Ground Truths

It was just a matter of time. Agentic autonomous AI has already been applied to life science and many other domains, and today there were 2 notable publications in Nature that move this concept forward for healthcare.

In the journal Cell, a team of >80 researchers from 4 continents reported on the discovery of a 14-protein blood test which paved the way for predicting and preventing lung cancer more than 5 years before it would be diagnosed. Current efforts in cancer are largely directed to therapy and early detection, with only a very limited foray to prevent...

Helen Pearson, PhD, is an award-winning biomedical journalist at Nature, named European Science Journalist of the Year in 2025. She teaches science writing at University College London. BEYOND BELIEF is her second, just published book. THE LIFE PROJECT was her first.

It has been 15 years since the first unequivocal proof that an immune checkpoint inhibitor (anti-CTLA-4, the T cell receptor shown in blue below; pink represents the antibody) was shown to extend survival in patients with metastatic melanoma and received FDA approval