Up with eggs, down with sperm. Plus, cyborgs and dinosaurs

H5N1 and the Future of Food

🐮Cows now

We’re all acutely aware of the bird flu–induced egg shortage, but now comes the news from SN’s McKenzie Prillaman about a second H5N1 bird flu variant, D1.1, detected in dairy cattle in Nevada in January 2025. Though pasteurizing milk effectively kills viruses, the headlines got us thinking about investment-worthy alternatives to traditional dairy and eggs.

🐤Context: the bird’s-eye view

It’s been just over a year since the current H5N1 bird flu outbreak began, leaping from birds to cows, and continuing to travel back and forth across species. Over 150 million birds (from commercial poultry to backyard flocks to wild birds) in the United States have been affected. Eggs are scarce and expensive, with no end in sight to the outbreak. Plant-based and other alternatives are rising to meet the challenge.

🌱The science of alt-eggs 

Egg alternatives are made from plant proteins, starches, soy products, and other ingredients like algae and fruit purees. They’ve grown in popularity in recent years, with demand increasing since the bird flu outbreak. Products can be solids like powders for baking and food additives or liquids that can be cooked into omelettes with a realistic, egg-like mouthfeel. The market is established, but new players are debuting alternatives to eggs and dairy products as demand increases among industrial food companies and retail consumers. 

Who’s who in alternative proteins

It’s a competitive market, with multiple players aiming to poach customers:

• Perfect Day, founded in 2014 in Emeryville, California, supplies their microflora egg-replacement protein formula to partners who make products including cheese, yogurt, protein drinks and baked goods. They’ve raised over $900 million in equity funding to date and just closed a Pre-Series E round of $90 million. Fun fact: Leonardo DiCaprio is a backer.  
• Eat Just, founded in San Francisco in 2011, is one of the earliest and most robust players, with $465 million raised to date. Best known for their egg substitutes, the company’s product lines also include alt-meat products, and are widely distributed in U.S. grocery stores like Whole Foods. 
• The EVERY Company, based in South San Francisco, boasts over $240 million in total funding to date. The company secured a Department of Defense grant in November 2024 for a manufacturing feasibility study aimed at securing food supply chains from risks including animal disease outbreaks.
• Onego Bio is a Finnish startup founded in 2022 as a spinoff from VTT, Technical Research Center of Finland. In 2024, they opened a US office in San Diego, and have raised a total of over $70 million to date.
• Simply Eggless makes a formula based on lupin beans, which are in the same family as chickpeas. Founded in 2020, the company is still in the pre-seed funding stage, with an estimated revenue of $1–10 million and products sold locally in New York City. 

Brain science and the rise of the cyborg

🧠A pacemaker for the brain

The first episode of Science News’s new podcast The Deep End, from senior neuroscience writer Laura Sanders, features a self-described “cyborg”: a young father suffering from severe depression who’s opted to have electrodes permanently implanted in his brain. It sounds radical, but evidence suggests it works, and if trials succeed, deep brain stimulation may emerge as a common treatment for depression and other neurological conditions. 

📋Trials in progress

The trial featured in the podcast is being led by Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. UCSF Health physicians have also successfully used “on-demand stimulation” from DBS to treat a patient with severe depression. The NIH-funded BRAIN Initiative, a coalition that includes research institutions from across the country, has published the results of a small study of 10 adults in 2023 in which 90% of subjects showed a significant improvement in depression symptoms, and 70% were in remission or no longer depressed.

🤯The booming brain imaging market

Deep brain stimulation, a well-established therapy, has seen significant growth since its initial Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 1997 for Parkinson’s tremors. Subsequent approvals in 2002 and 2016 extended its use to advanced and earlier stages of Parkinson’s disease. Over the past decade, researchers have broadened the procedure’s applications to target behavioral conditions like depression, leveraging advancements in imaging and neuroimaging which allow for greater accuracy, speed, and efficiency in identifying various brain behaviors. This progress is mirrored in the brain imaging market, valued at $13.5 billion in 2022 and projected to nearly double by 2032, driven by aging populations and AI-powered advancements.

🔋Beyond the hardware

Abbott, Boston Scientific, and Medtronic all make electrodes used in deep brain stimulation devices, but issues remain. The thin wires implanted in the brain can break or shift position, requiring revision surgery. The battery-powered pulse generator that sends electrical pulses to the brain requires battery replacement, which involves follow-up surgical procedures. Even if the hardware holds up, some individuals may develop tolerance to the stimulation, requiring ad-hoc reprogramming of the device settings. 

One company that aims to disrupt current technology is Torpedo Therapeutics. Driven by the pain points of traditional electrodes, Torpedo’s approach (developed with investment from the exclusive tech incubator Y Combinator) learns from brain activity and adjusts automatically. Torpedo has raised $500,000 over two pre-seed rounds, most recently in March 2022. 

Male contraceptives: definitely not premature

⚤ It’s men’s turn

Fred Schwaller, writing for SN, highlights recent and long-overdue advancements in male contraceptives. With decades of limited options, the scientific community is hopeful that new solutions will be available within 5 to 10 years. From topical hormonal gels that temporarily reduce testosterone levels, to injectable gels that block sperm from leaving the testicles, to pills that target essential sperm proteins, male contraception is an idea whose time has come.

🍆The inside story

Until recently, the only male contraceptives were condoms or vasectomies. While the former is unreliable (with failure rates as high as 12 percent), the latter is, well, permanent. The undesirability of both options — coupled with the rollback of Roe v. Wade and the curtailing of abortion access in multiple US states — has fueled the search for effective male contraceptives. Surveys show that increasing numbers of men are willing to try these new options, and that more women have indicated they’d trust their partners to use them responsibly.

🧪Startups in this space include:

• Contraline: makers of ADAM, an injectable gel administered to the vas deferens (the tubes that carry sperm). The gel forms a physical barrier that blocks sperm from leaving the testicles. Similar to intrauterine devices (IUDs) for women, Contraline’s contraceptive is designed to last for years and be reversible. The project is supported by the Male Contraceptive Initiative, a non-profit helping to fund and prepare the venture for filing with the FDA and initiating first-in-human trials.
• YourChoice Therapeutics: developing a non-hormonal male contraceptive pill targeting specific proteins involved in sperm production. The company has raised Series A funding of ​​$15 million, in addition to a grant of $500,000 from an undisclosed source in 2024. 
• Eppin Pharma: makers of a male contraceptive based on a peptide that impedes sperm’s ability to swim forward to provide a reversible and non-hormonal contraceptive option. The company is in preclinical studies, conducting laboratory and animal tests to evaluate safety and efficacy before moving to humans, with intellectual property from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Amber 2.0: Scientists Develop New DNA Storage

📸 The big picture: Scientists have developed a method to store DNA in an amberlike material and still extract it easily hours later, writes Payal Dhar for SN.

🦖The science, at a glance: Thermoset-REinforced Xeropreservation (T-REX), encapsulates DNA in amber-like polymer networks at room temperature. Through combining lock-and-key chemicals that “open up” the polymer’s structure, scientists can retrieve the DNA. The material is similar to polystyrene plastic, chosen because it isn’t easily broken down by nature: Anything encapsulated in plastic can endure for a very long time. But the team made a tiny yet important addition to the plastic — a weakness in the form of a chemical feature called a thionolactone. That allowed researchers to deconstruct the polymer to retrieve the DNA. 

💡Why it matters: DNA is fragile and needs careful handling and storage. Existing storage methods require freezing temperatures, specialized equipment or hazardous chemicals. The technology could one day be used to collect and preserve genetic data or other specimens, like seeds or proteins, in remote locations — or even to transport biological molecules for space research. 

📈 Industry leaders: Research was headed by James Banal, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and now technical director of the biotechnology firm Cache DNA, headquartered in Foster City, California. Cache DNA is an early stage startup with seed and grant funding of over $256,000. The company’s mission is to scale storage and access of biomolecules by combining chemistry, biology, automation, and computational tools. This could have broader applications for other sustainability and preservation projects, such as Revive & Restore, a leading wildlife conservation organization which promotes the incorporation of biotechnologies into standard conservation practice. They’re working to revive biodiversity and restore ecosystems through “genetic rescue” (increasing genetic variation via breeding) of endangered and extinct species.

🧐 Dive deeper: Interested in DNA technologies? Here’s startup research website Seedtable’s list of 69 genetics startups to watch in 2025. 

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