Some of the most expensive drugs currently in use are gene therapies to treat specific diseases, and their high cost limits their availability for those who need them. Part of the reason for the cost is that the manufacturing process yields as much as 90 percent non-active material, and separating out these useless parts is slow, leads to significant losses, and is not well adapted to large-scale production. Separation accounts for almost 70 percent of the total gene therapy manufacturing cost. But now, researchers at MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Center for Biomedical Innovation have found a way to greatly improve that separation process.
The findings are described in the journal ACS Nano, in a paper by MIT Research Scientist Vivekananda Bal, Edward R. Gilliland Professor Richard Braatz, and five others.
“Since 2017, there have been around 10,000 clinical trials of gene therapy drugs,” Bal says. Of those, about 60 percent are based on adeno-associated virus, which is used as a carrier for the modified gene or genes. These viruses consist of a sort of shell structure, known as capsids, that protects the genetic material within, but the production systems used to manufacture these drugs tend to produce large quantities of empty capsids with no genetic material inside.
These empty capsids, which can make up anywhere from half to 90 percent of the yield, are useless therapeutically, and in fact can be counterproductive because they can add to any immune reaction in the patient without providing any benefit. They must be removed prior to the formulation as a part of the manufacturing process. The existing purification processes are not scalable and involve multiple stages, have long processing times, and incur high product losses and high cost.
Separating full from empty capsids is complicated by the fact that in almost every way, they appear nearly identical. “They both have similar structure, the same protein sequences,” Bal says. “They also have similar molecular weight, and similar density.” Given the similarity, it’s extremely challenging to separate them. “How do you come up with a method?”
Most systems presently use a method based on chromatography, in which the mixture passes through a column of absorbent material, and slight differences in the properties can cause them to pass through at different rates, so that they can be separated out. Because the differences are so slight, the process requires multiple rounds of processing, in addition to filtration steps, adding to the time and cost. The method is also inefficient, wasting up to 30 or 40 percent of the product, Bal says. And the resulting product is still only about two-thirds pure, with a third of inactive material remaining.
There is another purification method that is widely used in the small molecule pharmaceutical industry, which uses a preferential crystallization process instead of chromatography, but this method had not been tried for protein purification — specifically, capsid-based drugs — before. Bal decided to try it, since with this method “its operating time is low and the product loss is also very low, and the purity achieved is very, very high because of the high selectivity,” he says. The method separates out empty from full capsids in the solution, as well as separating out cell debris and other useless material, all in one step, without requiring the significant pre-processing and post-processing steps needed by the other methods.
“The time required for purification using the crystallization method is around four hours, compared to that required for the chromatography method, which is about 37 to 40 hours,” he says. “So basically, it is about 10 times more effective in terms of operating time.” This novel method will reduce the cost of gene therapy drugs by five to 10 times, he says.
The method relies on a very slight difference in the electrical potential of the full versus empty capsids. DNA molecules have a slight negative charge, whereas the surface of the capsids has a positive charge. “Because of that, the overall charge density distribution of the full capsids will be different from that of the empty capsids,” he says. That difference leads to a difference in the crystallization rates, which can be used to create conditions that favor the crystallization of the full capsids while leaving the empty ones behind.
Tests proved the effectiveness of the method, which can be easily adapted to large-scale pharmaceutical manufacturing processes, he says. The team has applied for a patent through MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, and is already in discussions with a number of pharmaceutical companies about beginning trials of the system, which could lead to the system becoming commercialized within a couple of years, Bal says.
“They’re basically collaborating,” he says of the companies. “They’re transferring their samples for a trial with our method,” and ultimately the process will either be licensed to a company, or form the basis of a new startup company, he says.
In addition to Bal and Braatz, the research team also included Jacqueline Wolfrum, Paul Barone, Stacy Springs, Anthony Sinskey, and Robert Kotin, all of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Innovation. The work was supported by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, Sanofi S.A., Sartorius AG, Artemis Life Sciences, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
HOUSTON, Oct. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Bristow Group Inc. (NYSE: VTOL), the global leader in innovative and sustainable vertical flight solutions, today announced it will release its third quarter 2025 financial results after market close on Tuesday, November 4, 2025. In connection with the release, Bristow has scheduled a conference call for Wednesday, November 5, 2025, to begin at 10:00 a.m. ET (9:00 a.m. CT).
Investors may participate in the call by using the following link, which is now open for early registration: https://www.veracast.com/webcasts/bristow/webcasts/VTOL3Q25.cfm.
A replay of the call will be available through November 25, 2025, and can be accessed using the same link. The accompanying investor presentation will be available on November 4, 2025, on the investor section of Bristow’s website at www.bristowgroup.com.
About Bristow Group
Bristow Group Inc. is the leading global provider of innovative and sustainable vertical flight solutions. Bristow primarily provides aviation services to a broad base of offshore energy companies and government entities. Our aviation services include personnel transportation, search and rescue (“SAR”), medevac, fixed-wing transportation, unmanned systems and ad hoc helicopter services. Our business is comprised of three operating segments: Offshore Energy Services, Government Services and Other Services. Our energy customers charter our helicopters primarily to transport personnel to, from and between onshore bases and offshore production platforms, drilling rigs and other installations. Our government customers primarily outsource SAR activities whereby we operate specialized helicopters and provide highly trained personnel. Our other services include fixed-wing transportation services through a regional airline in Australia and dry-leasing aircraft to third-party operators in support of other industries and geographic markets.
Bristow currently has customers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, the Dutch Caribbean, the Falkland Islands, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Spain, Suriname, Trinidad, the United Kingdom (“UK”) and the United States (“U.S.”). To learn more, visit our website at www.bristowgroup.com.
Investors Bristow Group Inc. Jennifer Whalen +1 713.369.4636 InvestorRelations@bristowgroup.com
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WEST CHICAGO, Ill., Oct. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Titan International, Inc. (NYSE: TWI) (“Titan” or the “Company”), a leading global manufacturer of off-highway wheels, tires, assemblies, and undercarriage products, today announced the closing of a strategic partnership with Rodaros Industria de Rodas Ltda. (“Rodaros”), a Brazilian manufacturer of agricultural and construction wheels. This deal was first announced during Titan’s second quarter 2025 earnings call on July 31st and has now completed formal regulatory review.
Rodaros is the second largest manufacturer of agricultural wheels in Brazil. This partnership will be forged with an initial cash investment of $4 million by Titan for a 20% ownership stake and includes commitments to acquire the remaining 80% in 2029 based on financial performance criteria for final valuation of the enterprise. Titan will obtain one Board seat within Rodaros (out of a three-member Board) and will begin providing financial leadership.
Paul Reitz, President and Chief Executive Officer of Titan stated, “This partnership reinforces Titan’s commitment to offering the best solutions for our customers’ equipment and to driving performance improvements in agriculture and construction operations. By combining Rodaros’ excellence in wheel manufacturing with Titan’s market leading tire production and distribution across the entire region, we are paving the way for the development of integrated solutions tailored to the Brazilian and South American markets.”
Mr. Reitz continued “Building on Titan’s One Stop Shop framework, this strategic partnership now gives us the opportunity to distribute wheel/tire assemblies to existing OEM customers, particularly in Brazil, the third largest agricultural market in the world. Over the years, I’ve talked to key OEMs in Brazil, and they expressed enthusiasm about the opportunity to procure wheel/tire assemblies, which is something that none of our key competitors offer in that region. I expect this partnership to be a game changer for our customers and anticipate that wheel/tire assemblies will be a successful part of our Brazilian portfolio, much like they are in the US. Additionally, it gets us one step closer to our goal of being a supplier that OEMs can rely on for both wheels and tires, for all key geographies across the globe. We are excited about the growth opportunities that this partnership will provide for Titan, and about the ability to better serve our customers.”
Ronaldo Linero, CEO of Rodaros added, “This partnership is founded on shared values and complementary technical expertise between the companies. Our goal is to generate real synergies and deliver added value to the end customer”.
About Titan
Titan International, Inc. (NYSE: TWI) is a leading global manufacturer of off-highway wheels, tires, assemblies, and undercarriage products. Headquartered in West Chicago, Illinois, the Company globally produces a broad range of products to meet the specifications of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and aftermarket customers in the agricultural, earthmoving/construction, and consumer markets. For more information, visit www.titan-intl.com.
Apple on Tuesday became only the third company to break through the $4 trillion market value milestone.
Apple shares rose fractionally in early trading, just enough to briefly push the company’s value above the historic level. It ended the trading day at $3.99 trillion.
Nvidia and Microsoft crossed the $4 trillion threshold in July. Nvidia’s market valuation has grown even more since then, hitting $4.88 trillion as of Tuesday’s close.
Microsoft’s value rose above the benchmark again Tuesday, at $4.03 trillion, driven by news that the Windows software maker’s stake in OpenAI would be worth $135 billion.
Apple has lagged several of its Big Tech peers this year, with fears that its artificial intelligence efforts are coming up short. Apple has gained just 7.5% in 2025, well behind Nvidia’s 50%, Alphabet’s 42% and Meta Platforms’ 28%. For the year, the broad-based S&P 500 has risen 18%.
But Apple’s fortunes have changed in recent months.
In early September, a federal judge ruled that Google did not have to divest its Chrome browser business, which benefitted Apple. As part of the ruling, the judge said Google could continue to pay to have its search engine preloaded on devices, such as iPhones. Alphabet currently pays Apple billions of dollars a year to do so.
In mid-September, the company released its newest iPhones. The extra-slim iPhone Air, which briefly faced a delay before customers in China could purchase it, eventually was released and sold out in minutes in the country.
Apple CEO Tim Cook with President Trump in the Oval Office on Aug. 6.Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post via Getty Images
The negative sentiment regarding Apple among some Wall Street analysts also began turning around in recent weeks.
“Our checks suggest this may be more than the average iPhone refresh cycle, as lead times for the base iPhone 17 continue to outpace last year’s levels,” analysts at Evercore ISI wrote on Monday. “In addition, our survey work points to a strong demand environment.”
Multiple other analysts have also upgraded Apple’s stock.
To add to the company’s good luck, over the course of President Donald Trump’s trade war, most Apple products have been exempt from tariffs. Apple CEO Tim Cook has paid Trump multiple visits in the Oval Office and attended a state dinner that King Charles III hosted in the U.K. in Trump’s honor last month. On Tuesday, Cook appeared again with Trump in Japan.
Over the last month, Apple has overtaken other major tech companies with a more than 5% gain, well ahead of Amazon’s 3% and close to Nvidia’s 7%. Over the last month, Meta’s shares have returned only 1.5%.
Apple reports earnings on Thursday. Wall Street analysts expect that the company has even more room to run. As of Tuesday, the Wall Street consensus is for the tech giant to report more than $100 billion in quarterly revenue.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, filed a lawsuit against the makers of Tylenol, claiming they deceptively marketed the pain medication to pregnant people despite alleged risks of autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.
Paxton filed the suit on Tuesday in Texas state court against Johnson & Johnson, the creators of Tylenol, and Kenvue, a Johnson & Johnson spinoff company which has sold Tylenol since 2023.
Paxton, who is currently running for US Senate, alleged that both companies violated Texas’s consumer protection laws by not warning buyers. Paxton is also suing Johnson & Johnson for allegedly violating the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act by “fraudulently transferring liabilities arising from Tylenol” to Kenvue, said the Texas attorney general in a press release.
“Big Pharma betrayed America by profiting off of pain and pushing pills regardless of the risks. These corporations lied for decades, knowingly endangering millions to line their pockets,” said Paxton in a press release.
Texas is the first state to file such a suit after the Trump administration claimed last month that acetaminophen, a drug ingredient in Tylenol, carries a risk of autism, despite no new evidence suggesting that.
The latest suit comes only days after Donald Trump again warned pregnant people not to take the over-the-counter medication unless “absolutely necessary” and that children should not be given Tylenol “for virtually any reason” in comments made on Truth Social.
Tylenol makers have repeatedly defended the pain medication. Kenvue released a statement Tuesday in response to Paxton’s lawsuit, saying: “Acetaminophen is the safest pain reliever option for pregnant women as needed throughout their entire pregnancy.”
“Without it, women face dangerous choices: suffer through conditions like fever that are potentially harmful to both mom and baby or use riskier alternatives,” the Kenvuestatement continued.
In a previous September statement, Kenvue also said that it “strongly disagrees” with assertions that Tylenol may cause autism. “Sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism,” the statement said.
Top medical groups have similarly defended the use of Tylenol by pregnant people. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)called the Trump administration’s guidance on Tylenol “irresponsible”.
“Suggestions that acetaminophen use in pregnancy causes autism are not only highly concerning to clinicians but also irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients, including those who may need to rely on this beneficial medicine during pregnancy,” said the group in a September statement.
In March, three months after being forced out of his position as the CEO of Intel and sued by shareholders, Patrick Gelsinger took the reins at Gloo, a technology company made for what he calls the “faith ecosystem” – think Salesforce for churches, plus chatbots and AI assistants for automating pastoral work and ministry support.
The former CEO’s career pivot is taking place as the US tech industry returns to the political realm as a major revenue stream. Some of its most prominent present-day leaders have funded Donald Trump’s re-election and renewed their pursuit of government contracts as the second Trump administration has revitalized religious conservatism in Washington DC.
Now Gloo’s executive chair and head of technology (who’s largely free of the shareholder suit), Gelsinger has made it a core mission to soft-power advance the company’s Christian principles in Silicon Valley, the halls of Congress and beyond, armed with a fundraised war chest of $110m. His call to action is also a pitch for AI aligned with Christian values: tech products like those built by Gloo, many of which are built on top of existing large language models, but adjusted to reflect users’ theological beliefs.
“My life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ’s return,” he said.
Nick Skytland, a vice-president at Gloo, talks about faith alignment of AI at Colorado Christian University’s AI for Humanity event. Photograph: Mike Moselle
Gloo says it serves “over 140,000 faith, ministry and non-profit leaders”. Though its intended customers are not the same, Gloo’s user base pales in comparison with those of AI industry titans: about 800 million active users rely on ChatGPT every week, not to mention Claude, Grok and others.
Religiosity like Gelsinger’s – a born-again Christian who has referred to Silicon Valley as his “mission field” – is shaping Silicon Valley’s culture in its image. Where there was once purported atheism, there is now “a very loud, very visible and very specifically Christian-inflected technological culture” in Silicon Valley, said Damien Williams, a scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who studies how technologies are shaped by religious beliefs. It’s exemplified by figures like Peter Thiel – who warns of the coming of the antichrist if humanity fails to work toward certain technological frameworks – and Andreessen Horowitz’s Katherine Boyle, a close friend of JD Vance, the US vice-president. Gelsinger has long been outspoken about his Christian values, helping found Transforming the Bay With Christ in 2013, an organization aiming to ignite a Christian spiritual movement in the region.
Speaking on 7 October at a seminar co-hosted by Gloo, Colorado Christian University, a conservative college, and the Christian Post, a conservative evangelical Christian news outlet, Gelsinger framed AI’s development as “another Gutenberg moment”: an epochal shift as important as the Reformation. In the same way that a “plump little monk”, Martin Luther, used the printing press to catalyze “the greatest period of human invention”, he sees a similar faith-driven opportunity today to change the course of history through AI.
“The church embraced that great invention of the day to literally change humanity,” Gelsinger said of the printing press. “And so my question today is: are we going to embrace [and] shape AI as a technology that truly does become a powerful embodiment of the church and the expression of the church?”
Jesus’s hackathon
Straddling the worlds of AI, Christianity and faith tech, Gloo isn’t solely focused on shaping the AI sector through Silicon Valley. It’s wielding influence in other ways, such as by supporting and funding a Christian tech ecosystem. The company hosted a three-day hackathon following the seminar at Colorado Christian University; its event saw more than 600 participants compete for over $250,000 in prize money – nearly triple the attender count from 2024.
Though growing, the event was not without hiccups. Ryan Siebert, an AI product developer and hackathon attender, said he was able to get Gloo’s newest large language model, which has not yet been publicly launched, to provide him a recipe for methamphetamine through a prompt injection. He later communicated with the president of Gloo AI to share details about the vulnerability. A Gloo spokesperson said the company explicitly invited hackathon attenders to be among the first to test the new large language model and offer feedback on it, as the product is in a “pre-beta” stage of development.
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The audience at Colorado Christian University’s AI for Humanity event. Photograph: Mike Moselle
Meanwhile, Gelsinger said his message about Christian AI was finding friendly ears in Washington DC. In an interview with the Guardian, he described presenting Gloo’s work to legal advocacy groups, as well as congressional leaders. He declined to name the institutions or politicians, but said some lawmakers were interested in using Gloo products at their churches.
Gloo and Gelsinger frequently travel in conservative political circles. Brandon Showalter, a journalist at the Christian Post and moderator at the Gloo co-hosted seminar, is an anti-trans activist who has said he hopes trans youth care will eventually become “as unthinkable as ice pick lobotomies”. Annie Chestnut Tutor, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, the influential conservative thinktank behind Project 2025, participated in a panel moderated by Showalter and offered a Beltway insider’s perspective on AI regulation. On 17 October, Gelsinger delivered his “Gutenberg moment” stump speech at Liberty University’s CEO Summit, which also featured Liz Truss, Michael Flynn and Dan T Cathy, the Chick-fil-A chairman, as keynote speakers.
But Gelsinger appears just as comfortable in those venues as he does as a guest of honor at Joe Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address; and, as may be expected of a pragmatic industry executive, public records show he’s backed political campaigns on both sides of the aisle.
Gloo itself strikes an ecumenical tone in its institutional messaging. It shied away from politics or denominational disagreements at the hackathon; when an attender shared plans on Discord to build an AI bot of Charlie Kirk, the conservative political figure assassinated at a rally in Utah last month, that would offer “scripture-based responses”, a hackathon organizer encouraged staying “solidly focused on Jesus here”, even as “politics are definitely important”. Leah and Wes Brooks, whose hackathon team built a set of open-source AI tools enabling interoperability among faith-based and other apps, noted a diverse set of event-goers and religious backgrounds – including a female pastor – as well as a generally collaborative environment. “We didn’t even have to sign a statement of faith or anything like that,” Leah Brooks said. Gloo also says it does not “prohibit in any way” Muslim organizations from using its technology.
Brandon Showalter of the Christian Post interviews Patrick Gelsinger. Photograph: Mike Moselle
“We’re not trying to take a theological position: we’re building a technology platform, and then giving enough customization capability that the Lutherans can be good with it, the Episcopalians can be good with it, the Catholics can be good [with it], the Assemblies of God can be good with it,” Gelsinger told the Guardian. “We’re trying to say, ‘Hey, there’s a broad tent here of faith and flourishing,’ but also we’re trying to satisfy many organizations that do not take a denominational perspective, [such as] Alcoholics Anonymous.”
Gelsinger wants faith to suffuse AI. He has also spearheaded Gloo’s Flourishing AI initiative, which evaluates leading large language models’ effects on human welfare across seven variables – in essence gauging whether they are a force for good and for users’ religious lives. It’s a system adapted from a Harvard research initiative, the Human Flourishing Program. Models like Grok 3, DeepSeek-R1 and GPT-4.1 earn high marks, 81 out of 100 on average, when it comes to helping users through financial questions, but underperform, about 35 out of 100, when it comes to “Faith”, or the ability, according to Gloo’s metrics, to successfully support users’ spiritual growth.
Gloo’s initiative has yet to visibly attract Silicon Valley’s attention. A Gloo spokesperson said the company is “starting to engage” with prominent AI companies.
