Here's what we explored on the Journal this week.
The Great Mystery of Chirality: Life's Left and Right Hands (Oct 14)
Some of life's building blocks come in left-handed and right-handed forms, like gloves. Life mostly picks just one hand, and scientists think a tiny head start may have grown bigger over time.
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Cells That Clean House: The Amazing Recycling Inside You (Oct 15)
Your cells bag up worn-out parts and send them to a recycling spot called the lysosome. This cleanup is called autophagy, and its discovery won a Nobel Prize in 2016.
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Who's researching this
Casma Therapeutics is a biotech company in Massachusetts that studies autophagy and lysosomes. Its lead program, called CSM-101, is a molecule designed to switch on a lysosome channel called TRPML1. In March 2026, the company said CSM-101 was still in preclinical testing (lab and animal studies), working toward its first studies in people, starting with Parkinson's disease linked to a rare condition called Gaucher disease. (Casma press release)
Mentioning a company is not an endorsement or medical advice.
References
- Casma Therapeutics press release, March 10, 2026: https://www.casmatx.com/2026/03/10/casma-therapeutics-receives-mjff-support-to-advance-research-on-trpml1-in-parkinsons-disease/
- The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2016, press release, NobelPrize.org: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2016/press-release/
What this is not. Education only. Stories on cells.com are not medical advice. cells.com does not diagnose, treat, prescribe, run laboratory tests, or ship kits.
Simon Ng is the founder of cells.com. He has spent more than a decade on biotech finance executive teams, including at Quark Pharmaceuticals and Adverum Biosciences, and holds an MBA.