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Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her lawyer leave the courthouse in San Jose, California, on 3 January.Credit: David Odisho/Getty
Lessons from the Theranos debacle
Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of fraud against investors in her blood-testing company, Theranos. Holmes was acquitted on charges related to defrauding patients. Theranos claimed it could run more than 200 health tests on just a few drops of blood taken from a finger prick — but the claims were exaggerated. The story has become a cautionary tale for blood-diagnostics companies and scientists with entrepreneurial interests. In particular, it reminds executives at start-up firms to share their data early on, and participate in some kind of peer-review process, say experts.
Peril and promise of precision public health
Precision public health is commonly described as ‘the right intervention to the right population at the right time’. Funders are putting hundreds of millions of dollars behind projects that use big data and predictive analytics to tailor interventions — for example, targeting COVID-19-testing vans to the exact location of a cluster of cases. Critics say that the focus on new technologies can sap resources from the bread-and-butter methods that have made the field so successful, such as improving housing and access to health care.
Terra takes ‘omics’ computing into the cloud
Terra, a web-based tool, takes the pain out of sharing huge biomedical research data sets by allowing researchers to integrate and analyse them on the Google Cloud Platform. Terra provides access to the Cancer Genome Atlas, the Genome Aggregation Database and the All of Us Research Program, the last of which comprises some 3.7 petabytes alone. “It’s really about increasing access and breaking down silos so that you can do more interesting science with the data that’s being generated,” says Geraldine Van der Auwera, communications director for a group that co-developed the tool at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Features & opinion
Register results that students can replicate
Last month, a large-scale replication project underscored just how hard it is to repeat results in published papers. Yusuf Hannun, the director of the Stony Brook University Cancer Center in New York, says that he has seen this first hand over his three decades running a basic-biology laboratory. “My students have cumulatively wasted decades of research pursuing results that were impossible to confirm,” he says. He proposes two strategies: that every published study articulate specific testable conclusions, and that scientists compile these in a registry that can seed experiments for up-and-coming researchers.
Africa: build on what we got right
“In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Africa’s rapid and coordinated response, informed by emerging data, was remarkable,” write Christian Happi, director at the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, and John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Now, in 2022, Africa is struggling to get the vaccines promised — despite continuing to provide data that undergirds global discovery. Happi and Nkengasong urge the leaders of the 55 African Union member states to build on the astonishing gains made on the continent, invest in health security, and position Africa as a world leader in fighting infectious diseases.
Sustainability at the crossroads
The pandemic all but derailed promising progress on the Sustainable Development Goals are the United Nations’ flagship plan to end poverty and promote a healthier planet by 2030. “Attempts to feed science into policy have come up against strong barriers,” argues a Nature editorial. “Democracy and multilateralism are in retreat, undermining the commitment needed to make progress on sustainability goals. Still, this should not be a reason to disengage. On the contrary, researchers generally need to redouble their efforts.”
Where I work
María Eugenia Francia is a group leader in the Apicomplexan Biology Laboratory at the Pasteur Institute of Montevideo, Uruguay.Credit: Pablo Albarenga for Nature
María Eugenia Francia is a group leader in the Apicomplexan Biology Laboratory at the Pasteur Institute of Montevideo, Uruguay. “Here, I’m looking at a colour-coded -3D image of the cytoskeleton of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that infects people all over the world, with infection rates above 60% in some hot, humid places,” she says. “I appreciate any chance I get to see these organisms up close. As damaging as they are, these parasites are also beautiful.” (Nature | 3 min read)
See more of Francia’s lab on Nature’s Instagram (where we’ve just had our 500th post and reached 50,000 followers, yay!)
