A fter nearly a decade as a university diagnostic pathologist, Lawson Macartney decided that acad... more A fter nearly a decade as a university diagnostic pathologist, Lawson Macartney decided that academia was a difficult place to earn a living. "I gave up a teaching job and a research job and joined the industry in pathology, where I discovered that I was actually very good at leading teams, " he says. Macartney gained a commercial perspective and experience in sales, marketing, drug discovery and development at three companies. Now senior vice-president of the emerging business unit at Shire Pharmaceuticals in Wayne, Pennsylvania, he combines marketing and research to help develop products for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and gastrointestinal diseases. Researchers with a knack for promotion and a desire to help those in need may find their niche in biomedical marketing.
V LA D IM IR W R A N G E L / S H U TT E R S TO C K .C O M T en years ago, researchers from the H.... more V LA D IM IR W R A N G E L / S H U TT E R S TO C K .C O M T en years ago, researchers from the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute and the University of Illinois at Chicago used the analogy of cave-adapted fish to argue that the drivers of carcinogenesis “lie more in the adaptive changes enabled by local or systemic alterations of tissue architecture than the genetic changes observed in cancer cells.”1 Throughout the world, they wrote in their essay, cave fish possess remarkably similar phenotypic hallmarks: They are small, blind, eyeless, unpigmented, and equipped with exaggerated tactile organs. At the time, cave-adapted fish spanned 86 species from 19 separate families, and they showed both convergent evolution, in which different lineages converge on similar traits such as increased tactile abilities, and regressive evolution, in which unused traits such as sight are lost over time. The analogy’s upshot is that genetic analysis alone is insufficient to account for the strikingly similar phenotypes and the true drivers of the observed adaptations. In cave-adapted fish, “entry into the evolutionary opportunity provided by the cave preceded the emergence of the adaptive morphologies and associated molecular changes,” the researchers wrote. In the same way, they argued, cancer can be seen as a disease of ecological and evolutionary opportunity through the opening up of tissue niches that “permit and promote” a cancer’s evolution. Jason Somarelli, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, says that he remembers reading the 2011 essay and thinking, “This is exactly how I view this process happening.” Just as cavefish are under resource or ecological constraints—cold water and darkness, for instance—cancers can face restrictions on space, oxygen availability, and other microenvironmental limitations. Like cavefish, cancers also tend to converge on a small set of phenotypic hallmarks, such as genomic instability, and on the evasion of cellular defenses, such as growth suppressors and programmed cell death. They can also undergo regressive evolution when cells dedifferentiate and lose their specialized functions.
JOURNAL ENTRIES Read about the travails of young scientists go.nature.com/3fttcj COLUMN How scien... more JOURNAL ENTRIES Read about the travails of young scientists go.nature.com/3fttcj COLUMN How scientists can sell themselves effectively p.117
When inspiration strikes or desperation sets in, a bold few risk career suicide and move to new f... more When inspiration strikes or desperation sets in, a bold few risk career suicide and move to new fields. Bryn Nelson reports on what it takes.
THE POSTDOC SERIES How self-reflection helps lost postdocs go.nature.com/ymvxew RESEARCH ETHICS T... more THE POSTDOC SERIES How self-reflection helps lost postdocs go.nature.com/ymvxew RESEARCH ETHICS Team seeks data for integrity-promoting workplaces p.713
The metropolitan region of about 3.5 million people in Washington State had already documented th... more The metropolitan region of about 3.5 million people in Washington State had already documented the first US case of covid-19 on 20 January in a 35 year old man who had visited his family in Wuhan, China. The patient tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and was immediately hospitalised in an isolation unit at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. 1 After treatment with remdesivir, the man was released on 3 February. Tracing and monitoring (but not testing) of nearly 70 potential contacts didn't turn up any signs of covid-19, and state health officials breathed a wary sigh of relief.
Hastily constructed field hospitals in the US and UK have largely gone unused. Yet empty beds mig... more Hastily constructed field hospitals in the US and UK have largely gone unused. Yet empty beds might provide important lessons on improving hospital preparedness and flexibility, writes Bryn Nelson The 17 March 2020 letter from Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, to US President Donald Trump began with an urgent request. "I am asking that you send the USS Mercy to the Puget Sound region immediately," it read. Two models projected that the Seattle region was only a few weeks away from running out of hospital capacity due to an influx of patients with covid-19, and the Navy's hospital ship was seen as a lifeline. "It is very clear that our hospitals will be overwhelmed soon," Inslee wrote.
1. Nature. 2008 Jul 3;454(7200):132-3. Benefits blues. Nelson B. PMID: 18615890 [PubMed - indexed... more 1. Nature. 2008 Jul 3;454(7200):132-3. Benefits blues. Nelson B. PMID: 18615890 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] MeSH Terms: Emigration and Immigration/ legislation & jurisprudence; Homosexuality*; Humans; Research ...
Canadian futurist named Andrew Hessel has an unorthodox idea about how to cure breast cancer. He ... more Canadian futurist named Andrew Hessel has an unorthodox idea about how to cure breast cancer. He asks: what if volunteer researchers, working cooperatively from their garages and bedrooms, could rival the efforts of multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies? His crowd-funded venture, the Pink Army Cooperative, is trying to do just that by tapping into open-source tools springing from synthetic biology -an emerging field that designs biological products using engineering principles and a modular approach. Since the cooperative launched in 2009, nearly 600 people have invested in it. The cost to join? A mere US$20. This radical idea faces considerable hurdles -but even so, it has attracted plenty of attention from industry groups and the media. The cooperative, launched by Hessel and two co-founders, hopes to start Synthetic biology is facing a tug of war over whether to patent its discoveries or embrace open-source innovation.
A fter nearly a decade as a university diagnostic pathologist, Lawson Macartney decided that acad... more A fter nearly a decade as a university diagnostic pathologist, Lawson Macartney decided that academia was a difficult place to earn a living. "I gave up a teaching job and a research job and joined the industry in pathology, where I discovered that I was actually very good at leading teams, " he says. Macartney gained a commercial perspective and experience in sales, marketing, drug discovery and development at three companies. Now senior vice-president of the emerging business unit at Shire Pharmaceuticals in Wayne, Pennsylvania, he combines marketing and research to help develop products for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and gastrointestinal diseases. Researchers with a knack for promotion and a desire to help those in need may find their niche in biomedical marketing.
V LA D IM IR W R A N G E L / S H U TT E R S TO C K .C O M T en years ago, researchers from the H.... more V LA D IM IR W R A N G E L / S H U TT E R S TO C K .C O M T en years ago, researchers from the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute and the University of Illinois at Chicago used the analogy of cave-adapted fish to argue that the drivers of carcinogenesis “lie more in the adaptive changes enabled by local or systemic alterations of tissue architecture than the genetic changes observed in cancer cells.”1 Throughout the world, they wrote in their essay, cave fish possess remarkably similar phenotypic hallmarks: They are small, blind, eyeless, unpigmented, and equipped with exaggerated tactile organs. At the time, cave-adapted fish spanned 86 species from 19 separate families, and they showed both convergent evolution, in which different lineages converge on similar traits such as increased tactile abilities, and regressive evolution, in which unused traits such as sight are lost over time. The analogy’s upshot is that genetic analysis alone is insufficient to account for the strikingly similar phenotypes and the true drivers of the observed adaptations. In cave-adapted fish, “entry into the evolutionary opportunity provided by the cave preceded the emergence of the adaptive morphologies and associated molecular changes,” the researchers wrote. In the same way, they argued, cancer can be seen as a disease of ecological and evolutionary opportunity through the opening up of tissue niches that “permit and promote” a cancer’s evolution. Jason Somarelli, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, says that he remembers reading the 2011 essay and thinking, “This is exactly how I view this process happening.” Just as cavefish are under resource or ecological constraints—cold water and darkness, for instance—cancers can face restrictions on space, oxygen availability, and other microenvironmental limitations. Like cavefish, cancers also tend to converge on a small set of phenotypic hallmarks, such as genomic instability, and on the evasion of cellular defenses, such as growth suppressors and programmed cell death. They can also undergo regressive evolution when cells dedifferentiate and lose their specialized functions.
JOURNAL ENTRIES Read about the travails of young scientists go.nature.com/3fttcj COLUMN How scien... more JOURNAL ENTRIES Read about the travails of young scientists go.nature.com/3fttcj COLUMN How scientists can sell themselves effectively p.117
When inspiration strikes or desperation sets in, a bold few risk career suicide and move to new f... more When inspiration strikes or desperation sets in, a bold few risk career suicide and move to new fields. Bryn Nelson reports on what it takes.
THE POSTDOC SERIES How self-reflection helps lost postdocs go.nature.com/ymvxew RESEARCH ETHICS T... more THE POSTDOC SERIES How self-reflection helps lost postdocs go.nature.com/ymvxew RESEARCH ETHICS Team seeks data for integrity-promoting workplaces p.713
The metropolitan region of about 3.5 million people in Washington State had already documented th... more The metropolitan region of about 3.5 million people in Washington State had already documented the first US case of covid-19 on 20 January in a 35 year old man who had visited his family in Wuhan, China. The patient tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and was immediately hospitalised in an isolation unit at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. 1 After treatment with remdesivir, the man was released on 3 February. Tracing and monitoring (but not testing) of nearly 70 potential contacts didn't turn up any signs of covid-19, and state health officials breathed a wary sigh of relief.
Hastily constructed field hospitals in the US and UK have largely gone unused. Yet empty beds mig... more Hastily constructed field hospitals in the US and UK have largely gone unused. Yet empty beds might provide important lessons on improving hospital preparedness and flexibility, writes Bryn Nelson The 17 March 2020 letter from Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, to US President Donald Trump began with an urgent request. "I am asking that you send the USS Mercy to the Puget Sound region immediately," it read. Two models projected that the Seattle region was only a few weeks away from running out of hospital capacity due to an influx of patients with covid-19, and the Navy's hospital ship was seen as a lifeline. "It is very clear that our hospitals will be overwhelmed soon," Inslee wrote.
1. Nature. 2008 Jul 3;454(7200):132-3. Benefits blues. Nelson B. PMID: 18615890 [PubMed - indexed... more 1. Nature. 2008 Jul 3;454(7200):132-3. Benefits blues. Nelson B. PMID: 18615890 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] MeSH Terms: Emigration and Immigration/ legislation & jurisprudence; Homosexuality*; Humans; Research ...
Canadian futurist named Andrew Hessel has an unorthodox idea about how to cure breast cancer. He ... more Canadian futurist named Andrew Hessel has an unorthodox idea about how to cure breast cancer. He asks: what if volunteer researchers, working cooperatively from their garages and bedrooms, could rival the efforts of multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies? His crowd-funded venture, the Pink Army Cooperative, is trying to do just that by tapping into open-source tools springing from synthetic biology -an emerging field that designs biological products using engineering principles and a modular approach. Since the cooperative launched in 2009, nearly 600 people have invested in it. The cost to join? A mere US$20. This radical idea faces considerable hurdles -but even so, it has attracted plenty of attention from industry groups and the media. The cooperative, launched by Hessel and two co-founders, hopes to start Synthetic biology is facing a tug of war over whether to patent its discoveries or embrace open-source innovation.
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