12. The FDA also approved a new drug that targets cancers based on DNA instead of tumor location.
Foto: sourcektsdesign/Shutterstock
The drug, called Vitrakvi (larotrectinib), was developed by pharmaceutical company Loxo Oncology and approved by the FDA in November. Vitrakvi has already been tested on patients with lung, colon, breast and thyroid cancers.
Rather than going after certain types of cancer, the drug targets cancers based on genetically similar features (biomarkers).
“This new site-agnostic oncology therapy isn’t specific to a cancer arising in a particular body organ, such as breast or colon cancer,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a release. “Its approval reflects advances in the use of biomarkers to guide drug development and the more targeted delivery of medicine.”
According to data released in October, Loxo said that 81% of patients who tried the drug saw their tumors shrink, while 17% of patients had their tumors disappear entirely.
The drug comes with a steep price tag, though: $393,000 a year.
13. Researchers have also been developing medical robots that are 1,000 times smaller than a human hair and can suffocate tumors.
Foto: sourceJason Drees/Arizona State University
This IV-injectable robot has been successfully deployed inside mice and pigs with breast, skin, ovary and lung cancers. After five years of research, the team of scientists behind the nanorobot published their work in February.
The killer robot attacks the tumor by blocking off its supply of fresh blood. Scientists haven’t tested it out in humans yet, though.
14. Cancer researchers also found new evidence that high-fat, low-sugar diets might help kill cancer cells when used in tandem with a certain type of drug.
Foto: sourceAfrica Studio/Shutterstock
Researchers are zeroing in on potential ways to make cancer drugs more effective by changing patients’ diets.
In July, a team of doctors published the results of a study in which they put mice with cancer on low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diets while administering a treatment called a PI3K inhibitor that’s designed to kill tumors. The results showed that the diet-treatment combination improved the medication’s effects.
Scientists are now moving forward with a human trial.
“We hope very much that we would see, in the future, a much more careful assessment of what diet means and how diet can affect chemotherapy,” Siddartha Mukherjee, the study’s lead co-author and an oncologist at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, told Business Insider.
15. Scientists figured out a way to grow meat in a lab without relying on any products from slaughtered animals.
Foto: sourceShutterstock
A handful of startups are racing to create real pieces of meat out of animal cells in a lab.
But for the most part, the food that’s used to coax those cells to proliferate is an animal product called fetal bovine serum, which comes from slaughtered cows. That means the lab-grown meat isn’t yet cruelty-free.
However, the Dutch startup Meatable claims to have solved that problem by using only stem cells from animals’ umbilical cords.
“This way, we don’t harm the animals at all, and it’s material that would otherwise get thrown away,” Krijn De Nood, Meatable’s CEO, told Business Insider in September.
The company aims to begin serving its slaughter-free burgers and sausages to restaurants in roughly four years.
16. In Egypt, archaeologists opened a 30-ton black sarcophagus and found three skeletons.
Foto: Archaeologists unearth coffin containing three mummies in Alexandria, Egypt on July 19, 2018.sourceREUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
The 2,000-year-old sarcophagus was discovered in July by a construction crew working in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.
Some people worried that opening the casket might unlock a nasty curse, but archaeologist Mostafa Waziri, the secretary-general of Egypt’s antiquities ministry, pooh-poohed that idea.
“I was the first to put my whole head inside the sarcophagus,” Waziri said. “Here I stand before you … I am fine.”
The three skeletons found in the sarcophagus were most likely soldiers, according to Egypt’s antiquities ministry, and one skull showed signs of fractures caused by a sharp instrument.
17. Egyptian excavators also found a 3,200-year-old dairy product: the world’s oldest cheese.
Foto: sourceUniversity of Catania and Cairo University
The cheese was found in the tomb of a 13th-century BCE mayor of Memphis, Egypt, excavators announced in August.
Investigators think it’s either cow- or goat-milk cheese.
Cheese-lovers on social media quickly exclaimed that they wanted to eat the ancient curd, even though it might contain deadly bacteria.
18. Chinese scientists announced in January that they’d cloned monkeys, thereby breaking the “technical barrier” for cloning humans.
Foto: Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, two cloned macaque monkeys at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.sourceThomson Reuters
The scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience cloned the monkeys using the same technique that produced Dolly the sheep two decades ago. But it’s still very difficult to clone primates: it took 127 eggs to produce two live macaques. (Scientists named the baby monkeys Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua.)
The researchers said they do not intend to clone people any time soon. Instead, they want to use the scientific breakthrough to better study diseases and potential new drugs.
19. Researchers also figured out other advanced new ways to make babies. But a recent announcement about genetically edited babies drew questions and criticism from scientists around the world.
Foto: sourceShutterstock/vchal
In October, scientists announced that they’d healthy baby mice born from two moms and no dad. And this month, doctors reported a woman who received a transplanted womb from a deceased organ donor gave birth to a baby girl.
But a more controversial announcement came from Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who claims to have successfully edited the genes in a pair of twins born in China in November. By using a cut-and-paste DNA-editing technique called CRISPR, he said, the babies were born immune to HIV.
Jiankui hasn’t produced any evidence to back up his claims, though, and it’s not clear why anyone would need to genetically edit babies to ward off HIV, since life-saving drugs already exist for the auto-immune disease.
Scientists also worry that if Jiankui’s claims are true, the changes he made could have far-reaching consequences, since any genetic mutations the babies may have would get passed on to their offspring.
20. Scientists also learned more about our human ancestors this year. It turns out that early humans didn’t hesitate to get freaky with other species, and interbred with hominins like Denisovans and Neanderthals.
Foto: Neanderthal paintings can be seen in a cave in Pasiega.sourceThomson Reuters
A genetic study published in March revealed that as early Homo Sapiens made their way out of Africa, they had sex and interbred with Denisovans on numerous occasions.
21. A female scientist won the Nobel Prize in physics this year for only the third time ever.
Foto: sourceCole Burston/Getty Images
Donna Strickland, an associate professor of physics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics with a French scientist for her work on lasers.
“All this tremendous beauty and complexity of the biological world all comes about through this one simple, beautiful design algorithm,” Arnold said after she won half of the 2018 prize. “What I do is use that algorithm to build new biological things.”
The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to 210 people. Strickland, whose Wikipedia entry had previously been rejected because she wasn’t famous enough, was surprised to learn that out of all those winners, she was only the third woman.
“Is that all, really? I thought there might have been more,” she said.“We need to celebrate women physicists, because we’re out there.”
This year, a female chemist won the Nobel Prize, too. Frances Arnold became the fifth womansince 1901 to get it. The award recognized her work in using directed evolution to produce enzymes for new chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The Nobel Prize in chemistry prize has been awarded to 181 people since 1901.
22. Scientists discovered two new kinds of giant dinosaurs.
Foto: Here’s how the Ingentia Prima dinosaur may have looked.sourceJorge A. Gonzales
A study about one new species, which was discovered in Argentina, was published in July. The creature is called Ingentia Prima, a name derived from the Latin words for “huge” and “first.” The dinosaur weighed as much as three African elephants when it roamed 210 million years ago (that’s 30 million years earlier than scientists previously thought giant dinosaurs existed).
Another dinosaur, called Ledumahadi mafube, was discovered in South Africa, according to research published in September. It’s believed to have lived roughly 200 million years ago. That means both creatures would’ve been around at the time of Pangea, when the world’s land was still one supercontinent.
“It shows how easily dinosaurs could have walked from Johannesburg to Buenos Aires at that time,” Wits University paleoscientist Jonah Choiniere said.
23. Climate scientists learned more about how our warming planet is hurting us.
Foto: Augustin Dieudomme looks out at the flooded entrance to his apartment complex near the Cape Fear River as it continues to rise in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in Fayetteville, North Carolina on September 18, 2018.sourceAP Photo/David Goldman
Scientists estimated Hurricane Florence, which hit the US in September, was more than 50% wetter than the storm would have been without climate change.
The heat-trapping gas that’s been added to Earth’s atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels also means that a trillion dollars in coastal real estate could be threatened by the end of this century. That’s according to a recent report released by the Trump administration, which also found that thousands more people will die each year from heat-related conditions if we keep up business-as-usual.
But scientists are also coming up with promising solutions that could limit the planet’s temperature rise if we take action now.
24. Investigators cracked the Golden State Killer case using DNA matching. The implications of that strategy are huge.
Foto: Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who authorities said was identified by DNA evidence as the serial predator dubbed the Golden State Killer, appears at his arraignment in Sacramento, California on April 27, 2018.sourceFred Greaves/Reuters
The suspected Golden State Killer, who’d been at large for more than three decades, was finally caught in April because a distant relative’s DNA was available on a public genealogy website.
A study released in October estimates that 60% of white Americans- who are the biggest consumers of DNA testing services- could now be identified up to a “third cousin or closer” using available DNA data.
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