1. SOUTH KOREA

The Ministry of Health and Welfare selects Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS to operate the country’s global accelerator platform. JLABS will engage with various local incubators and collaborators in the startup ecosystem to offer venture development programs, stimulate employment and encourage commercialization to enhance the global competitiveness of Korea’s life sciences sector.

2. COSTA RICA

Costa Rica revises its biotech regulatory framework to ease restrictions on gene editing and other new breeding techniques. Experts say a banana variety resistant to yield-reducing fungal diseases sigatoka and Fusarium wilt could be the first genome-edited product commercialized in Costa Rica later this year.

3. RWANDA

Rwanda partners with CEPI, Ginkgo Bioworks, BioNTech and IQVIA to create a ‘disease intelligence system’ for monitoring biological threats. If a novel pathogen is detected on arriving international flights from the analysis of wastewater or nasal swab samples, the end-to-end biosecurity infrastructure aims to deliver a vaccine within 100 days, an effort aligned with CEPI’s 100 Day Mission, a global effort embraced by the G7 and G20.

4. INDIA

The first human clinical trial of a gene therapy for hemophilia A (FVIII deficiency) begins in Vellore, India. The treatment uses a lentiviral vector to express a FVIII transgene in the patient’s own hematopoietic stem cells, which, once differentiated, will produce FVIII, is supported by the government’s Department of Biotechnology, Bangalore-based Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine, Emory University and Christian Medical College, Vellore.