A billion-dollar drug was found in Easter Island soil – what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studied

The Rapa Nui people are mostly invisible in the origin story of rapamycin. Posnov/Moment via Getty Images – By Ted Powers, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis Published: 2025 Sep 29 – An antibiotic discovered on Easter Island in 1964 …