Volume 26 Issue 12, December 2020

Goodbye 2020, a year of arguably too many challenges for the world. As tempting as it is to leave this year behind, the biomedical community is forever changed by the pandemic, while business as usual needs to carry on. Looking forward to a new year, experts share six trends for the biomedical community in 2021.

Nearly a year after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, it is time to look back and assess what could have been predicted by health experts.

Single-cell analysis provides novel insights into elements of CAR T cell toxicities and response.

Studies demonstrate the efficacy of screening by liquid biopsy for enrollment in clinical trials of precision cancer therapy.

Plasmodium falciparum parasites survive the dry season by accepting increased clearance rates through the host spleen, which leads to a persistent lower-level infection.

In the spring of 2020, a series of reports from Europe and the USA described clusters of children and adolescents presenting with a life-threatening, hyperinflammatory syndrome — called ‘multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children’ (MIS-C) — that was seemingly linked to prior exposure to the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In June 2020, the US National Institutes of Health convened a workshop of immunologists and clinicians to discuss emerging knowledge and identify key questions surrounding MIS-C, with a focus on innate and adaptive immunity, genetics and epigenetics. This Meeting Report describes the main findings from the workshop.

Analysis of spatial heterogeneity of crowding in China and Italy, together with COVID-19 case data, show that cities with higher crowding have longer epidemics and higher attack rates after the first epidemic wave.

A global analysis generating high-resolution maps of travel time shows that 91.1% of the world’s population can reach a hospital or clinic within an hour if they have access to motorized transportation, but only 56.7% can do so by walking, highlighting additional inequities for underserved populations accessing healthcare.

Neoadjuvant immunotherapy combination in the NABUCCO trial elicits high pathological complete response rates in patients with locoregionally advanced (stage III) urothelial cancer and provides molecular biomarkers of treatment efficacy.

Neoadjuvant combination of immune checkpoint therapy in patients with cisplatin-ineligible bladder cancer achieves clinical efficacy and uncovers immune features as potential predictive biomarkers of treatment response.

Preliminary results from the Beat AML umbrella trial demonstrates the feasibility and efficacy of applying prospective genomic profiling for matching newly diagnosed patients with AML with targeted therapies.

An observational study on a large cohort of patients with gastrointestinal cancer demonstrates the utility of ctDNA analysis for accelerating the enrollment of patients in clinical trials with no accompanying deterioration in treatment efficacy.

Tumor-secreted midkine modulates immune tolerance in the melanoma tumor microenvironment and determines resistance to immune checkpoint blockade.

Single-cell transcriptomics reveals that the heterogeneity of anti-CD19 CAR T cell infusion products contributes to variability in clinical response, early molecular response and development of immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome in patients with large B cell lymphomas.

A human stem cell–derived model helps to uncover neuronal phenotypes associated with genetic forms of neuropsychiatric disease.

A single-cell map of transcriptomic changes during acute liver failure unveils new insights into pathogenesis and potential therapeutic targets.

Polygenic risk scores are nearing a level of differentiation required for their clinical utility in risk prediction in populations with high-risk rare pathogenic genetic variants.

Application of Bayesian models to vital statistics data from 21 industrialized countries shows that approximately 206,000 additional people died than if the COVID-19 pandemic had not occured. The heterogeneous distribution of excess deaths across the countries reflects differences in how the pandemic has been managed as well as the resilience of healthcare systems in these nations.

Malaria cases are predominant during the rainy seasons in many endemic regions owing to the life cycle of the mosquito vector. How Plasmodium falciparum adapts in humans during the intervening dry season, without causing malaria symptoms or killing the host, offers new insights into its persistence in humans.

The risk of developing active tuberculosis (TB) in individuals with latent TB infection is highly variable within and among different risk groups. A personalized risk predictor was developed to better target preventative treatment to individuals at greatest risk, supporting evidence-based clinical decision-making for latent TB.