didn’t specify what the Starlink simulators are made of, mass simulators are commonly used in rocket vehicle development and are often simple constructions of metal or concrete that weigh roughly the same as the object in question. As the rocket is not reaching orbit, the simulators are expected to follow a similar trajectory to the rocket and are designed to burn up during reentry.

    Read more CNBC space news

    Assuming the launch goes according to plan, Starship would reach space and then travel halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff.

    Additionally, the rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster would return after separating from Starship and land on the arms of the company’s launch tower — a feat the company pulled off on the fifth flight but missed on the sixth.

    The Starship rocket sits at the launch pad during inclement weather on January 14, 2025, near Boca Chica, Texas.

    Sergio Flores | Afp | Getty Images

    As with each previous flight, SpaceX aims to push development further by assessing additional Starship capabilities, including tests of its heatshield tiles and the trajectory of its intense reentry.

    Starship is critical to the company’s plans, even with its $350 billion valuation and already dominant position in the space industry.

    Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, Starship stands 403 feet tall and is about 30 feet in diameter. SpaceX has flown the full Starship rocket system on six spaceflight tests so far since April 2023, at a steadily increasing cadence.

    The Super Heavy booster, which stands 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket’s journey to space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust — about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which launched for the first time in 2022.

    Starship itself, at 171 feet tall, has six Raptor engines — three for use while in the Earth’s atmosphere and three for operating in the vacuum of space.

    The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The full system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch

    TOPSHOT – The SpaceX Starship lifts off from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on November 19, 2024, for the Starship Flight 6 test. 

    Chandan Khanna | Afp | Getty Images

    The Starship flying on this launch, tagged as Ship 33, also represents a second-generation version of the vehicle, called “Block 2.”

    SpaceX noted that the “significant upgrades” to this vehicle include changes to the flaps on the vehicle’s nose, redesigns of its propulsion system to boost performance, an enhanced flight computer, 30 cameras placed along the vehicle for monitoring the rocket and a reinforced heat shield.

    The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program..



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  • Bristol Myers Squibb says Alzheimer’s is the biggest market for new schizophrenia drug

    Bristol Myers Squibb says Alzheimer’s is the biggest market for new schizophrenia drug


    The Bristol Myers Squibb research and development center at Cambridge Crossing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023. 

    Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Bristol Myers Squibb believes Alzheimer’s is the largest market for its newly approved schizophrenia drug, Cobenfy, which it expects to eventually generate billions of dollars in revenue.

    In an interview, company executives said each treatment use they are studying for Cobenfy has multibillion dollar potential, including Alzheimer’s disease psychosis, Alzheimer’s agitation and Alzheimer’s cognition, bipolar disease and autism. But Alzheimer’s is the “really large market here,” Bristol Myers Squibb CFO David Elkins told CNBC on Tuesday at the JPMorgan Health Care Conference in San Francisco.

    There are nearly 6 million patients in the U.S. with Alzheimer’s, and around half of them have psychosis, or symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, Elkins said. Cobenfy could be the first drug specifically approved for Alzheimer’s-related psychosis, said Chief Commercialization Officer Adam Lenkowsky. 

    Atypical antipsychotics – medication used to treat a range of psychiatric disorders – are often used to treat psychosis in Alzheimer’s patients even though they are not approved for that purpose. But those treatments can increase the risk of death, and Cobenfy does not, according to Bristol Myers Squibb. 

    Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s agitation, a symptom that can cause a patient to feel restless and worried, is estimated to affect around 60% to 70% of patients with the disease, according to some studies. 

    Bristol Myers Squibb on Monday said it plans to release initial late-stage trial data for Cobenfy in Alzheimer’s-related psychosis treatment during the latter part of the year, which is earlier than expected. The company also expects to start phase three trials in Alzheimer’s agitation, Alzheimer’s cognition and bipolar disorder in 2025, while studies in autism will begin in 2026. 

    JPMorgan analyst Chris Schott expects Cobenfy sales to reach about $5 billion by 2030, with a peak sales potential in the $10 billion range across multiple treatment uses, according to a research note on Tuesday. That is a huge boon to Bristol Myers Squibb as it faces pressure to offset the potential loss of revenue from top-selling treatments that will see their patents expire. 

    Bristol Myers Squibb’s Cobenfy drug

    Courtesy: Bristol Myers Squibb

    It’s a full-circle moment for Cobenfy, which became the first novel type of treatment for the roughly 3 million U.S. adults with schizophrenia in decades after it won approval in September. The drug comes from Bristol Myers Squibb’s whopping $14 billion acquisition of biotech company Karuna Therapeutics at the end of 2023. 

    But the drug’s roots are in treating Alzheimer’s.

    Eli Lilly originally tested one part of the drug – xanomeline – in the 1990s to reduce cognitive decline before shelving it due to severe side effects such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation. Xanomeline activates certain so-called muscarinic receptors in the brain to decrease dopamine activity without causing the side effects associated with antipsychotics. 

    More CNBC health coverage

    Andrew Miller, founder and former president of research and development of Karuna Therapeutics and now an advisor to Bristol Myers Squibb, saw xanomeline’s potential in neuroscience and theorized combining xanomeline with a second existing medication – trospium – to reduce those side effects. He went on to launch Karuna to develop the combination as a schizophrenia treatment.

    Other breakthrough treatments for Alzheimer’s recently entered the market, including Biogen and Eisai’s Leqembi and Eli Lilly‘s Kisunla. Those treatments work in part by clearing toxic plaques in the brain called amyloid, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, to slow the decline in memory and thinking in patients in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s 

    But as people progress through their disease, they experience symptoms such as psychosis and agitation, Bristol Myers Squibb’s Elkins said. 

    “That’s where Cobenfy fits it,” he said. “If you can get rid of the psychosis, the agitation, people’s cognition improves. Just imagine for the caregivers and health-care system overall, how impactful this drug could be for those patients and their loved ones. It’s really exciting when you think about it in that context.”

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  • Toyota is ‘exploring rockets’ with nearly $45 million investment in Japanese launch startup, chairman says

    Toyota is ‘exploring rockets’ with nearly $45 million investment in Japanese launch startup, chairman says


    After Akio Toyoda, CEO and President of Toyota, announced he was stepping down on Thursday, he shared his advice to his successor and his business philosophy.

    Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno | Gamma-rapho | Getty Images

    LAS VEGAS — Toyota Motor is exploring the development and production of orbital rockets, Chairman Akio Toyoda said Monday.

    The automaker, through its “Woven by Toyota” mobility company, is investing 7 billion Japanese yen ($44.4 million) into Interstellar Technologies Inc., a Japanese private spaceflight company developing launch vehicles for satellites.

    Toyoda, former CEO and scion of the automaker, said there shouldn’t only be “one car company” — referring to Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk also leads SpaceX — working on the development of such technologies.

    “We are exploring rockets too, because the future of mobility shouldn’t be limited to just earth or just one car company, for that matter,” Toyoda said during a press conference for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

    Read more CNBC space news

    Founded in 2013, Interstellar Technologies has performed seven launches of its small suborbital MOMO rockets, which reached space for the first time in 2019. The startup has yet to deploy a satellite in orbit, with plans to develop the larger ZERO and DECA line of rockets for delivering spacecraft.

    Toyota said the company expects to leverage its experience with the mass production of vehicles for the production of rockets with Interstellar Technologies. 

    In the Japanese launch market, Toyota is taking on Mitsubishi, whose subsidiary Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has developed and launched the H3 series of rockets for JAXA, the country’s space agency. Mitsubishi’s H3 rocket, which debuted several years behind schedule, was intended to be priced competitively with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, which dominate the current global launch market.

    Woven City

    Toyota on Monday also announced completion of the first phase of Woven City, including housing for residents and inventors whom the automaker is inviting to come to the location.

    Woven by Toyota was announced five years ago by Toyoda at CES as a “prototype city of the future,” located on a 175-acre site at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan to test and develop new emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles.

    The chairman said the mission of Woven City isn’t necessarily to make money, but to be a test course and experimental proving ground for future technologies.



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  • How Ancient Archaea Survive Extreme Heat: Insights From Indian Scientists Research

    How Ancient Archaea Survive Extreme Heat: Insights From Indian Scientists Research


    New Delhi: Scientists at the Bose Institute, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), have studied archaea — a domain of ancient organisms — to find clues to survival strategies of microorganisms by adapting to harsh conditions with the help of their toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems.  

    Archaea, which means “ancient things” in Greek, are one of the oldest forms of life on Earth and belong to a group called the third domain of life.

    Many archaea live in some of the harshest environments on Earth, which makes them ideal for studying how life can survive in tough conditions.

    The team, led by Dr Abhrajyoti Ghosh at the Department of Biological Sciences, explored how certain archaea toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems help these organisms cope with high temperatures.

    In the study, published in the journal mBio, Ghosh and his team studied a specific TA system in a heat-loving archaeon called Sulfolobus acidocaldarius to understand how it helps these organisms.

    They examined S. acidocaldarius, which lives in environments with hot volcanic pools like Barren Island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and some other volcanic areas in the world, that can get as hot as 90 degrees Celsius.

    The detailed analysis of the VapBC4 TA system that helps survival in the high-temperature environment, shows its important role during heat stress. They found that the VapC4 toxin carries out several functions, such as stopping protein production, helping the organism form resilient cells, and influencing biofilm creation. When the cell faces heat stress, a stress-activated protease (which hasn’t been identified in archaea yet) may break down the VapB4 protein (which otherwise checks the VapC4 toxin’s activity).

    Once VapB4 is gone, the VapC4 toxin is released and can stop protein production. This block in protein production is part of a survival strategy that helps cells form “persister cells” during stress. These persister cells go into a resting state, conserving energy and avoiding making damaged proteins. This dormancy helps them survive tough conditions until the environment improves, the scientists said.



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