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We list the key people who made headlines this year, either for public reports that overstretched their reach or for papers that almost never saw the light of day.
This year has proven to be a veritable cliff-hanger for the world of biomedicine. At the same time that the US government stands poised on the brink of the so-called 'fiscal cliff', pharmaceutical companies are stumbling with the industry's 'patent cliff' and academic researchers face the looming 'funding cliff'. But not everything in 2012 was so dire, with dozens of new drugs to hit worldwide markets and countless discoveries made to enable the next generation of medicines. What follows are a set of 'Cliff's notes' to the year that was for the field.
From the microbiome to the microenvironment, certain areas of biomedicine saw fast-paced discovery this year. Here's a rundown of the papers that helped these fields advance quickly in 2012.