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From an alarming global health emergency to an increased focus on antibiotic resistance, 2016 was a year replete with attention on infectious disease. But the year also included events ranging from clinical trials gone horribly awry to calls for expanded access to marijuana for research.
Recent ballot initiatives instituting a tax on sugary drinks in the US, alongside related efforts by other countries and support from the World Health Organization, bring to the forefront the need for greater scientific insight into how sugars affect metabolic health.
From tech billionaires turned medical philanthropists to a crusader for improved drug safety, our list of newsmakers this year includes a number of hyper-ambitious individuals.
This past year saw breakthroughs in areas ranging from gene editing to eye-tissue repair. Here are a few of the research papers that reported some of the exciting discoveries of 2016.
Gene therapies featured prominently among this year's newsworthy drugs, some of which have already received a green light from regulatory agencies for sale or are otherwise surging forward in trials. Other drugs ended the year with a much less rosy efficacy or safety profile.
The US Food and Drug Administration approved a muscular-dystrophy drug against the scientific advice of its own staff and advisors. Despite leadership's attempts to downplay the controversy, doubts now surround standards for accelerated approval.
From organoids to population-level studies, mental health research has begun to crack long-standing mysteries. Longitudinal investigations into brain and cognitive development among adolescents, such as the forthcoming 10,000-person ABCD project, will help to mature the field.
The suicide rate in the US is increasing, whereas funding for research into suicide prevention has decreased. It will take more investment to truly understand the mechanisms of action underlying the causes of this global killer and to design new treatments for those causes. But efforts must come from all segments of society.
Here, we announce two policy changes across Nature journals: data-availability statements in all published papers and official Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) validation reports for peer review.