Featured
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Outlook |
Innovative cancer therapies offer new hope
The arsenal of weapons used to treat these insidious diseases is rapidly expanding.
- Herb Brody
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News Explainer |
Chance of heatwaves in India rising with climate change
Not only are these extreme events increasing in frequency, they are lasting longer and becoming hotter, too.
- Jude Coleman
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Outlook |
Advances in highly targeted radiation treatment for cancer have ignited interest in a once obscure field
Therapies that treat while diagnosing — theranostics — can extend length of survival and improve the quality of life for some people with advance-stage cancer.
- Rachel Nuwer
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News Feature |
A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe. Here’s how to stop it
Time spent outdoors is the best defence against rising rates of short-sightedness, but scientists are searching for other ways to reverse the troubling trend.
- Elie Dolgin
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Outlook |
Randomized trials of cancer drugs are for yesterday
Pitting new treatments against old, ineffective agents is neither ethical nor economical.
- Elaine Schattner
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Outlook |
How antibody–drug conjugates aim to take down cancer
Scientists are trying to work out how to balance potency with toxicity and tackle the cost of next-generation therapeutics.
- Benjamin Plackett
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Outlook |
Turning tumours against themselves
Advances in in situ therapeutic cancer vaccines offer a mode of treatment that could redeem the promise of previous false dawns.
- Liam Drew
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Outlook |
AI assistance for planning cancer treatment
Armed with the right data, advances in machine learning could help oncologists to home in quickly on the best treatment strategies for their patients.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Outlook |
Natural killer cells show their cancer-fighting worth
Although natural-killer-cell therapies are safer than T-cell therapies and offer other advantages, they require upgrades to overcome their limited lifespan and susceptibility to immunosuppression.
- Amanda B. Keener
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News |
‘Smart’ antibiotic can kill deadly bacteria while sparing the microbiome
Compound called lolamicin targets a group of harmful microbes but does not disturb those that live peacefully in the gut.
- Fred Schwaller
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News & Views |
Pollen problems: May brings dismay to a hay-fever sufferer in 1874
A book on everyday biology that appeals to non-specialists and specialists alike, and a trek through hay fields causes one Nature reader to experience relentless ‘sneezings’, in the weekly dip into Nature’s archive.
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Comment |
Heed lessons from past studies involving transgender people: first, do no harm
Decades of neuroscientific work have focused on exploring a biological basis for transgender identity — but researchers must take societal factors into account.
- Mathilde Kennis
- , Robin Staicu
- & Felix Duecker
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News |
Autistic people three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s-like symptoms
Largest study of its kind also finds increased risk in older adults with a range of intellectual disabilities.
- Miryam Naddaf
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News |
The immune system can sabotage gene therapies — can scientists rein it in?
People treated with gene therapy cannot receive a second dose for fear of a dangerous immune response. Researchers hope to find a way around this.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
Ozempic keeps wowing: trial data show benefits for kidney disease
Semaglutide, the same compound in obesity drug Wegovy, slashes risk of kidney failure and death for people with diabetes.
- Rachel Fairbank
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models
To understand the 'brains' of LLMs, researchers are attempting to reverse-engineering artificial intelligence systems.
- Matthew Hutson
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News & Views |
Seed-stashing chickadees overturn ideas about location memory
Certain neurons encode memories of events that occurred in specific physical locations known as place fields. Chickadees show patterns of neuronal activity that are specific to locations of hidden food but independent of place fields.
- Margaret M. Donahue
- & Laura Lee Colgin
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News & Views |
Neural pathways for reward and relief promote fentanyl addiction
Neuroscientists find that two distinct neural pathways are responsible for the addictive properties of the opioid fentanyl: one mediates reward, the other promotes the seeking of relief from symptoms of withdrawal.
- Markus Heilig
- & Michele Petrella
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News & Views |
AI networks reveal how flies find a mate
Artificial neural networks that model the visual system of a male fruit fly can accurately predict the insect’s behaviour in response to seeing a potential mate — paving the way for the building of more complex models of brain circuits.
- Pavan Ramdya
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Research Briefing |
How the same brain cells can represent both the perception and memory of faces
Long-term memories are thought to be represented by the same brain areas as those that encode sensory stimuli, but the mechanisms remain unclear. A study that recorded neural activity from face-selective regions of the macaque brain found that these regions represent familiar faces using a neural code that is distinct from the one for sensory representation.
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Nature Podcast |
Fentanyl addiction: the brain pathways behind the opioid crisis
How two neural pathways contribute to the deadly opioid’s addictive nature, and why babies are suing the South Korean government.
- Elizabeth Gibney
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Article
| Open AccessA whole-slide foundation model for digital pathology from real-world data
Prov-GigaPath, a whole-slide pathology foundation model pretrained on a large dataset containing around 1.3 billion pathology images, attains state-of-the-art performance in cancer classification and pathomics tasks.
- Hanwen Xu
- , Naoto Usuyama
- & Hoifung Poon
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Article |
Covalent targeted radioligands potentiate radionuclide therapy
Radiopharmaceuticals engineered with click chemistry to selectively bind to tumour-specific proteins can be used to successfully target tumour cells, boosting the pharmacokinetics of radionuclide therapy and improving tumour regression.
- Xi-Yang Cui
- , Zhu Li
- & Zhibo Liu
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Correspondence |
Trials that infected people with common colds can inform today’s COVID-19 challenge trials
- Jonathan Ewbank
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Correspondence |
Internet use and teen mental health: it’s about more than just screen time
- Linxiao Zhang
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Correspondence |
Social-media influence on teen mental health goes beyond just cause and effect
- Michael A. Spikes
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Editorial |
A global pandemic treaty is in sight: don’t scupper it
Millions of people died of COVID-19 because the fundamental principle of equity between nations was ignored during the outbreak. That must not be allowed to happen again.
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News |
First ‘bilingual’ brain-reading device decodes Spanish and English words
Artificial-intelligence system allows a man who cannot speak coherently to have a conversation in the language of his choice.
- Amanda Heidt
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News |
Lab-grown sperm and eggs: ‘epigenetic’ reset in human cells paves the way
Technique wipes away tags on DNA that must be reprogrammed during development of reproductive cells.
- Heidi Ledford
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Clinical Briefing |
mRNA therapy is safe for treating the inherited metabolic condition propionic acidaemia
Propionic acidaemia is an inheirited metabolic condition caused by a lack of a liver enzyme, which leads to accumulation of toxic compounds. In a first-in-human trial, a therapeutic messenger RNA drug (mRNA-3927) led to restored enzyme activity, was well tolerated and showed a promising dose-dependent reduction of potentially life-threatening clinical events.
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News |
Could bird flu in cows lead to a human outbreak? Slow response worries scientists
The H5N1 virus is a long way from becoming adapted to humans, but limited testing and tracking mean we could miss danger signs.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
Pig-organ transplants: what three human recipients have taught scientists
As researchers mark the loss of the first living recipient of a pig kidney, they share what they’ve learnt about xenotransplantation.
- Max Kozlov
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News |
Gut microbes linked to fatty diet drive tumour growth
Scientists know there is a link between obesity and some cancers. A study in mice and people suggests why that might be.
- Gillian Dohrn
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Research Highlight |
Organoids merge to model the blood–brain barrier
Combining a brain organoid with a blood-vessel organoid yields a system similar to a protective mesh in the brain.
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Comment |
Neglecting sex and gender in research is a public-health risk
The data are clear: taking sex and gender into account in research and using that knowledge to change health care could benefit billions of people.
- Sue Haupt
- , Cheryl Carcel
- & Robyn Norton
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News & Views |
Dual-action obesity drug rewires brain circuits for appetite
A two-in-one drug that modulates neural pathways involved in appetite and reward might prove to be more effective and longer lasting than current weight-loss drugs on the market.
- Tyler M. Cook
- & Darleen Sandoval
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News |
Experimental obesity drug packs double punch to reduce weight
Test of weight-loss candidate in mice shows that there is still room for improvement in a burgeoning field.
- Asher Mullard
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Article
| Open AccessGLP-1-directed NMDA receptor antagonism for obesity treatment
Unimolecular integration of NMDA receptor antagonism with GLP-1 receptor agonism effectively reverses obesity, hyperglycaemia and dyslipidaemia in rodent models of metabolic disease.
- Jonas Petersen
- , Mette Q. Ludwig
- & Christoffer Clemmensen
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Correspondence |
Interpersonal therapy can be an effective tool against the devastating effects of loneliness
- Myrna M. Weissman
- & Jennifer J. Mootz
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News Feature |
How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models
Researchers are striving to reverse-engineer artificial intelligence and scan the ‘brains’ of LLMs to see what they are doing, how and why.
- Matthew Hutson
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News |
Brain-reading device is best yet at decoding ‘internal speech’
Technology that enables researchers to interpret brain signals could one day allow people to talk using only their thoughts.
- Miryam Naddaf
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News |
Human embryos embrace asymmetry to form the body
The cells generated by the very first division of the fertilized egg make a lopsided contribution to the body’s organs and tissues.
- Sara Reardon
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News |
Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being
A survey of more than 2.4 million people finds that being online can have a positive effect on welfare.
- Carissa Wong
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Outlook |
How ignorance and gender inequality thwart treatment of a widespread illness
Tens of millions of people have female genital schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease that few physicians have even heard of. Efforts are under way to move it out of obscurity and empower women and girls to access sexual and reproductive health care.
- Claire Ainsworth
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News |
Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail
Google scientists have modelled a fragment of the human brain at nanoscale resolution, revealing cells with previously undiscovered features.
- Carissa Wong
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News |
Bird flu in US cows: where will it end?
Scientists worry that the H5N1 strain of avian influenza will become endemic in cattle, which would aid its spread in people.
- Sara Reardon
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Article
| Open AccessDiscovery of potent small-molecule inhibitors of lipoprotein(a) formation
Biochemical screening and optimization identify small molecules that inhibit the formation of lipoprotein(a), and these inhibitors reduce the levels of Lp(a) in several animal models, suggesting that they could provide a therapeutic option in humans.
- Nuria Diaz
- , Carlos Perez
- & Laura F. Michael
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Article |
A meta-analysis on global change drivers and the risk of infectious disease
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss could help to reduce the burden of plant, animal and human diseases, especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants of health.
- Michael B. Mahon
- , Alexandra Sack
- & Jason R. Rohr