Every year, MIT Technology Review assembles its list of 35 Innovators Under 35 - the young scientists and engineers whose work is apparently shaping the future while the rest of us are still figuring out which streaming service to cancel. This year's list includes nine people transforming biotech, and the publication has offered a taste of what five of them are up to, ranging from lifesaving medical devices to the ever-buzzy field of "age reversal."

First up: Paschal Kija, 28, who developed a device to treat postpartum hemorrhage - a complication that contributes to around 29% of maternal deaths in his home country of Tanzania. The Mkanda Salama ("Safe Wrap" in Swahili) is easy to use and costs just $70. A study found it stopped postpartum bleeding in 73% of women within 20 minutes, which is the kind of statistic that makes you wonder why it took until now for someone to invent it.

Next, brain electrodes - those devices scientists have been inserting directly into people's brains for decades, which, shockingly, can cause a bit of damage. Xiao Yang, 34, is working on ultra-small electrodes she hopes will have less impact on surrounding brain tissue. They're flexible, too, and look a lot like actual neurons, presumably so the brain doesn't notice the intrusion. Yang is also creating sheets of electrodes inspired by kirigami, the traditional Japanese art of cutting paper into three-dimensional shapes. Her sheet has a honeycombed structure shaped like a spiral basket, and she's already using it to study brain cells in the lab.

In 2024, Kyle "KJ" Muldoon Jr. was born with a rare and potentially fatal genetic disorder. Sarah Grandinette, now 26, was part of a team that developed an entirely new, personalized treatment for him - a gene-editing therapy essentially designed to correct a genetic misspelling. Grandinette created cells with KJ's genetic variant to screen gene-editing approaches, then tested potential medicines in mice and monkeys. KJ got his first dose at about seven months old, responded well, and was eventually discharged from the hospital. He's "doing pretty great," she says, which is the understatement of the year.

Then there's the longevity crowd. The buzziest tech in the field right now centers on reprogramming - rewinding the age of cells by resetting them to a more embryonic-like state, because apparently we've all decided aging is a bug rather than a feature. In a 2020 study, Yuancheng (Ryan) Lu, now 34, and colleagues showed a reprogramming therapy reversed vision loss in aged, blind mice. Now an almost identical version is being tested in people with eye disease. Life Biosciences, the company developing the drug, dosed its first volunteer in June.

Finally, Samuel King, 27, used a generative AI model last year to come up with new genetic blueprints for bacteriophages - teeny viruses that infect bacteria. He printed those blueprints as strands of DNA and found in experiments that the AI-designed viruses could create new copies of themselves, burst out of bacterial cells, and infect other nearby bacteria. Viruses aren't technically alive, but King hopes AI-designed life forms might one day be used to make drugs or soak up pollution - because why not let AI design the viruses, too?

You can read more about these innovators and the others on the biotech list here. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review's weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.