Volume 27 Issue 2, February 2021

In the past year, there has been more CRISPR news than the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier. Gene editing has continued its forward momentum in major ways, and scientists are beginning to see results.

As an increasing number of clinical decision-support systems driven by artificial intelligence progress from development to implementation, better guidance on the reporting of human factors and early-stage clinical evaluation is needed.

Unexpected direct and indirect risks of participating in clinical trials have emerged during COVID-19 that investigators and institutional review boards may not be sure how to investigate. How should existing guidance and ethical frameworks for clinical trials be applied in a pandemic setting?

An increasing amount of publications are recognizing that a person’s risk of diabetes and diabetes outcomes are influenced largely by social determinants of health. This renewed understanding of disease should influence health provision and diabetes research, but will it?

New personalized brain-stimulation methods for the treatment of depression and obsessive–compulsive symptoms provide hope for future treatment applications.

Models of estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer are used to explore the rationale for androgen receptor agonists as treatments for breast cancer.

People on low-fat, low-energy-density diets have lower ad libitum energy intake than that of those on high-fat, high-energy-density diets.

CRISPR-Cas gene editing enters the field of promising clinical approaches for mitigating hemoglobin defects in patients with hemoglobinopathies.

A comprehensive strategy for the next steps to ensure vaccination of the global population against SARS-CoV-2 is now required, and key steps and challenges are detailed in this Perspective.

The many levels of heterogeneity within tumors dictate their response to therapy and should be considered in future therapeutic regimes.

Survey data from across 19 countries reveal heterogeneity in attitudes toward acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine and suggest that trust in government is associated with vaccine confidence.

Acute mapping of responses to focal electrical neuromodulation in a patient with treatment-resistant depression reveals distinct mood and symptom changes that are highly context dependent.

Selective and personalized neuromodulation of orbitofrontal beta–gamma rhythms in humans, achieved with an alternating current, robustly attenuates obsessive–compulsive behavior for 3 months.

Analysis of global smoking prevalence trends from 2009 to 2017 demonstrates that, when implemented, national-level tobacco control policies are highly effective; however, considerable gaps remain in the universal adoption of anti-tobacco interventions.

A generalizable and interpretable artificial-intelligence system achieves clinical accuracy for screening and early breast-cancer detection on 2D and 3D mammograms.

Exploratory analyses from the phase 2 randomized SAFIR02-IMMUNO trial identify biomarkers associated with improved outcomes to durvalumab as compared to maintenance chemotherapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer.

Long-term outcomes and biomarker analyses of two neoadjuvant immunotherapy clinical trials in melanoma patients support the clinical benefit of this treatment approach and uncover prognostic correlates of response.

A new risk calculator calibrated specifically for the US population provides estimates of risk for COVID-19 for individuals and at the community level, using socioeconomic factors, demography, pre-existing conditions and mortality rates by age and ethnicity.

A single dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine elicits antibodies and cytokine-producing T cells that might help control or prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Two doses of the coronavirus disease 2019 vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 boost antibody responses and functions in phase 1/2 trial participants.

Single-cell transcriptional profiling of primary human synovial sarcoma tumors suggests that combinatorial treatment with HDAC and CDK4/CDK6 inhibitors could enhance tumor immunogenicity.

A pooled analysis of neoadjuvant immunotherapy trials in melanoma shows that the degree of pathological response associates with patient survival and might represent a surrogate marker for long-term outcomes.

Functional interplay of sex hormones in estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer unveils the therapeutic potential of androgen receptor agonists.

Analyses from the gut microbiome of over 1,000 individuals from the PREDICT 1 study, for which detailed long-term diet information as well as hundreds of fasting and same-meal postprandial cardiometabolic blood marker measurements are available, unveil new associations between specific gut microbes, dietary habits and cardiometabolic health.

The beneficial effects of a Mediterranean diet on cardiometabolic health are associated with specific changes in the gut microbiome, suggesting a personalized approach towards cardiometabolic disease prevention.

In an inpatient, randomized controlled crossover trial, participants consumed 550–700 kcal day⁻¹ fewer calories when following a plant-based, low-fat diet with a high glycemic load compared with an animal-based, low-carbohydrate diet with a low glycemic load; weight loss was comparable between the two diets and there were no significant differences in hunger or enjoyment of the meals.