News & Comment

We asked the winners of the Nature Award for Inclusive Health Research to share their key lessons for conducting medical research in partnership with under-represented communities.

We asked leading researchers to share new discoveries about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, from how the virus spreads and the risk of long COVID to the impact of vaccines and masks.

Early-career researchers share their priorities for cancer research, from early screening and immunotherapy to nanotechnology and counseling.

Being transgender can inspire these researchers and improve their work, but sometimes their research has nothing to do with their identity.

Black scientists have been historically underrepresented in academia and science. A 2018 study of the National Center for Education Statistics found that only 6% of faculty in the USA were Black. Systemic racism and other issues that translate into a lack of diversity in research often cause unwelcoming environments for Black scientists. Last fall, sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement and triggered by the #BlackBirdersWeek virtual event, several scientific communities took to social media to create ‘#BlackIn...’ movements. Over the course of a week, organizers offered virtual talks, workshops and social events highlighting Black scientists in their fields. We spoke with the founders of four of these ‘#BlackIn...’ movements to learn how they are empowering the Black scientific community to start conversations about being Black in science, and to discuss strategies for continuing to diversify scientific research.

As the number of people with obesity and type 2 diabetes increases around the world, we spoke with four experts about where research efforts should be focused to tackle these diseases.

The pandemic has thrust many mainstream journalists into unfamiliar grounds, including coverage of expert opinion that is not backed up by peer-reviewed content, reporting on preprints, and assessing high-complexity instant-response science. How did they manage? We asked five journalists from mainstream media about their experience.

Anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are being developed at an unprecedented pace, but what will the final vaccine or vaccines look like at approval and beyond? We asked six experts in vaccine development for their thoughts.

We discussed with five scientists what the sources and roles of real-world evidence are, how we can use such data in clinical trials and how these data can be converted into useful information that can impact patient management and regulatory decisions in oncology.

The pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) include extracellular beta-amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, neuronal loss and tau deposits in brain. Therapies targeting these known hallmarks are yet to yield any meaningful benefit in clinical trials. We spoke to four researchers in the fields of AD research and therapy development to find out where they think the fields should head next.

Six leaders in aging research discuss how to translate their findings in the field.

Kazutoshi Mori, Professor at Kyoto University, shares the 2014 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award with Peter Walter, Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Walter and Mori are honored for their work identifying core components of the unfolded protein response (UPR). Mori made his first major discovery in this area—identification of the IRE1 component of the UPR—in 1993, while he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Alim Louis Benabid, Chairman of the Board at Clinatec Institute in Grenoble, France shares the 2014 Lasker∼DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award with Mahlon DeLong, Professor at Emory University School of Medicine. DeLong and Benabid are honored for their work that led to the development of deep brain stimulation, a therapy that has helped relieve symptoms in thousands of patients with advanced Parkinson's disease.

Mary-Claire King, American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, is recognized with the 2014 Lasker∼Koshland Special Achievement Award for her wide range of contributions to biology and medicine as well as human rights. King's development of mathematical models of genetics and discovery of the role that a single gene locus, BRCA1, has in hereditary breast cancer have had wide influence, and she has worked tirelessly to apply genetics to reunite missing persons, such as the 'lost children' of Argentina, with their families.

Mahlon DeLong, Professor at Emory University School of Medicine, shares the 2014 Lasker∼DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award with Alim Louis Benabid, Chairman of the Board at Clinatec Institute in Grenoble, France. DeLong and Benabid are honored for their work that led to the development of deep brain stimulation, a therapy that has helped relieve symptoms in thousands of patients with advanced Parkinson's disease.

Peter Walter, Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Kazutoshi Mori, Professor at Kyoto University, share the 2014 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for their work that resulted in identification of key components of the unfolded protein response (UPR). Walter identified the IRE1 component of the UPR in 1993, shortly after starting his laboratory at UCSF.

Last month, Martin Stratmann began a six-year term as president of the Munich-based Max Planck Society. Stratmann spoke with David Levine about his vision for the society and about what the change of guard will mean for biomedical research.

In April, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the Biological Technologies Office. The man picked to lead the BTO is Geoffrey Ling, a physician-scientist with training in neurology and pharmacology who spent 27 years in the US Army Medical Corps. Ling spoke with Brendan Borrell about what the BTO will mean for the medical research community.

 Last month, Genentech entered a five-year partnership with PatientsLikeMe to mine the online patient network’s database of real-world experiences from more than 250,000 members with 2,000 different conditions. At the helm of PatientsLikeMe is Jamie Heywood, a mechanical engineer by training who devised the idea for the platform ten years ago when he noticed some striking similarities between the information asked of online dating websites and clinical trial portals. Nicholette Zeliadt spoke to Heywood about what this new partnership will mean for open-participation research.

 In July, Victor Dzau will start his six-year term as president of the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). A cardiologist and researcher by training, Dzau currently serves as chancellor for health affairs at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Roxanne Khamsi spoke with Dzau about his vision for the IOM.