CT Scan#2: Fascinating 2022 breakthroughs
We are constantly flooded by bad news, I get it, that’s what drives attention and how media keeps their business alive. But what actually makes an impact on people’s lives, is the scientific and technological progress happening every single minute in every corner of the planet. Human creativity executed by talented and high-performing teams at companies, institutes, and laboratories around the world. Groups of humans coming up with advances that challenge the concept of reality and figuring out mechanisms to deliver them to millions of people.
2022 might seem a year without much progress, but it was a great year, as told by the following breakthroughs. This list doesn’t follow any particular curation criteria, it’s just a list of some breakthroughs that happened or got consolidated during 2022 that I find fascinating.
1. Precise gene editing in humans
You have probably heard of CRISPR, the revolutionary Nobel-winning gene editing method that cuts DNA’s fragments at precise locations to modify particular genes. However, many diseases such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia are caused by a single base change in the DNA, and traditional CRISPR is not very good at this. This is where base editing comes in, a method capable of swapping a single base for another one to alter a gene. The first base editor converts a cytosine-guanine (C-G) base pair into a thymine-adenine (T-A) base pair, as described by David Liu lab’s paper. Many more base editors have been invented since.
This year, a team from University College London tried their base editors in a 13-year old patient with a rare and aggressive type of Leukemia. T-cells, a type of white blood cell part of the immune system, were collected from a healthy donor and four separate changes (all C to T base conversions) were performed to the cells using base editing. These edits allowed the T-cells to recognize a certain receptor in Leukemia cells and kill the cancer. The modified T-cells were injected into the patient’s bloodstream. A month after, the patient’s cancer was in remission (disease levels undetectable).
In another story in New Zealand, as part of Verve therapeutic’s clinical trial, a patient with inherited risk for extra-high cholesterol (the fatty molecule that clogs arteries) who was suffering from heart disease, underwent base editing. This therapy consisted in an injection that carried RNA instructions (a single base edit to the PCSK9 gene) wrapped in a nanoparticle, similar to mRNA vaccines for COVID-19. This edit should be enough to permanently lower cholesterol levels, and could be the therapy that prevents people dying from heart attacks.
The first base editing paper came out in 2016, just 6 years later, it’s already in humans. The potential for this platform gene editing technology could change medicine forever.
2. Generative AI
This one is pretty obvious. Researchers have been advancing generative models for years, but it was 2022 the year that witnessed an explosion in impressive demonstrations previously thought only capable by humans.
This year OpenAI released DALL-E 2, a text-to-image model that analyzes pairings of text and images to find patterns to create new images. It uses a machine learning technique called diffusion, where images are created from noise based on the text provided. The images output by these models are impressive, the image at the beginning of this post was created using DALL-E 2. Similar models such as stable diffusion and midjourney were also released this year.
ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) also by OpenAI, capable of answering complex questions, write poems, song lyrics, essays, and even answer emails for you in the background.
We are already cyborgs thanks to the real-time data we can access via our smartphones and laptops, these AI models bring a complete new interface to augment our creative abilities.
3. Effective immunotherapies
Immunotherapies have been used in humans since 2011, including anti-CLA-4 and anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibodies, the therapies advanced by the Nobel prize winners James Allison and Tasuku Honjo. However, some astonishing results were observed this year this year as part of a small clinical trial of patients with rectal cancer that took anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody. Of the 18 patients that took the drug, in all of them the cancer was gone, no signs of cancer by physical exam, endoscopy, PET and MRI scans. A doctor interviewed by the NYT said “I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer”.
Another type of immunotherapy is CAR T-cell therapy, in which T-cells are modified in a lab to better recognize and attack antigens, such as cancer cells. In a paper published this year, this therapy was used in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, a life threatening autoimmune disease. The therapy targeted the antigen CD19, which covers B cells. Because B cells are responsible for the onset of clinical symptoms, a depletion of B cells would result in a reduction or elimination of symptoms in patients with lupus. After 3 months of the therapy, remission of lupus was observed in the 5 patients in the study. Additionally, drug-free remission persisted even after the reappearance of B cells.
4. Nuclear ignition
If we want to do better against the climate threat, we have to come up with alternative emissions-free energy modalities. The holly grail of energy is nuclear energy, however, since 1950, attempts at recreating the phenomenon that happens in the sun, fusion, have been suboptimal. This year, researchers at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s largest nuclear-fusion facility, created a nuclear reaction that produces more energy than it consumes — ignition.
How was this demonstrated? 192 lasers delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy onto a tiny gold cylinder that contained a frozen pellet of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. As the laser pulses collapsed, this created extremely high temperatures (only seen in stars), causing the hydrogen isotopes to fuse into helium, creating a cascade of fusion reactions that generated additional energy. An estimate of 3.15 megajoules of energy was released, 54% more than the energy that went into the reaction.
5. Ending malaria
Just in 2021, malaria killed about 620,000 people. And through history, it has killed billions of people. This year, a new malaria vaccine developed by scientists at the University of Oxford, proved to be very effective in a phase III clinical trial. The trial involved 450 children in Burkina Faso, were after 3 doses and a booster shot, it was reported to be 80% effective at preventing infection. This is fantastic news, as malaria is one of the world’s leading causes of child mortality.
6. James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
This one is pretty impressive, and hard to put into words. Basically, scientists from NASA with the help of the European and Canadian space agencies, put a giant mirror in space capable of observing galaxies formed 13 billion years ago. One of the main differences from its predecessor, the Hubble telescope, is that the JWST can observe infrared wavelengths. This is important because as the light from the earliest stars and universes travel to the earth, it shifts from visible to infrared wavelengths. Meaning that infrared provides the best view of those early times.
This is the most complex science mission ever put into space. The mirror wouldn’t fit in a spaceship, so it was designed to fold up for launch. Additionally, the telescope needed to be maintained cold, to prevent noise in the infrared measurements, so the scientists designed a sunshield that keeps it at -233°C.
The telescope has already produced astonishing images of the universe, being able to observe galaxies more distant than anything previously documented. It has also being able to pick up gases in exoplanets previously undetected: carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. This is a big deal because it’s the first evidence of photochemistry in an exoplanet. And this is just the beginning, the telescope will be in space until ~2040, helping scientists discover more about the early times of the universe.
7. Virus — Multiple Sclerosis link
Viral diseases have long term effects, such as the long-term effects thousand of people have been suffering after COVID-19 infection. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a devastating disease where the immune system attacks neurons. A leading suspect of MS has been Epstein-Barr virus, which infects most people in childhood and can lead to infectious mononucleosis (also known as kissing disease). In a study from this year, researchers showed that this virus is an essential player in MS by analyzing 20 years of medical records and blood samples. Of the 801 soldiers who developed MS, all but one had previously tested positive for Epstein-Barr virus. And among soldiers who were initially negative, a subsequent infection raised MS risk 32-fold. That exceeds the increase in lung cancer risk caused by smoking.
8. Synthetic embryos
Using stem cells harvested from mice, scientists were able to create an embryo like structure, with working intestines, a beating heart, and the start of a brain. This didn’t require any sperm, egg, or a womb. This has important implications as we could use this to grow organs for tissue and cells for medical conditions, study how organs form during development, and test medicines without real embryos.
9. Organ restoration after death
In a landmark paper, scientists restored circulation in vital organs on pigs, such as the heart and brain, one hour after the animals died. This was possible using a system called OrganEx, which pumped a blood substitute thought the animal’s body. The substitute contained the animal’s blood plus 13 compound such as anticoagulants. This cocktail slowed the decomposition of the body, and restored organ functions such as heart contractions, and activity in the liver and kidneys. It also helped preserve the integrity of brain tissue, however, no coordinated brain activity was observed. This study challenges the ideas of cardiac death, which occurs when blood circulation and oxygenation stops, and was thought to be irreversible.
10. Ethereum merge
I was hesitant to put anything related to crypto, but I do think it’s important to advance decentralized technologies. Ethereum is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies. This year, a fascinating operation that aimed at changing how ethereum transactions are validated was executed. It shifted from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake algorithms. The problem with proof-of-work is that as miners race to solve a really hard math problem, a lot of electricity is wasted. Instead, proof-of-stake uses a deposit as part of a lottery to validate a transaction. In the latter case, only one computer does the work, without the need to solve a complex math problem. The energy cut from this transition was 99.988% and 99.992% of carbon-dioxide emissions were reduced.
