E11: Gene therapy restores children's hearing in trial; a soil breakthrough could cut fertiliser use, and much more:
Tony Morley, February 27th 2025
Gene Therapy restores children's hearing in trial; soil breakthrough could cut farm fertiliser use, suicide rates continue to fall, promising new therapies for autoimmune diseases, and AI diagnoses for HIV and epilepsy make progress, and much more:
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A new trial gene therapy treatment improved hearing in ten children with a rare form of hearing loss, in some cases nearly restoring normal hearing
“Regeneron’s investigational gene therapy has been tied to notable hearing improvements in 10 of 11 children who were treated for a rare genetic condition that causes hearing loss.” — Breakthrough Gene Therapy Could Restore Hearing
“Among 11 participants with at least one post-treatment assessment, 10 demonstrated a notable hearing improvement at various decibel levels, according to researchers. Furthermore, among five children with 24-week assessments, three experienced improvements that brought their hearing to “nearly normal” or “normal” levels.”
Gabrielle Masson
UK soil breakthrough could cut farm fertiliser use and advance sustainable agriculture
"This opens the door to the creation of wheat varieties that can exploit soil microbes to provide nutrients and so reduce the need to use large amounts of artificial inorganic fertilisers."
Robin McKie
German startup Isar Aerospace pushes towards orbit
Nearly ready to launch, German startup Isar Aerospace is pushing closer to its first attempt to go orbital. If successful, it will mark the first orbital launch from Western Europe.
"We are almost ready for the test flight. All we need is the license," said Daniel Metzler, co-founder and CEO of Isar Aerospace. "By enabling space access from mainland Europe, we provide a critical resource for ensuring sovereignty and resilience."
Stephen Clark
In the majority of high and middle-income countries, people are today breathing the cleanest air in hundreds of years
"Today, we have better technologies and a much better understanding of how to tackle air pollution than we did 50 or 100 years ago. This means people around the world can accelerate this process if they put the right policies and interventions in place."
By: Hannah Ritchie
Civilization consumes roughly 30 billion tonnes of concrete annually — here’s a look at how we can make this critical building material more sustainable.
A fleet of emerging technologies and methods for concrete chemistry, manufacture, and delivery are gradually moving beyond testing and into the realm of commercial viability. The upshot may soon be commercially competitive green, or at least greener concrete.
Jianzhuang Xiao
A groundbreaking and life-changing new gene therapy for children born blind has transformed their ability to see
A paper published in the Lancet Medical Journal outlines an experimental new gene therapy trial that has helped four young children born with one of the most severe forms of childhood blindness to see "life-changing improvements" to their ability to see.
"Before the therapy, they were registered legally blind and only just able to distinguish between dark and light. After the infusion, all parents reported improvements - with some of their young children now able to begin to draw and write."
"The outcomes for these children are hugely impressive and show the power of gene therapy to change lives."
A new genetic breakthrough could help reduce the death rate from breast cancer of women of color.
Women with African ancestry in the United States are close to 40 per cent more likely to die of breast cancer than white women and have double the likelihood of being diagnosed with breast cancer before reaching 40.
New genomic studies are beginning to lay the groundwork for better answering why helping pave the way to design better treatments tailored to women of colour.
Leah Small
Inside the new therapies promising to finally beat autoimmune disease
"Type 1 diabetes, IBD, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, coeliac disease and lupus are all caused by the body attacking itself. But new therapies that reset the immune system could offer lasting help"
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Suicide prevention efforts are working, new research shows
"Age-adjusted suicide rates plummeted among females, declining by 65% between 2000 and 2021. Among males, there were smaller declines of 54% over this period."
"Progress in reducing suicides globally has been even faster for females than males, with age-adjusted rates dropping by 50% among females compared to 34% in males. These improvements are driven by evidence-based interventions by governments and communities."
Mohsen Naghavi
PAC-MANN diagnoses early-stage pancreatic cancer with 85% accuracy
A recent study published in the Science Translational Medicine has outlined a new and noninvasive test for pancreatic cancer with an approximately 85% accuracy.
"Scientists at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) have developed a new blood test for pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly forms of the disease. Tests showed up to 85% accuracy in detection, even in early stages."
Depositphotos
A new AI epilepsy diagnostic tool can detect the brain lesions skilled doctors often miss
While researchers are cautiously optimistic, they note that if the tool can improve the number of suitable candidates for brain surgery, it could be "life-changing for many more people with epilepsy."
"An artificial-intelligence tool can detect two-thirds of epilepsy brain lesions doctors often miss, say the UK researchers who have developed it, paving the way for more targeted surgery to stop seizures."
From HIV to COVID, a ‘One-shot’ machine learning method could screen immune cells could help to detect conditions with overlapping symptoms
"In a study of nearly 600 people, published in Science on 20 February, the tool identified whether participants were healthy or had COVID-19, type 1 diabetes, HIV or the autoimmune disease lupus, as well as whether they had recently received a flu vaccine."
“This is a one-shot sequencing approach that captures everything that your immune system has been exposed to,”
Miryam Naddaf
Nine patients with kidney cancer were found cancer-free three years later after receiving a trial cancer vaccine
The new study, published February 5th 2025 in Nature, outlines the enormous potential of personalized vaccines to dramatically change how we fight certain cancer types.
"Nine patients with advanced kidney cancer who received an experimental vaccine tailored to their tumors’ specific mutations mounted an immune response to their disease and remained cancer-free for three years"
Elizabeth Cooney
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