Volume 29 Issue 5, May 2023

Nature Medicine explores the latest translational and clinical research news, with Heartseed and Novo Nordisk’s clinical trial of iPSC–derived cardiomyocytes for the treatment of heart failure.

Nature Medicine explores the latest translational and clinical research news, with a New Drug Application from Sage Therapeutics and Biogen for their GABA receptor agonist.

They use proprietary data to understand human disease, while funding data science and brain research to support their AI ambitions

Paleogenomics can help elucidate the genetic basis of modern diseases, including inborn errors of immunity that impair the response to infections, providing a tool for drug development.

High-income countries have a wealth of genomics expertise that can be rapidly activated to deal with disease threats. African countries should invest in a federated data-management system for genomics epidemiology to deal with such threats better.

UNICEF and other international bodies must produce a clear plan that prioritizes development and education for children with disabilities, especially in low- and middle-income settings, as required for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

These interventions for women and girls improve population health and boost the economy.

The CanScreen5 project provides a tool for monitoring the performance and improving the quality of global cancer screening programs — and highlights the importance of robust quality assurance in this setting.

Single-cell analyses in humans and mice have revealed the identity of the erythropoietin producing cells of the kidney — opening up new avenues of research for anemia and related disorders.

Diagnosis of kidney allograft rejection remains complex and somewhat subjective; but an automated version of the gold-standard Banff classification could streamline assessment and improve diagnostic accuracy.

A multiorgan model unravels the inter-organ aging network and predicts chronic diseases and mortality

Machine learning models that integrate cardiac troponin concentrations and clinical features to compute the probability of myocardial infarction outperform current care pathways that use fixed troponin thresholds or risk scores. Adoption of these models could reduce inequalities, prevent unnecessary admissions, and accelerate the diagnosis and treatment of patients with myocardial infarction.

By using several large population-based and clinical neuroimaging cohorts, we identified a shared neural basis for several mental disorders, namely the neuropsychopathological factor. This genetically determined factor might represent a delayed development of prefrontal brain neural circuits, leading to poor executive function.

An individual-level simulation model has been developed to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of maternal health policy interventions in 200 countries and territories. In addition to assessing global progress, this approach can guide priority setting and provide context-specific guidance for local policymakers.

We characterized cancer cells, immune responses and the microbiota composition in a cohort of primary colon cancers. Multi-omic analyses defined parameters associated with favorable prognosis, including a score that captured the intratumoral immune response and a specific microbiome signature. This data repository (atlas and compass of immune–cancer–microbiome interactions (AC-ICAM)) is publicly available.

The health sector must play its part in decarbonization efforts; this Perspective outlines the principles of fair pathways to net-zero healthcare that are attentive to health and socioeconomic inequalities.

This Perspective outlines practical considerations for designing and testing visual displays to communicate health information, using illustrative case examples.

In children, adolescents and adults with mutated ALK-driven relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma, a third-generation ALK inhibitor with or without chemotherapy was well tolerated, and recommended phase 2 doses were successfully identified in all patient groups.

In the final analysis of all cohorts in the phase 2 ROAR basket trial, dabrafenib plus trametinib exhibited tumor-agnostic clinical activity in patients with rare BRAFV800E-mutated cancers, including anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, biliary tract cancer, low-grade glioma and hairy cell leukemia.

A deep learning algorithm using electronic health records from two large cohorts of patients predicts the risk of pancreatic cancer from pre-cancer disease trajectories up to 3 years in advance, showing promising performance in retrospective validation.

Genomic analyses in a rapid autopsy cohort study of patients with melanoma identify the genetic and transcriptomic landscape of melanoma with acquired resistance to MAPK inhibitor and immune checkpoint blockade therapies, providing insights for the potential improvement of therapeutic strategies.

In the first results from an ongoing global cancer screening data repository, screening program organization was better overall in Europe compared to other continents; however, there were substantial gaps in implementation across both high- and low-resource settings.

Epidemiological analyses coupled with immunological phenotyping suggest that humoral immunity induced by COVID-19 vaccines wanes more rapidly in individuals with severe obesity compared to individuals with a BMI within the normal range.

Analysis from a population cohort in Israel found that a third booster dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine in mothers before or during pregnancy was associated with greater protection against COVID-19 hospitalization in their infants compared to two doses.

Findings from two conjoint experiments conducted in Austria and Italy revealed differences in the determinants of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and vaccine fatigue, suggesting that vaccination campaigns should be tailored to different groups according to previous vaccination status.

The prolonged persistence at elevated levels of nirsevimab, an RSV-specific monoclonal antibody, likely accounts for the observed protection from severe disease throughout an RSV season, while it does not prevent the induction of a natural immune response in RSV-exposed infants.

In the LIBERTY-PN PRIME and PRIME2 phase 3 trials, dupilumab, a monoclonal antibody that blocks IL-4 and IL-13 signaling, significantly reduced itch and skin lesions in patients with prurigo nodularis, a chronic inflammatory skin disease.

Single-cell analyses in a reporter mouse model and human tissues identify a rare cell subset that produces erythropoietin in vivo, opening potential new avenues for research in erythropoiesis and oxygen homeostasis.

A clinical decision support system for diagnosis of myocardial infarction, based on machine learning models that use a single measurement of high-sensitivity troponin, outperforms clinical guidelines that use fixed cardiac troponin thresholds for diagnosis.

A decision-support system that automates the Banff classification system for diagnosis of kidney allograft rejection leads to reclassification and correction of pathologists’ diagnoses and improves risk stratification of allograft outcomes.

Organ-specific aging clocks for multiple brain and body systems show that the biological age of one organ system selectively influences the aging of multiple other systems via characteristic aging pathways.

Evidence from large longitudinal neuroimaging cohorts, which include genetic and behavioral data, suggest a common neural basis for symptoms seen across multiple psychiatric disorders.

Case report of an individual heterozygous for a rare RELN-COLBOS variant that confers resilience, via a gain-of-function mechanism, to Alzheimer’s disease.

Modeling analyses of maternal mortality data for 200 countries and territories reveal that based on current trends, the maternal mortality Sustainable Development Goal targets for 2030 are unlikely to be met.

Analyses from the Global Maternal Health microsimulation model revealed that a comprehensive strategy involving family planning and community-based interventions would have the largest impact in reducing maternal mortality, although the priority of different interventions need to vary by setting.

A large, publicly available dataset integrating RNA, whole-exome, T cell receptor and 16S rRNA sequencing from patients with colon cancer enables the discovery of a prognostic score consisting of tumor, immune and microbial features.