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How accurate is your data? The answer means everything

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Data is the new oil.”

My colleague, Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala, recently made that assertion, and I’ve been repeating it ad infinitum—for good reason. Dr. Mukkamala made the wise point that those who collect, own, and control data have enormous influence over our world. Data informs everything from how much funding schools get to selecting the right lifesaving treatment for a critical patient.

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New OLED TVs are brighter than ever – here’s what that means for LCD’s future

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We might only be a couple of weeks in to the 2024 TV hardware season, but it’s already looking set to be a transformative year for the once humble gogglebox. One where we could see the long-established best TV landscape transformed so much by a battle over brightness that a once-key premium TV technology may find itself fighting for survival.  

This sounds like pretty apocalyptic talk, I realise, at a time when most AV fans (apart from a few middle aged CRT fans, maybe) would likely say that when it comes to TV technology, we’ve never had it so good. Intense rivalries between the world’s biggest manufacturers and, increasingly, competing technologies have propelled the TV world forward over the past 10 years at an unprecedented rate, leaving us spoilt for choice like never before.

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The big Apple lawsuit explained: why Apple’s getting sued and what it means for the iPhone

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It’s a move that’s sent shockwaves through the entire tech industry: the US government, through the Department of Justice (DOJ), is suing Apple for what it sees as unfairly and illegally building a monopoly around the iPhone.

You can read the full filing here, but we’re going to break down the key points for you here – why Apple is being sued, what it might mean for the iPhone and the tech industry in the future, and what the arguments are on both sides.

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what it means for the future

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Melissa Mattola-Kiatos, RN, Nursing Practice Specialist, removes the pig kidney from its box to prepare for transplantation.

A pig kidney is unpacked for transplant into 62-year-old Richard Slayman of Massachusetts.Credit: Massachusetts General Hospital

Early success in the first transplant of a pig kidney into a living person has raised researchers’ hopes for larger clinical trials involving pig organs. Such trials could bring ‘xenotransplantation’, the use of animal organs in human recipients, into the clinic.

The recipient of the pig kidney was a 62-year-old man with end-stage renal failure named Richard Slayman. He is recovering well after his surgery on 16 March, according to his transplant surgeon. The kidney was taken from a miniature pig carrying a record 69 genomic edits, which were aimed at preventing rejection of the donated organ and reducing the risk that a virus lurking in the organ could infect the recipient.

The case demonstrates that, at least in the short term, these organs are safe and function like kidneys, says Luhan Yang, chief executive of Qihan Biotech in Hangzhou, China, who is also a founder of the biotech firm that produced the pigs, eGenesis in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company is in discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about planning clinical trials for its programmes for transplanted pig kidneys, livers and paediatric hearts, says Wenning Qin, a molecular biologist at eGenesis.

Hopes for full-scale tests

All US transplants of animal organs into living humans, including Slayman’s, received FDA approval as a ‘compassionate use’, granted in narrow cases when a person’s life is at risk and there are no other treatments. But Yang hopes that the new results will push the FDA towards approval of full-scale clinical trials. Xenotransplants can “provide hope and life for patients and their families”, Yang says.

The surgery also brings clinicians closer to relieving the shortage of life-saving human organs by using animal organs. In the United States alone, there are nearly 90,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant, and more than 3,000 people die every year while still waiting. “Even though organ donation rates have increased massively, we still need millions of organs to transplant into patients,” says Wayne Hawthorne, a transplant surgeon at the University of Sydney in Westmead, Australia.

“This is great news for the field,” says Muhammad Mohiuddin, a surgeon and researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, who led the first pig-heart transplant in a living person. Mohiuddin, who is also president of the International Xenotransplantation Association, says clinical trials would produce much-needed rigorous data about the safety and efficacy of xenotransplantation.

Surgeons have previously transplanted gene-edited pig hearts into two living people. And modified kidneys have been transplanted into several people declared dead because they lack brain function. Earlier this week, surgeons in China transplanted a modified pig liver into a clinically dead person and kept the organ in place for ten days.

Dozens of edits

The operation to give Slayman a pig kidney took four hours, says Tatsuo Kawai, one of the transplant surgeons who conducted the surgery. On his right side, Slayman retained a donated human kidney that Kawai had transplanted into him in 2018, but that had begun to fail. As a result, Slayman had resumed regular dialysis, but he developed complications that required frequent hospital visits, which made him a candidate for xenotransplantation.

Surgeons perform the world’s first genetically modified pig kidney transplant into a living human at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Surgeons in Boston, Massachusetts, perform the first transplant of a pig kidney into a living person.Credit: Massachusetts General Hospital

Slayman’s newest kidney came from a pig that had undergone CRISPR–Cas9 genome editing by eGenesis’s scientists to modify 69 of the animal’s genes. Monkeys called cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis) that received the company’s pig organs with these same genomic edits survived for months to years1. Qin says she is hopeful that Slayman’s xenotransplanted kidney will survive for just as long or even longer, particularly because her team devised the edits with humans, not monkeys, in mind.

The edits included removal of three genes that contribute to the production of a protein on the surface of pig cells. The human immune system attacks cells bearing this protein, which it takes as the hallmark of a foreign invader. Seven genes were added because they produce human proteins that help to prevent organ rejection.

Antiviral meaures

Another 59 genetic changes were made to inactivate viruses embedded in the pig genome. These changes address the risk that the viruses will become active once in the human body. So far, researchers have not seen this happen in transplants to living humans, people who are clinically dead or non-human primates, says Yang. But some laboratory experiments have shown that these viruses can be transmitted from pig tissue to human cells and to mice with compromised immune systems2.

The first genetically modified pig heart to be successfully transplanted into a living person turned out to be tainted with a latent virus, which might have contributed to the organ’s eventual failure3. A major concern for the FDA ahead of approving the operation was the risk that pig pathogens could infect the recipient, Kawai says. eGenesis tests its pigs on a regular basis for pathogens including porcine cytomegalovirus, which can linger quietly in its animal hosts, Qin says.

Before the procedure, the researchers collected and froze blood samples from Slayman, his family members, and his surgeons. If Slayman develops an infection, researchers can test these blood samples to determine whether they were the source of the pathogen, says Kawai.

Slayman will continue to be tested regularly for pathogens, and if he develops symptoms, his family members and caregivers will also be tested.

These precautions are important because a healthy pig is very different to an immunocompromised individual, says Yang. Even though no viruses, bacteria or fungi were detected in the pigs prior to the transplant, they could still be present and grow in an immunocompromised person, she says. “We don’t know what we don’t know.”

Healthy kidney

Kidneys filter out toxic substances from the body, produce urine and help to control blood pressure. Once the surgeons restored blood flow to the transplanted pig organ, it immediately became pink and started to produce urine, says Kawai, a sign that the transplant had been successful.

Another metric of kidney health is the level in the blood of a chemical compound known as creatinine — high levels indicate that the kidney is not performing its waste-filtering role well. Kawai says that prior to the transplant, Slayman’s creatinine level was 10 milligrams per decilitre, but it had gone down to 2.4 by the fourth day. He hopes it will drop to 1.5, which is around the normal range.

“It seems like so far this kidney is functioning the way that it is supposed to,” Mohiuddin says.

Slayman could be released from the hospital as early as tomorrow, Qin says. He is receiving immunosuppressive medications, and has so far shown no signs of organ rejection. Qin says that eGenesis’s goal is to find the right combination of genetic edits in pigs to make it unnecessary for organ recipients to take immunosuppressive drugs, which weaken the body’s ability to fight off pathogens.

“There was always a saying that xenotransplantation is around the corner, and will always be,” Qin says. “Well, now we have someone among us that carries a porcine kidney — it’s just amazing.”

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What Putin’s election win means for Russian science

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Vladimir Putin behind a lectern marked with a golden eagle crest.

Vladimir Putin spoke at an event marking the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences.Credit: Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin has secured a fifth term in office, claiming a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election on 18 March. Election officials say he won a record 87% of votes. This outcome came as a surprise to no one, and many international leaders have condemned the vote as not being free or fair.

Researchers interviewed by Nature say that another six years of Putin’s leadership does not bode well for Russian science, which has been shunned globally in response to the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and is on precarious ground at home. Those still in Russia must choose their words carefully: as one scientist, who wishes to remain anonymous, put it, “business as usual” now includes possible prison time for offhand comments.

Publicly, Putin’s government is a big supporter of research. In early February, at a celebration of the 300-year anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Putin bolstered the academy’s role, effectively reversing parts of a sweeping reform that limited its autonomy he oversaw in his third term. And at the end of last month, he signed an update to the 2030 national science and technology strategy, which calls for funding for research and development to double to 2% of gross domestic product, and stresses an increased role for applied science amid “sanctions pressure”.

Despite being made before the election, these big announcements were framed not as campaign promises but as top-down directives, says Irina Dezhina, an economist at the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy in Moscow. “The fact that it was set in motion back then implies no one really expected any changes at the helm.”

Fractured landscape

Although domestic support for Russian science, which remains mostly state-funded, appears to be strong, many collaborations with countries in the West have broken down since the invasion of Ukraine, prompting a shift to new partners in India and China.

After intense internal discussions, CERN, the European particle-physics powerhouse near Geneva, Switzerland, voted in December 2023 to end ties with Russian research institutions once the current agreement expires in November this year. And the war has severely disrupted science in the Arctic, where Russia controls about half of a region that is particularly vulnerable to climate change. A study1 this year gave a sense of how collaborative projects could be affected by losing Russian data: excluding Russian stations from the International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic causes shifts in project results that are in some cases as large as the total expected impact of warming by 2100.

Reports also suggest that political oppression combined with the threat of military draft have led to a ‘brain drain’ among scientists. Getting an accurate headcount is challenging, but a January estimate by the Latvia-based independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe, based on researchers’ ORCID identifiers, says at least 2,500 researchers have left Russia since February 2022.

Researchers who stayed in Russia have had to contend with serious supply-chain disruptions as well as personal risks. And international sanctions on Russia might have hit even the most productive scientists: according to a January 2024 paper co-authored by Dezhina, which surveyed some of the most published and cited Russian researchers, three out of four of them report at least some fallout from sanctions, mostly economic ones2.

Russia’s isolation has particularly affected the medical sciences, because it means that international clinical trials are no longer held there, says Vasily Vlassov, a health-policy researcher at the Higher School of Economics University in Moscow. He fears that being cut off from the global community will erode Russia’s expertise in this fast-moving and technically complex field: “It’s a problem we have yet to fully appreciate.”

Researchers in the social sciences and humanities are less dependent on overseas partners, but they are affected by increasingly nationalist ideology, says a Russian researcher who asked to remain anonymous. When reviewing articles for publication in Russian journals, the researcher says, they are seeing an increasing number of submissions blaming problems in research and higher education on ‘the collective West’, a common propaganda term. “It’s everywhere, and it’s poisoning minds.”

Uncertain future

The election outcome serves as a reminder of the ongoing war and the openly totalitarian environment in Russia, says Alexander Kabanov, chief executive of the Russian-American Science Association, a US-based non-profit organization. “We are still dealing with an ongoing disaster,” he says.

Yet the impacts of sanctions on Russian science are beginning to fade from public consciousness in other countries. Pierre-Bruno Ruffini, who studies science diplomacy at Le Havre University-Normandy in Le Havre, France, says that academic sanctions and their consequences have “rapidly and completely disappeared” from discussions in the French research community. Dezhina agrees, and adds that, in her experience, even cooperation between individual scientists, once seen as a promising workaround for institutional bans, is on the decline.

Researchers in exile are working on an alternative to the state’s vision of the future for Russia and national science. A policy paper published earlier this month by Reforum, a European project that aims to create a “roadmap of reforms for Russia”, presents a to-do list for revitalizing Russian research. Three out of five of the tasks listed focus on bringing it back into the international fold. Olga Orlova, a science journalist who wrote the policy paper, thinks that scientists in Russia have a part in building that future.

“They shouldn’t be afraid of the change — they should be working for it,” she says.

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Streaming light means better iPhone photos and videos anywhere

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Get better iPhone shots with this foldable LED light, now only $23.
Upgrade your iPhone photography with this $23 portable LED stream light.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Social media and FaceTime mean we’re all shooting more iPhone videos and photos than ever — sometimes in lighting conditions that are far from ideal. This Mini Foldable Stream Light is easy to take anywhere, so it provides better lighting anytime (and anywhere) you plan to be streaming video or taking pix.

Right now, you can elevate your imagery for a very low price. Get the Mini Foldable Stream Light for only $23.99 (regularly $29).

Mini Foldable Stream Light delivers better lighting for streaming

The big advantage this streaming light provides is a wide range of color temperatures. If you’ve ever shot a video and thought it looked too red or too blue, what you’re observing is the color temperature of the light out of balance with what your iPhone perceives as white. Fortunately, this portable iPhone accessory can fix this widespread problem easily.

With 24 LED RGB modes to choose from, it’s easy to match your light with the illumination around you. Or, you can use color effects to set the mood. The 66 professional bright eye care beads provide smooth and even light with no flickering, so you can focus on capturing your image without worrying about the darkness or contrast.

This portable key light doubles as an iPhone stand

The Mini Foldable Stream Light serves dual purposes, as it also unfolds into an iPhone stand. Adjust the plastic stand, clamp in your iPhone and then flip up the light (or leave it down if you need a more natural effect). The stand also can serve as a handle for stabler shoots as you’re moving.

The entire package can be stowed in a pocket when folded up, so it’s always with you when you’re ready to shoot. It runs on its own separate 1,000mAh battery that lasts up to eight hours, so it won’t sap your iPhone’s juice.

Save on portable streaming light for better iPhone photos and videos

Get crisper and more effective videos and photos on your iPhone with this Mini Foldable Stream Light, now just $22.99.

Buy from: Cult of Mac Deals

Prices subject to change. All sales handled by StackSocial, our partner who runs Cult of Mac Deals. For customer support, please email StackSocial directly.



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what it means for cancer treatment

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Coloured scanning electron micrograph of T-lymphocyte killer cells attacking a cancer cell.

T cells (blue; artificially coloured) attack a cancer cell (red).Credit: BSIP Lecaque/Science Photo Library

More than 35 years after it was invented, a therapy that uses immune cells extracted from a person’s own tumour is finally hitting the clinic. At least 20 people with advanced melanoma have embarked on treatment with what are called tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), which target and kill cancer cells.

The regimen, called lifileucel, is the first TIL therapy to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And it is the first immune-cell therapy to win FDA approval for treating solid tumours such as melanoma. Doctors already deploy immune cells called CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cells to treat cancer, but CAR-T therapy is used against only blood cancers such as leukaemia.

TILs are a type of naturally occurring immune cell called a T cell. TILs recognize targets, called antigens, on the surfaces of cancer cells and burrow into solid tumours to kill them. They are the brainchild of Steven Rosenberg, a cancer researcher and surgeon at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who first showed1 that TILs could shrink tumours in people with melanoma. In clinical trials, TIL treatment has put some people with melanoma in remission for up to 20 years.

The FDA granted approval on 16 February to lifileucel, sold as Amtagvi by biotechnology company Iovance Biotherapeutics, based in San Carlos, California. The approval “is a great accomplishment”, says TIL specialist Nick Restifo, chief scientist at Marble Therapeutics in Boston, Massachusetts. He says that it will pave the way for TILs to be used to treat other cancers, including lung and pancreatic tumours, in the near future.

Nature spoke with scientists about TIL therapy and its future.

How are TILs made and used?

After a person’s tumour is removed, surgeons send tissue samples to a laboratory that isolates TILs from them and grow the TILs for three weeks until they’ve multiplied into billions of cells. Before the TILs are reinfused back into the treated person, the recipient is given chemotherapy and an immune chemical called interleukin-2 (IL-2) that temporarily kills immune cells to make room for the TILs.

For now, lifileucel can be used only as a last-line treatment in people with certain forms of advanced melanoma that haven’t responded to other treatments. But Iovance and others are currently testing lifileucel as a first-line treatment against melanoma. Some evidence suggests that it might be even more effective as a first- or second-line treatment, before an aggressive treatment can harm the TILs in tumours.

How effective are TILs?

In Iovance’s trial testing lifileucel in 153 people with melanoma, tumours shrank in 31% of the participants2. And in a second trial in Denmark, 20% of people who received TIL therapy went into complete remission, compared with 7% of those who received a different drug3.

Amod Sarnaik, a surgical oncologist at the Moffitt Center in Tampa, Florida, who led Iovance’s trial, says that solid tumours can generally become resistant to treatments such as chemotherapy. But removing most of the tumour and infusing billions of TILs is often enough “brute force” to overcome the cancer, Sarnaik says. The immune system then ‘remembers’ the most effective TILs, allowing it to quickly churn them out if the cancer comes back.

What are the side effects?

Most of the therapy’s side effects, such as anaemia and fevers, come from the chemotherapy and IL-2 treatments used to prepare patients for TIL infusion. But Sarnaik says that there is a risk of “friendly fire” if TILs also attack normal cells alongside the tumour cells. This can cause autoimmune conditions such as vitiligo, in which TILs cause skin discolouration by attacking pigment cells.

How are TILs regulated?

Similar to CAR T cells, TILs are naturally occurring cells that are specific to each person. But whereas CAR T cells are genetically engineered to attack specific antigens on cancer cells, no one knows which antigens any particular person’s TILs target — although it largely doesn’t matter, as long as they work for the individual person. “It’s a different drug literally for every patient,” Restifo says.

Because it’s impossible for the FDA to assess every patient’s set of TILs, the agency instead approved the process that Iovance uses to multiply the cells and the way that they are administered to people with cancer. And because TILs occur naturally, companies can patent only their processes and not the cells overall. “It’s good news for all of us trying to develop different ways of improving on the process,” Sarnaik says.

How much will the treatment cost?

Iovance has said that it plans to charge US$515,000 for the treatment, making it even more expensive than some of the six CAR-T therapies approved in the United States.

But other approaches might make TILs more affordable, says Inge Marie Svane, a cancer immunologist at Copenhagen University Hospital who is running TIL trials in Europe. Several university hospitals are growing TILs for melanoma without a company’s involvement, using a process that costs about €50,000 (US$55,000).

What’s next for TILs?

Dozens of companies are developing TILs for other types of tumours, and some have already proven effective against cervical4 and lung5 cancer. Researchers are developing improvements such as genetic manipulations that make TILs better at infiltrating and killing tumours. Svane, for instance, is about to start a clinical trial of TILs that are missing a gene that allows cancerous cells to kill them. “What we want to achieve is complete remission,” she says.

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