The FDA’s drive to reduce animal testing in drug development has coincided with a boom in AI-powered biosimulation techniques such as multi-agent virtual scientists and digital twins, while organoids and other mature methods embrace AI to ramp up predictive power. However, a shift to animal-free drug testing will take time.

The first Nature Conference on Next-Generation Fluorescence Microscopy is now open for registration. Running from September 18–20, 2026 in Beijing, the conference will highlight key areas in fluorescence microscopy, featuring sessions on super resolution techniques, mesoscale and intravital imaging, biological applications and AI-driven developments.

From virtual patients to simulated cells and organs-on-chips, digital twins are forecasting disease and guiding drug development. Scientists now must figure out how to define, validate and deploy these models.

Building a living cell from scratch requires overcoming a bottleneck that has remained unresolved despite decades of progress: orchestrating the spatiotemporal integration of core functional modules. To tackle this barrier, the SynCell Asia Initiative outlines a strategy for developing core functional modules through the establishment of a centralized, AI-driven biofoundry.