Hu­man eggs are in­cred­i­bly rare cells. The ovary typ­i­cal­ly pro­duces on­ly 400 ma­ture eggs across a woman’s life. But bi­ol­o­gists in George Church’s lab at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty — a group that’s nev­er con­tent with na­ture’s lim­its — just got a step clos­er to­ward a tech­nique that could one day al­low peo­ple to grow eggs on de­mand.

The ap­proach, known as in vit­ro ga­me­to­ge­n­e­sis, or IVG, would al­low sci­en­tists to make eggs or sperm from adult stem cells. If sci­en­tists are suc­cess­ful, IVG could rewrite the rules of as­sist­ed re­pro­duc­tion by giv­ing peo­ple with in­fer­til­i­ty and even same-sex cou­ples the abil­i­ty to have bi­o­log­i­cal chil­dren through in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion.

Viking Ther­a­peu­tics is fig­ur­ing out its next steps af­ter the high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed read­out of a mid-stage tri­al of the oral form of its in­cretin drug for obe­si­ty proved to be a let­down.

The pill al­lowed obese pa­tients in a Phase 2 tri­al to lose up to 12.2% of their weight at three months, Viking said Tues­day morn­ing. But the rates of side ef­fects were high, and 38% of pa­tients giv­en the high­est 120 mg dai­ly dose of the pill dis­con­tin­ued treat­ment.

Viking’s GLP-1/GIP ag­o­nist had been one of the hottest hopes in the obe­si­ty space, and the com­pa­ny’s shares VK­TX fell 40% at mar­ket open Tues­day.

Sen­so­ri­um, a start­up found­ed by sci­en­tists from Mass Gen­er­al and Har­vard in 2021 to look for new brain drugs from plants and fun­gi, has raised a $25 mil­lion Se­ries A ex­ten­sion, the com­pa­ny told End­points News in an in­ter­view.

The start­up has been large­ly qui­et since it launched with $30 mil­lion in No­vem­ber 2022. Sen­so­ri­um orig­i­nal­ly planned to start a clin­i­cal tri­al with that fund­ing in 2024, but it just raised new fund­ing to get the com­pa­ny’s ex­per­i­men­tal an­ti-anx­i­ety drug through a Phase 1 study. The first healthy vol­un­teer was dosed ear­li­er this month.

The drug is a chem­i­cal­ly tweaked form of a mol­e­cule from a suc­cu­lent. “We want to main­tain the po­ten­cy, the ac­tion, the ef­fi­ca­cy, but we've got to fix all the oth­er things na­ture gives us,” Sen­so­ri­um co-founder and CEO Ja­cob Hook­er told End­points. “I al­ways say na­ture gives us amaz­ing phar­ma­col­o­gy, but ter­ri­ble drug­like prop­er­ties.”