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Composite coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of T cells and an apoptotic brain cancer cell.

CAR-T-cell therapy modifies T cells — shown here attacking a brain cancer cell — to recognize specific proteins.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library

CAR-T cells hold cancer at bay

A last-resort cancer treatment called CAR-T cell therapy has kept two people leukaemia-free for 12 years. “We can now conclude that CAR T cells can actually cure patients with leukaemia,” says physician and study author Carl June. CAR-T cell therapies involve removing immune cells called T cells from a person with cancer, and genetically altering them so that they produce proteins — called chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs — that recognize cancer cells. The cells are then reinfused into the person, in the hope that they will seek out and destroy tumours. But the therapy is expensive, risky and technically demanding, and doesn’t work for everyone.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: Nature paper

First COVID human challenge trial

Initial results from the first COVID-19 human challenge study show that healthy, young people developed no or mild symptoms. Such trials intentionally expose participants to a disease, providing a unique opportunity to study viral infections in detail from start to finish — but they are controversial because of the risks they pose to volunteers. The UK study of 34 individuals, aged 18–30, shows that such trials can be done safely, say scientists, and lays the groundwork for more in-depth studies of vaccines, antivirals and immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: Research Square preprint (not peer reviewed)

Direct evidence of two types of water

Water is unlike most other liquids on Earth: it has at least 66 weird properties, including high surface tension, high heat capacity, high melting and boiling points and low compressibility. Some chemists have come to think of it as not being one liquid at all, but two distinct liquid phases that coexist in a mixture. Now, physicists might have made the first direct observation of the transformation between the two states, in supercold water mixed with trehalose, a natural antifreeze that keeps the liquid from freezing.

Chemistry World | 6 min read

Reference: PNAS paper

Features & opinion

What Omicron reveals about immunity

Immunologists have raced to work out how to protect against Omicron and other variants of SARS-CoV-2. Their research has yielded a wealth of insights — and a few surprises. “It’s an amazing natural experiment,” says immunologist Donna Farber. “It’s just this unbelievable opportunity to look at human immune responses in real time.”

Nature | 14 min read

‘It’s not easy to evolve’

In the latest in a Nature Careers series on female scientists in sub-Saharan Africa, leading public-health researcher Adidja Amani discusses the importance of role models, goal-setting, delegation and mentoring. “It was not easy growing up in an environment where men are more valued than women,” she says. “My wealth comes from the people around me.” Still, work–life balance is an ever-present challenge. “I have made sacrifices,” says Amani. “I have cut off everything that is leisure and I work seven days per week.”

Nature | 5 min read

Anti-fraudster accused of fraud

In 2013, botanist Steven Newmaster published research that rocked the supplements industry with accusations that herbal products often didn’t contain what they claimed to. He became a leading authority on the verification of food and supplement ingredients. Now, eight researchers in the DNA barcoding field — including two of Newmaster’s co-authors — say the work is based on data that are “missing, fraudulent, or plagiarized”. An investigation by Science offers a long list of apparent plagiarism, data fabrication and conflicts of interest in Newmaster’s work. Newmaster denies these accusations, reports Science.

Science | 19 min read

Infographic of the week

Most mutated: Scatter plot showing the number of mutations on spike protein S1 of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus over time.

Source: Nextstrain

Omicron is so different from earlier coronavirus variants, such as Alpha and Delta, that evolutionary virologists estimate its closest-known genetic ancestor probably dates back to more than a year ago, some time after mid-2020. Its unusual array of mutations evolved under virologists’ radar, so it seemed to come out of nowhere. Working out under what conditions this highly transmissible variant arose might help scientists to understand the risk of new variants emerging, and suggest steps to minimize it. (Nature | 12 min read)

See more of the week’s key infographics, selected by Nature’s news and art teams.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“ARIA will give tremendous power to those who sit inside its black box, making decisions about whom and what to fund. If ARIA succeeds… it must not do so behind closed doors.”

A Nature editorial argues that there’s too much secrecy behind ARIA, the United Kingdom’s DARPA-inspired agency for high-risk, high-reward research funding.