It hides in bats, jumps across species, and attacks the human brain and respiratory system with devastating speed. With fatality rates reaching as high as 75%, Nipah virus is not a hypothetical future threat—it is a real and growing danger. As medicine races to catch up and vaccines remain in development, scientists and early-stage startups are fighting against time to stop the next outbreak before it begins.

Fetty Wap lost an eye as a child. Today, startups and Stanford scientists are rewriting what that loss could mean—and what the future of vision may become.

For over a century, surgical pathology has relied on a rigid, manual workflow: rapidly freezing tissue, slicing it into thin sections, mounting it on glass slides, staining it with dyes, and examining it under a microscope. While effective, this process is slow, labor-intensive, and often destructive—consuming valuable clinical specimens in the process.

Fibrosis is the hidden driver behind a range of chronic, life-threatening conditions — and a frontier in urgent need of innovation. In diseases like pulmonary fibrosis, liver cirrhosis, kidney disease, and heart failure, fibrosis is what transforms treatable inflammation into irreversible damage. It is a process where the body’s healing mechanisms spiral out of control, laying down excess scar tissue that hardens and suffocates otherwise healthy organs.

In the global fight against infectious diseases, few threats loom larger than antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Once-reliable antibiotics are losing their effectiveness, and healthcare systems around the world are struggling to keep pace. The challenge isn’t just about developing new drugs—it’s also about knowing, with speed and certainty, which treatments will work for each patient. In this space, diagnostic speed can mean the difference between life and death.

From prescription mishaps to surgical mistakes and billing inconsistencies, medical errors pose a serious threat to patient well-being and healthcare efficiency. AESOP Technology, spun out of Taipei Medical University and now headquartered in San Francisco, is tackling these challenges using AI-driven clinical decision support systems (CDSS) that enhance diagnostic accuracy, flag medication errors, prevent wrong-site surgeries, and even optimize billing.

In June 2024, Chinese urologist Dr. Zhang Xu made history—performing the world’s first transcontinental remote prostatectomy,...

Breast cancer remains one of the most common and potentially devastating diseases affecting women globally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), breast cancer accounted for 2.3 million new cases and approximately 685,000 deaths worldwide in 2020 alone. Every year, millions of women face the daunting challenge of breast cancer, highlighting the urgent need for reliable, accurate, and timely detection methods.