Closer Look
Even now, a MacArthur 'genius' who studies gene regulation feels impostor syndrome
Courtesy John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
He's a Harvard professor and the youngest MacArthur "genius" this year, but he still concedes he has impostor syndrome. Jason Buenrostro (above), 35, an associate professor of stem cell and regenerative biology, said it dates to growing up as a Latinx first-generation college student. "It even happens now — I'll walk into a room and be like, do I really deserve to be here? Especially when I am in a room with people who don't look like me," he told STAT's Anika Nayak. "A lot of people — faculty and staff at Harvard — feel the same way."
His MacArthur award honors his pioneering technique for studying how cells regulate gene expression, known as ATAC-seq. One application is studying how cancer cells grow. "ATAC-seq can be used to identify what genes are on and what genes are off in the cell. And by understanding why these genes may be on, we can think about how to intervene." Read the full interview.
health
Lung cancer incidence continues to be higher in women, study says
Five years ago, an American Cancer Society study showed the incidence of lung cancer was higher in women than men under age 50, a reversal of what had been a historical trend of higher incidence among men that wasn't solely explained by who did or didn't smoke. A new research letter in JAMA Oncology reports that while overall rates have continued to decline, they've fallen more among men than women. That means the burden of lung cancer is higher in women age 35 to 54 than in men.
The higher incidence rate now reaches middle-aged adults as younger women with a high risk of the disease enter older age. "Reasons for this shift are unclear because the prevalence and intensity of smoking are not higher in younger women compared with men except for a slightly elevated prevalence among those born in the 1960s," the authors write, encouraging lung cancer screening among eligible women.
Covid-19
Opinion: Yes, go get your Covid booster. All of you
Uptake of the latest updated Covid-19 vaccine has been far from universal. One reason could be confusion over who needs it, with some people wondering whether only those at high risk should get another vaccination. Writing in a STAT First Opinion, Jennifer Beam Dowd of University of Oxford argues that updated Covid shots make sense for all of us, given vaccination's individual and population-level benefits, especially when it's not obvious who's most vulnerable.
"There is no clearly defined group that has no risk of severe Covid, and it is not easy to know who is at highest risk," she writes, including older people who underestimate their risk because they're pretty healthy. She's also convinced by the likelihood that vaccination reduces the risk of long Covid and helps recovery for some. Then there's this calculus: "Fewer infections mean less transmission. Less transmission means fewer cases. Fewer cases means fewer serious cases and deaths. That's math." Read more.
Correction: In yesterday's newsletter I got it wrong when I said HDL was the "bad" form of cholesterol. As alert readers pointed out, it's LDL that we want to avoid.
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