Hybrid proteins face complex regulatory hurdles, and regulatory sandboxes could help balance safety, innovation, and consumer acceptance on their path to market, say Dr Alessandro Monaco and Prof Kai Purnhagen (University of Bayreuth, Germany)

Scaling hybrid proteins requires supportive policy and financing frameworks to reduce the hidden costs of the global food system while strengthening sustainability, resilience, and food security, says Dr Helena Wright (FAIRR Initiative, London, UK).

A growing number of Global South governments and academics are now calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering, says Prof Aarti Gupta of Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

The rights, leadership, and knowledge of Inuit Peoples must be foundational to geoengineering and other climate policies affecting their Homelands, ensuring meaningful participation and avoiding unfair burdens, emphasizes Sophie Crump, Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greenland.

The Earth BioGenome Project is scientifically viable and globally coordinated—but success now hinges on strategic policy leadership, sustained funding, and unrestricted data access, asserts Prof. Richard A. Gibbs, Baylor College of Medicine, USA.

This commentary expands on Kurt Vandenberghe’s call for science-based climate policy by stressing that the climate crisis is, at its core, a global energy crisis with cascading impacts on health, biodiversity, equity, and security. It critiques oversimplified narratives like single temperature thresholds, arguing instead for a focus on replenishing natural capital and addressing interconnected human-driven crises. While past global challenges, such as ozone depletion, had clear scientific, technological, and political solutions, climate change requires a far more complex, transdisciplinary, and bottom-up approach. The article emphasizes that citizens—not just policymakers—must be empowered to shape resilient futures, and that science must move beyond diagnosis to help deliver actionable, collaborative solutions aligned with human well-being and planetary resilience.

“No Place to Hide: Science Is the Foundation of Policy” calls for urgent, science-driven climate action. With global temperatures already surpassing 1.5°C, the EU places science at the heart of its Green Deal, climate law, and upcoming 2040 framework. The message is clear: climate policy is not just about nature—it is about security, resilience, and economic survival. Science provides the evidence, innovation, and solutions we need, but action requires breaking silos, effective communication, and shared responsibility across all sectors. The EU’s upcoming climate adaptation plan and investment in resilience show the path forward. The research community is central to this mission, and their work fuels the hope of a safer, stronger, and more sustainable future. There is no time to wait—together, we must act now.

A holistic, microbiome-informed approach to agrifood systems and childhood nutrition policies—rooted in global collaboration, evidence-building, and equitable innovation—can drive sustainable solutions to undernutrition and improve children’s health worldwide.

Dr. Abdelbagi M. Ismail explores how scientific innovations, strategic partnerships, and policy reforms, led by organizations like the International Rice Research Institute, are crucial for achieving sustainable food security in Africa and globally amid mounting environmental and population pressures.

Disruptive approaches such as NANOSPRESSO could help provide equitable access to advanced therapies for patients with rare diseases worldwide, as called for by the recent World Health Assembly Resolution on Rare Diseases, highlight Alexandra Heumber Perry and Debra Bellon.

The European Union has embarked on a comprehensive process to phase out animal testing for chemical safety, engaging stakeholders across numerous consultations and workshops, though final implementation remains years away. In contrast, the United States Food and Drug Administration has unveiled a clear and ambitious roadmap to rapidly reduce animal testing, centered on validated New Approach Methodologies such as organ-on-chip and advanced computational models. These regulatory developments underscore a global shift toward innovative, human-relevant safety testing methods and signal important changes for pharmaceutical regulation worldwide.

Realistic opportunities to extend the human healthspan and ease the societal burden of aging-related diseases are emerging, but require long-term funding for infrastructures that support large-scale data collection and systems-based aging research, advocate Prof. Renaud Jolivet and colleagues.

In a context of tensions and conflict globally and locally, we are seeing polarisation and isolation in our societies, and growing evidence that trust is being eroded. This tension is clear within the science community (in its broadest definition), and between science and society. (…)

Global health policies must prioritize investments in sepsis R&D as a cornerstone of pandemic preparedness and response, urge Dr Mariam Jashi, Global Sepsis Alliance, Georgia, and Prof Niranjan Kissoon, University of British Columbia, Canada.

Academic freedom is a prerequisite for scientific advancement and innovation. It serves as the cornerstone of scientific inquiry, granting scholars the unfettered ability to explore, teach, and disseminate ideas without fear of censorship or retribution. More recently, academic freedom has faced mounting political, economic, and social pressures, bringing it back into the global spotlight. Safeguarding this freedom is essential for the continued pursuit of knowledge and the betterment of society. 

Participating last month at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, I had the pleasure of moderating  a discussion with some of the leading voices in climate science and innovation on a subject that couldn’t be more relevant given the setting and the stakes.

The topic of discussion was the underutilization of scientific knowledge in processes geared toward policy consensus and climate action. The question on the floor was: “[If] we possess so much scientific knowledge about the causes for the climate multi-crisis and about the solutions, why then does science not play a bigger role in breaking what seems like an endless cycle of deadlocked discussions?”

As the recent repeated climate-related tragedies in several countries (…) demonstrate, we are now observing what was predicted many years ago on the basis of scientific models. As William Ripple and colleagues have stressed, (…)  “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperilled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.

We live in a time of significant global challenges. The term polycrisis has emerged as we face wide-reaching and impactful issues such as the climate, war and conflict, and health.  To address these challenges, we will need political will, global collaboration, inter- multi- and transdisciplinary approaches, systems thinking and scientific breakthroughs at scale.  Science and scientists have an important role to play as societies tackle these challenges and lay foundations for actions that will direct the course of the future.   It is possible to argue that science that engages effectively with society will depend on the sharing, uptake and accessibility of scientific knowledge and insight, but also on the way that science is designed and co-designed in ways that reflect excellence and the aspirations and expectations of societies. 

In the 21st Century, as humanity and the Earth face crises of survival and sustainability, we must fundamentally rethink the values that science and technology aspire to, their social roles and methods, and the norms of scientists. This rethinking will likely lead to significant changes in the 200-year history of modern science, which has been institutionalized since the early 19th Century.