Editorials

Deliberate practice will, however, get you further.

The growth of citations to published content typically follows an S-shaped curve. We look back at the fairly homogeneous citation-growth patterns — and at the few exceptions to them — for the content that we published in 2017.

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.

Upcoming inexpensive assays for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in less than one hour at points of care or at home should help suppress the COVID-19 pandemic.

Increased power efficiency, standardization and functionality enhance the biomedical prospects of electronic devices for interfacing the body.

In less than a decade, the genome-editing technology now recognized by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has impacted the biological and biomedical sciences widely. What’s next for CRISPR in biomedicine?

Obtaining valuable datasets is often arduous, costly and time-consuming. Give them away for wider reuse.

Results from the early trials of vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2 signal the fitness of vaccine technologies soon to be tested at scale.

Two recent high-profile retractions of COVID-19 papers exemplify that trust cannot be taken for granted. To strengthen it, scientific review will have to become more transparent.