Gene-editing drugs are moving from lab to clinic at lightning speed
The promising treatments still face technical and economic hurdles, though
One autumn day in 2020 Patrick Doherty was walking his dog up a steep mountain in County Donegal, Ireland, when he noticed he was, unusually for him, running out of breath. The eventual diagnosis was terrifying: amyloidosis, a rare genetic disease that caused a protein, amyloid, to build up in his organs and tissues. The prognosis was even worse: it would cause him years of pain until it finally killed him. In the face of such terrible fortune, though, Mr Doherty had a stroke of luck. He was able to join a trial of a new medical therapy and, with just a single injection, was apparently cured. Now, he continues to walk his dog up that steep mountain in County Donegal every week.
From the August 3rd 2024 edition
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AI researchers receive the Nobel prize for physics
The award, to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, stretches the definition of the field
A Nobel prize for the discovery of micro-RNA
These tiny molecules regulate genes and control how cells develop and behave
AI offers an intriguing new way to diagnose mental-health conditions
Models look for sound patterns undetectable by the human ear
Why it’s so hard to tell which climate policies actually work
Better tools are needed to analyse their effects
Isolated communities are more at risk of rare genetic diseases
The isolation can be geographic or cultural
An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped—human brains could follow
For now, it is the most sophisticated connectome ever made