Roundup: Hantavirus and Pandemic Preparedness, Cancer Vaccines, and More

It’s been a busy time for science and health news! Lots to catch up on since we last connected.

Haven’t We Seen This Movie Before?

If all these news videos of a stranded cruise ship with dangerously ill passengers under quarantine is giving you flashbacks to the early days of Covid, I don’t blame you. There’s (somewhat) good news and a bit of related bad news as well.

By now we’ve all heard about the hantavirus cases among passengers on the Hondius cruise ship: three people have died and four others got sick. Fueling fear is the suspicion that this particular strain of the virus is a rare type capable of transmitting between humans. Maria Van Kerkhove, director for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the World Health Organization, said that “human-to-human transmission can’t be ruled out so as a precaution this is what we are assuming.”

But even if that transmission path is confirmed, hantavirus doesn’t spread the way a respiratory pathogen does. As a result, it is far less likely to lead to an epidemic. The WHO continues to classify the risk to the global population as low.

That’s what is passing for good news these days. The bad news is that countries attempting to sign off on final details for a global treaty to improve pandemic preparedness failed to get it done. According to the Guardian, the dealbreaker was about worldwide access to medical products to avoid the inequitable situation that arose in the Covid pandemic, when wealthier countries got new treatments and lower-income countries were left out. This breakdown in talks means that a pandemic treaty passed through the WHO last year cannot be implemented yet. Negotiators have suggested kicking the can down the road until next year. Meanwhile, a statement from WHO representatives said, “If a new pathogen emerged today, the world remains largely unprepared for it.”

Just Don’t Call It a Vaccine

It’s no secret that mRNA vaccines went from global hero to fodder for conspiracy theorists in record time. But recent news from researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center shows that mRNA vaccines have tremendous promise as a cancer treatment. Perhaps we just need to find a different name for them?

In an early-stage clinical trial of 16 patients with pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest types of cancer — half of patients responded to the treatment, which works by stimulating the immune system to kill cancer cells. (Unfortunately, it is quite common for large fractions of patients to have no response to a cancer therapy, so the 50% response rate here is not a red flag.) Here’s what has researchers and doctors really excited: seven of the eight patients who responded to the treatment were alive four to six years later, defying the traditional odds with pancreatic cancer. Of the eight patients who didn’t respond to treatment, only two remained alive that long afterward. The mRNA vaccines were custom-designed for each patient, based on biological characteristics in each person’s tumor.

This trial is no fluke. There have been at least 120 clinical trials evaluating the performance of mRNA vaccines against cancer. After these recent results, you can bet there will be more in the future.

But misinformation about mRNA vaccines is a real threat. If someone in your life could use some myth-busting about these therapies, I recommend sharing this commentary from a researcher focused on health communication.

Singing Mice: Not Just from Disney Flicks

The biological mechanism behind vocal learning (what we think of as speech) is one that has evolved independently in many types of organisms: birds, whales, elephants, and people, among others. Now we can add mice — specifically, a species known as Alston’s singing mouse, which is found in South and Central America.

Scientists found that these mice sing in a complex form of communication. (My favorite detail: apparently they never interrupt each other.) By mapping genetic signals in the brains of these mice and comparing them to other mouse species, researchers discovered a key neural pathway behind this speech ability. For the nitty-gritty technical details, check out the open-access paper in Nature.

This Week in Misbehaving AI

Regular Salisbury’s Take readers will know I can’t pass up a good story about AI tools doing things they’re not supposed to. In a recent presentation at a conference about research integrity, scientists reported results from a study of two AI agents designed to run full scientific experiments. They found that these AI tools made up data and cherry-picked results to make their outcomes seem better than they actually were.

To make matters worse, it was very difficult for the scientists to catch these AI agents in the act, even though that’s what the point of the study was. The algorithms were particularly good at covering their tracks to make it seem as if the final results were completely trustworthy.