Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 16 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02378-x
Visualizing microglia and blood vessels in postnatal mouse cortex reveals that microglia contact and prune vessels, which is mediated by PD-L1–PD-1 signaling.
Autolomous and Cellular Origins Expand Cell Therapy Manufacturing Process
Officials at Autolomous and Cellular Origins say the companies have carried out the end-to-end integration of their respective platforms to bring full automation and digitization to the entire cell therapy manufacturing process. This new scalable approach creates a connected manufacturing environment that gives developers greater standardization, traceability, and control across the entire manufacturing process, according to the companies’ spokespersons.
Cellular Origins’ Constellation® automated platform was created to enable cell therapy manufacturing, integrating mobile robotics, existing bioprocessing technologies, and sterile fluid transfer into a coordinated operation. Its flexible, modular architecture allows developers and manufacturers to scale manufacturing capacity as demand grows while maintaining standardized processes, avoiding therapy redevelopment and reducing scale-up risk, notes Edwin Stone, CEO of Cellular Origins.
Autolomous’ digital autoloMATE® platform was designed to allow real-time data exchange and integration across existing software and AI systems, as well as devices and robotic platforms across the entire manufacturing process and supply chain, while safeguarding intellectual property. The modular architecture allows each deployment to be configured to customer needs.
The combined solution overcomes fragmentation, limited visibility, and the absence of standardized, interoperable data flows without replacing existing processes, enabling manufacturers to scale to commercially viable levels, maintains Alexander Seyf, CEO of Autolomous. First integrations have already been achieved at the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Digital and Automation Testbeds, as part of an Innovate UK-funded project.
“Scientific ambition has never been the bottleneck in bringing innovative cell therapy to patients, but the delivery infrastructure has brought many challenges,” continues Seyf. “Together with Cellular Origins, we enable fast and efficient scaling from research through to patient administration, ensuring standardization, automation and digitization across the entire process.”
“Scaling cell therapy manufacturing is not just a question of employing automation. It requires a manufacturing system that can evolve with demand,” adds Stone. “Our collaboration with Autolomous, and joint work with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, clearly demonstrates how robotic platforms and digital infrastructure can operate as one.”
The post Autolomous and Cellular Origins Expand Cell Therapy Manufacturing Process appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
STAT+: Kalshi comes for biopharma, with prediction markets for clinical trials and FDA approvals
Prediction markets have permeated the worlds of sports, politics, and reality television shows. Now, the biopharma industry could be next.
On Thursday, Kalshi, one of the world’s largest prediction market exchanges, said it will start taking bets on clinical trials and regulatory approvals.
It’s starting with a small number of markets chosen in collaboration with its partner, AppliedXL, a tech company that monitors and predicts the outcomes of clinical trials.
How is Sonar-Cities progressing towards more inclusive and resilient emergency preparedness?
How is Sonar-Cities progressing towards more inclusive and resilient emergency preparedness? Sonar-Cities is a Horizon Europe project that brings together partners from across Europe to co-create practical tools that strengthen […]
The post How is Sonar-Cities progressing towards more inclusive and resilient emergency preparedness? appeared first on Mental Health Europe.
STAT+: Eli Lilly to acquire psychedelics-focused biotech AtaiBeckley
Eli Lilly is acquiring AtaiBeckley, the developer of psychedelic treatments for mental health conditions, to expand its portfolio of neuroscience medicines, the company said Thursday.
The AtaiBeckley deal is just the latest in a string of acquisitions by the pharma giant, flush with cash from its booming GLP-1 business.
Lilly is paying $2.8 billion in cash upfront for AtaiBeckley, with the potential for another $1 billion payout contingent on certain development and regulatory milestones.
STAT+: Spring forward forever? Another daylight saving debate arrives in Congress
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Good morning. Who are you rooting for in the World Cup final? Personally, I’m hoping for more drama and heartbreak, plus a good seat wherever I’m watching.
Trump health nominees face fire at Senate hearing
The Senate health committee held a hearing yesterday, and STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo was there in person following along:
STAT+: Amylyx nears pivotal endocrine drug study readout
This story first appeared in Adam’s Biotech Scorecard, a subscriber-only newsletter. STAT+ subscribers can sign up here to get it delivered to their inbox.
Later this quarter, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals will read out results from a study evaluating a new treatment for a rare endocrine disorder. It’s a pivotal moment that could support the drug’s approval and comes two years after Amylyx was rocked — and lauded — for voluntarily pulling a drug for ALS off the market because a follow-on study showed it wasn’t helping patients.
The Amylyx drug, avexitide, is being developed to halt severe, uncontrolled drops in blood sugar that some people experience after undergoing stomach-reducing surgery for weight loss.
Why heat pumps are still so hot in the US
It feels as if it should be illegal to even think about heating appliances during the height of summer—seriously, these heat waves in New York have been brutal—but we need to talk about heat pumps.
The appliances use electricity for heating, they’re incredibly efficient, and they’re on the rise. (For what it’s worth, many heat pumps can also be run in reverse to cool buildings.) In the US, heat pump sales have doubled over the past 15 years, according to a new report. And they’re winning the heating race against fossil fuels, outpacing natural-gas furnaces by 32% during the first quarter of 2026.
These stats are especially striking at this moment, because a key tax credit for heat pumps just ended with the close of 2025. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the data. Why are heat pumps still so hot?
In case you need a quick refresher, heat pumps use electricity to essentially move heat from one spot to another. A refrigerant moves around a loop in the device, expanding and compressing, gathering and releasing heat at different points in the cycle. (For a more in-depth look at the thermodynamics, this explainer I wrote in 2023 still holds up.)
The result is an appliance that can be incredibly efficient. Once you pay for and install a heat pump, it’s generally significantly cheaper to run than a gas or oil furnace or other types of electric heating systems. And because they’re more efficient and don’t involve burning fossil fuels, heat pumps can be a major help in decarbonizing buildings.
One of the major hurdles to wider use of heat pumps is the appliances’ cost: They tend to be more expensive to buy and install than gas furnaces. For this reason, many governments offer incentives to encourage their adoption. In the US, people who installed heat pumps between 2023 and 2025 were eligible for up to $2,000 in tax credits.
Last year, though, the Trump administration slashed those tax credits, along with many of the other incentives that were part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Effective January 1, 2026, no more financial help for heat pumps.
I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending. Tax credits of up to $7,500 for new EVs ended on September 30, 2025. In the quarter leading up to that deadline, sales spiked as people rushed to take advantage of the incentive. Then they fell off a cliff. Things are starting to normalize now, but clearly the tax credit’s sunset had a major effect.
But as it turns out, heat pumps are an entirely different story. In the first few months of 2026, sales have actually gone up, as Lucas Davis, an energy economist and UC Berkeley professor, points out in a new analysis.
Heat pump shipments were flat from December to January and have seen a gradual rise since then, according to data from the Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, a trade group that represents about 90% of the US market. This increase from winter into spring follows a seasonal trend seen in previous years—and it’s actually a bit stronger in 2026.
This data isn’t what you’d expect to see if losing the tax credit were hurting demand. As Davis lays out in his post, it seems the credit wasn’t really convincing people to install heat pumps, or at least the case for doing so was sufficient without the added incentive.
“It appears that the U.S. market for heat pumps is strong enough that it does not depend on tax credits,” Davis writes.
In 2024, MIT Technology Review put heat pumps on our annual list of breakthrough technologies. “We’ve entered the era of the heat pump,” I wrote at the time.
While heat pump sales have been up and down over the last few years, the era is going strong. The appliances have outsold gas furnaces in the US for the last four years. It’s not just the US, either. Countries including China and Germany have seen strong movement to heat pumps in recent years.
There’s rarely a straight path to adoption for new technology, especially something that requires so many individual households to make a significant change. But it’s encouraging that a major decarbonization tool is going strong, even when roadblocks pop up.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
STAT+: CMS signals intent to revamp how it pays for clinical software and AI
For years, Medicare has been wrestling with how to pay for artificial intelligence and other software-based clinical tools. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is good at calculating the costs of physical items, from a cotton swab to the wear and tear on a CT scanner. But an algorithm to predict cardiac risk from a CT scan, or an AI-based map to visualize prostate cancer’s spread? Less so.
This month, in its proposed rules for hospital outpatient payments and physician fees for 2027, CMS has signaled that it’s ready to build a more consistent payment structure for clinical software and AI that factors in their impact on patient outcomes. It’s starting — as an interim step, just for 2027 — by proposing a practical change to the way it labels and pays for several clinical software and AI services.
After requesting feedback several times on AI and software payment structures, “it’s really the first time that we’ve heard the agency say that they are planning a different policy moving forward,” said Cybil Roehrenbeck, executive director of industry group the AI Healthcare Coalition. Medicare payment — and its influence on private insurers’ coverage of emerging technologies — has a significant impact on what clinical software and AI gets commercialized and reaches patients.
Accelerator programme to help innovators enter NHS primary care
Digital health innovators are being offered a specialist accelerator programme designed to help them engage with NHS primary care.