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Help is coming for RSV
The vaccine makers Pfizer and GSK are racing to get approval for the first-ever jabs against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which has been hospitalizing young children in the United States and Europe at an alarming rate. Approval could happen as early as May. Trials have shown that both shots can prevent severe disease in adults over 60 — and one protects infants born to vaccinated people. New treatments are coming, too: two other companies have completed successful trials of a single-dose monoclonal antibody that would probably be less expensive and require fewer doses than one already in use.
Precision-controlled CAR-T-cell immunotherapies
Researchers have bolstered the power of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cancer therapies, which use genetically altered T cells to seek out tumours and mark them for destruction. Now scientists have further engineered the cells to contain switches that allow control over when and where the cells are active. This helps them to infiltrate tumours and dodge immune-suppressing defences.
Reference: Science paper 1 & Science paper 2
Features & opinion
How UK science is failing Black researchers
There’s just five Black professors in UK biosciences, one in chemistry and none in physics — figures that have barely shifted in more than a decade. This Nature feature shows, in nine stark charts, how Black people and those from other marginalized ethnicities are squeezed out of science. Black representation at the undergraduate level has been climbing since 2007, but at the postgraduate research level, the number of Black people drops sharply — and only 0.6% of professors are Black. The trend is reversed for white students. The reasons are complex, but a biased curriculum, lack of role models and not being vouched for by others all play a part.
Futures: science fiction from Nature
In the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series:
• A space-born child’s first experience of Earth food sets the scene for the heartwarming ‘Family get-together’.
• Are we living in a simulation? Two people come up with an amusing way to find out in ‘The end of infinity’.
Five best science books this week
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes a frank and fascinating book from the leader of the UK COVID-19 Vaccine Taskforce, an exploration of how technology can connect us to the sounds of nature and a magnificent revival of mathematician Johann Doppelmayr’s 1742 celestial atlas.
Podcast: the oldest known story sequence
In this week’s Nature Podcast, the team discusses the prehistoric carvings that make up the earliest known narrative scene. Plus, they ask whether artificial intelligence could spell the end for student essays and get to grips with the lack of diversity in UK academia.
Nature Podcast | 29 min listen
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Nature’s 10
Ten people who helped shape science in 2022
A Ukraine-based climate scientist, a monkeypox watchman and an abortion fact-finder are some of the fascinating people behind the year’s big research stories.