The Needle

ISSUE 14 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. This issue we highlight an important, emerging class of therapeutic that seeks to dampen low-grade sterile inflammation mediated by the inflammasome. This protein complex and its component, nucleotide-binding domain (NOD)-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3), is not just another...

ISSUE 13 Welcome to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. In this issue we take a look at a breakthrough in sequence-based design of peptide binders in the context of the stampede of startups developing AI/machine learning-based peptide design platforms guided by structural data. In the translational literature, E3 ubiquitin ligase biology...

ISSUE 12 Welcome back to The Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on preclinical biotech startups from around the world. After a brief summer hiatus, we are delighted to be back. This week, in the context of all the chatter about in-licensing Chinese assets, we highlight a novel target originating from a Hangzhou City biotech. P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL-1) is a new member of the growing...

ISSUE 11 Welcome to the Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science to help you navigate the latest translational research, with a roundup of the latest news on biotech startups from around the world. This week we’re “stuck” on the fast-moving field of ‘molecular’ glue drugs. This is an area that is going places, with a steady stream of new ventures (by our count nearly 30 companies still in the preclinical stages), a burgeoning stream of papers describing new compounds in the literature and...

ISSUE 10 Welcome to another issue of the Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science helping you understand the latest translational research and the latest news from around the world on biotech startups. Over the past few days, CAR-T cell therapies have been front and center in the news. Not your typical ex vivo CAR-T, but Capstan Therapeutics’ therapy that directly reprograms patient T cells in situ, which was the focus for a high-profile merger with AbbVie at the end of June. There...

ISSUE 9 Welcome to the latest issue of the Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science helping you navigate the latest translational research and the latest news in early-stage biotech. After a busy week up in Boston at RESI 2025 and BIO, there was a lot to digest. So, it took us a bit longer to send out our roundup. This week, the immunoproteosome is in our crosshairs with an exciting new study revealing its involvement in neurometabolism and neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation was a...

ISSUE 8 Welcome to the latest issue of the Needle, a newsletter from Haystack Science helping you understand the latest translational research and goings on in the biotech startup world. This week, we talk about mitochondrial disease, a corner of the gene and base-editing universe that, until recently, had been somewhat neglected, at least in terms of biotech startups. Also, there was the usual harvest of papers describing drug targets and a couple of intriguing drug delivery papers. We...