Editorials in 2021

A deeper understanding of the myriad ways that the mechanics of cellular and tissue microenvironments trigger or exacerbate disease will open up pathways for new interventions.

The repertoire of new preclinical strategies for fighting tumours that resist or evade immunotherapy drugs and cellular immunotherapies is widening.

It’s not easy.

The newest strategies for delivering therapeutics to specific cells and tissues are increasingly translationally promising.

Biomedical research needs upgraded standards for the monitoring, control and reporting of the environmental conditions of cells in culture.

The proposal for an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) being considered by the United States Congress is bold and necessary, yet will require unrelenting focus, independence and a measured risk-taking culture.

In machine learning applied to healthcare, challenges with the data stand between feasibility testing and clinically robust deployments.

The effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies will benefit from a range of strategies — new, or borrowed from other classes of therapeutic — to trigger durable immune responses.

The availability of higher-quality biomedical and clinical data is widening the reach and usefulness of data-fitted biophysical models and of data-driven mathematical and statistical modelling.

To facilitate diagnostic radiology at the point of care, improvements in imaging hardware and processing software that raise the signal away from the noise floor are being leveraged toward improving device portability or accessibility.

The preclinical performance of subretinal or intracorneal delivery of Cas9 nucleases encoded in RNA foreshadows safer and effective one-and-done gene therapies for eye diseases.

We encourage openness in publishing, and promote increased transparency in peer review.