The melanoma vaccine nobody believed in worked, and clean air grew lungs

Company president Stephen Hoge was standing on stage. He sat back down. So did Bancel 13. That's how uncertain this looked, even from the inside. Last week, Moderna and Merck announced that a 1,137-volunteer trial of the vaccine, called intismeran autogene, showed it reduced the odds that surgically removed melanoma would return or spread 13. The vaccine is built individually for each patient and can be tailored to target up to 34 different mutations in that person's specific tumor 46, which is the part that makes this a personalized medicine story as much as a cancer story: the shot itself is different for every person who receives it.

Since the policy began, roadside nitrogen dioxide has fallen 54% in central London. The lung study, published in The Lancet Public Health, found that children in the zone showed measurably better lung growth trajectories than their Luton counterparts, the first evidence anywhere that a clean air zone actually changes how kids' lungs develop, not just how the air reads on a monitor 7.

In a validation study of 1,142 symptomatic adults, it correctly identified 97.6% of positive biomarkers, and stayed accurate even in patients with conditions like chronic kidney disease that normally muddy these measurements 51. Before tests like this existed, confirming amyloid buildup meant a PET scan or a spinal tap. "Just over a year ago, there were no FDA-cleared blood tests for Alzheimer's, and now we have three," said Isobel Coleman of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation 51.

Through a program run by Farm Africa and Sweden's Sida development agency, they switched to solar-powered irrigation instead, a change expected to save the cooperative nearly $6,000 in fuel costs alone 57. For farmers further out in rural Oromia, the bigger win wasn't even the money: it was no longer losing whole days standing in line for fuel that might not be there 57. "Solar irrigation is a clean energy source that can deliver a powerful double dividend: lower costs for farmers and a healthier planet for future generations," said Farm Africa's Ayele Feleke 57.

When the stopping cue appeared over a happy face, the dancers were noticeably faster at halting their movement than the non-dancers were; on neutral cues, the two groups performed about the same 20. The dancers had at least six months of formal training and currently practiced six or more hours a week.

The algae, a strain called Chlorella BDH-1, absorbed leftover nutrients and supplied oxygen back to the meat cells growing alongside it. Processed and fed back into the system, the algae could replace up to half the expensive amino acids and animal serum a batch would otherwise need, and in some conditions actually beat standard growth medium by more than double 53. "From our calculations, we estimate we can reduce growth media costs somewhere between 60-90%," said researcher Melanie Oey 53.

Sacks's observation, that we are all doing a milder version of the same thing constantly, using narrative to hold a self together, is the piece's center: "We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative, whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives" 72.