Volume 27 Issue 5, May 2021

Understanding disparities between genders in career equity could help promote equal pay and equal opportunity for women in academia.

Ensuring access to vaccines against COVID-19 for refugee and displaced populations and addressing health inequities are vital for an effective pandemic response.

Investment in research and programs to discover and apply the principles that underpin sustained behavior change is needed to address the continuing threat from COVID-19 and future pandemics and will require collaboration among behavioral, social, biomedical, public-health and clinical scientists.

First-generation students, whose parents do not have baccalaureate degrees, are less likely to apply to MD-PhD programs than to MD programs, which has led to a worrying lack of diversity among physician-scientists.

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.

SARS-CoV-2 can escape natural immune responses, but can the virus evade monoclonal antibodies and vaccine-mediated immunity?

A multi-arm clinical trial reports results of testing a strategy for the treatment of bladder cancer that uses standard immunotherapy plus biomarker assessment and targeted therapies.

Unexpected clinical results unearth a new facet in CAR design that could facilitate the development of more-effective CAR T cell therapies.

New advances in machine learning could facilitate and reduce disparities in the prenatal diagnosis of congenital health disease, the most common and lethal birth defect.

Microbiome science is fast advancing and its careful integration into public health is detailed in this Perspective.

Recent advances in machine learning techniques have created opportunities to improve medical diagnostics, but implementing these advances in the clinic will not be without challenge.

Post hoc analyses and follow-up of a patient with Leber congenital amaurosis treated with the antisense oligonucleotide sepofarsen as part of a clinical trial indicates sustained improvement of vision 15 months after receiving a single dose of the drug.

Breakthrough infections of SARS-CoV-2 occurring 12 or more days after the first dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine were associated with lower viral loads than those found in unvaccinated individuals, suggesting that the vaccine might reduce infectiousness.

The adaptive, biomarker-driven BISCAY trial evaluating durvalumab with targeted agents in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma based on tumor genomic alterations finds no added clinical benefit over durvalumab monotherapy.

A first-in-human trial of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-2α inhibitor belzutifan (MK-6482) has a favorable safety profile and shows promising clinical activity for the treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma who have been heavily pre-treated.

Single-cell RNA profiling of human cystic fibrosis proximal airway tissue reveals an overabundance of epithelial cells transitioning to specialized ciliated and secretory cells coupled with a decrease in cycling basal cells.

In a pragmatic, cluster-randomized clinical trial, use of an AI algorithm for interpretation of electrocardiograms in primary care practices increased the frequency at which impaired heart function was diagnosed.

Transcriptomic and proteomic profiling of breast cancer biopsies identifies baseline features of the tumor immune microenvironment associated with T cell clonal expansion following neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 treatment.

A clinician-in-the-loop deep learning system streamlines the workflow of pathologists for detection of Barrett’s esophagus and retains the diagnostic accuracy of full manual review.

A bedside-to-bench analysis identifies single-chain variable fragment linker length as an important component of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) structure and suggests that, in contrast to CD28-based CAR T cells, tonic signaling can be beneficial for 4-1BB-based CAR T cell function.

Senescence of hematopoietic progenitor cells, enforced by the BRAF^V600E mutation, underlies the development of Langerhans cell histiocytosis and could be a new target for drug development and therapy of this disease in patients.

A randomized crossover study of BPN14770 in adult males with fragile X syndrome shows significant cognitive improvement in domains related to language with corresponding improvement in caregiver scales rating language and daily functioning.

Systematic characterization of longitudinal tau variability in human Alzheimer’s disease using an unbiased subtyping algorithm reveals four trajectories of tau deposition with distinct clinical features.

Deep learning can facilitate identification of congenital heart disease from fetal ultrasound screening, a diagnosis that in clinical practice is often missed.

Single-cell transcriptomics and protein expression analyses of salivary glands and gingiva, along with the detection of infectious virus and virus-specific antibodies in saliva from SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals, support a potential role for the oral cavity in COVID-19 pathogenesis.

Transcriptomic and proteomic profiling of blood samples from individuals with COVID-19 reveals immune cell and hematopoietic progenitor cell alterations that are differentially associated with disease severity.

Sera from convalescent individuals with coronavirus disease 2019 and from individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 have reduced ability to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants B1.1.7 and B.1.351, but antibody potency against the variants increases after two vaccine doses.