Mass General Brigham leading experts have identified the "Big Ideas in Medicine" list consisting of 12 innovative ideas to help reshape clinical care. The "Big Ideas," announced at the 2025 World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston, focus on gene editing technologies, leveraging the immune system to address disease, new funding models for research and innovation, and utilizing AI in care delivery, and more. 

Salk Institute and the University of California San Diego have identified a unique sugar called HSAT (antithrombin-binding heparan sulfate) as a potential therapeutic target for slowing tumor progression and metastasis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common pancreatic cancer. They also found that HSAT was detectable in cancer patients’ plasma, suggesting it may be a useful biomarker to help catch and track pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Carl F. Nathan, the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the David and Beatrix Hamburg Award for Advances in Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine.

UCLA researchers have made strides in developing a stem cell gene therapy for alpha thalassemia major, a severe, inherited blood disorder in which patients lack the gene needed to produce hemoglobin.

The therapy involves collecting a patient’s own blood stem cells, adding the missing alpha-globin gene using a viral vector, and then returning the corrected cells to the patient.

In patient cells in culture, the gene therapy successfully restored normal alpha-globin protein production to healthy levels, enabling the modified cells to produce functional hemoglobin.