March 15 | 2021
Good Worldwide Launches Leaps.org to Rebuild Public Trust in Science and Journalism
Kira Peikoff is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and son.
MARCH 15, 2021 -- LeapsMag, the award-winning online magazine created to encourage public discussion about scientific innovation, re-emerges today as Leaps.org, a non- profit media initiative within the Good Worldwide ecosystem, dedicated to rebuilding public trust in science as a force for good and fostering dialogue about the ethical implications of new breakthroughs. Leaps.org's news and commentary cover a wide range of topics including health and medicine, biotechnology, agriculture, research and development, space exploration, and environmental concerns. Notable contributors and interviewees include neuroscientist Sam Harris, geneticist George Church, Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel, author Steven Pinker, virologist Angela Rasmussen, and many others.
Science and the media that report on it are facing unprecedented mistrust and suspicion, yet at the same time the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a growing public appetite for accessible information about scientific developments. President Biden has tasked his Surgeon General nominee Vivek Murthy with improving public trust in science as one of his key goals. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in January that roughly 3 in 10 U.S. health care workers express hesitancy about getting a COVID-19 vaccine. A September 2020 Pew Research Center study found that "majorities across 18 of the 20 publics say that limited public understanding is a problem for coverage of scientific research."
And Edelman Worldwide released global survey results showing that trust in scientists and journalists is down compared with last year, and trust in all information sources is at record lows: "In a world of misinformation and media echo chambers," Edelman stated, "how can we rebuild the trust needed to enable the acceptance of science and innovation to create a brighter future for humanity?"
<p>That's where Leaps.org comes in. The original platform was launched by science writer Kira Peikoff in 2017 as an editorially independent outlet for high-quality journalism and commentary, with financial support from Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment unit of Bayer that invests in paradigm-shifting technologies. Leaps by Bayer holds the conviction that responsible innovation requires broad public engagement on a neutral platform that is free of sponsor bias.</p><p>Leaps.org's transition to becoming a non-profit media outlet underscores the publication's guiding principle: total editorial independence. Editor-in-Chief Peikoff ensures that funders have no influence over the content published, including no veto power or advance viewing. She will be expanding key partnerships, special events, and philanthropic projects. "In light of the magnified confusion and suspicion raised by the pandemic, there's never been a more important time for science and media to join together," said Peikoff. "We need to highlight the key role of scientific progress in securing society's future while aggressively countering misinformation and breaking down barriers to inclusive discussion. Leaps.org accomplishes these goals through accessible and accurate storytelling, using the highest caliber sources and rigorous fact-checking." Because Leaps.org is not reliant on a revenue-generating model, its journalism is not tied to conventional performance-driven metrics.</p><p>"Scientific progress could change the world for the better, but advances will only have impact if people understand the benefits and feel empowered to ask questions. Stimulating this dialogue has never been more important," said Dr. Jürgen Eckhardt who heads up Leaps by Bayer. "We applaud the evolution of Leaps.org into a non-profit initiative that can realize its mission on a larger scale." </p><p>"Right now, a healthy relationship with science is vital to address our biggest challenges – from COVID-19 to climate change. It's an honor to be part of the fast-growing, award-winning Leaps.org platform to help science and society thrive together," said GOOD Worldwide Co- Founder and CEO Max Schorr.</p><p>As part of the transition, Leaps.org recently launched a new monthly podcast series, "<a href="https://leaps.org/new-podcast-making-sense-of-science/episode-1-covid-19-vaccines-and-our-progress-toward-normalcy" target="_self"><u>Making Sense of Science</u></a>," with the first episode featuring NYU medical bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan. On March 11, Leaps.org co-hosted "<a href="https://leaps.org/covid-vaccines-and-the-return-to-life-part-1/" target="_self"><u>COVID Vaccines and the Return to Life: Part 1</u></a>" with the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program and the Sabin–Aspen Vaccine Science & Policy Group, the first of a four-part series that will run throughout 2021. Leaps.org's regular publication schedule features original reporting and commentary from highly sought-after journalists, scientists, academics, and thought leaders. The platform has already achieved significant success in making science compelling to a large audience, achieving close to 6 million page views and 6.2 million engagements on social media in 2020 alone.</p>
About Leaps.org
<p>Leaps.org is a not-for-profit program within the Good Worldwide ecosystem, which also includes Upworthy — a media platform that reaches over 150 million people monthly — whose mission is to share the best of humanity and inspire others to do the same.</p><p>Leaps.org publishes award-winning journalism, popularizes scientific progress on social media, and hosts forums about innovation, ethics, and the future of humanity. Leaps.org's projects and activities are supported by a consortium of like-minded partners including the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, and supporters Leaps by Bayer, the Rita Allen Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.</p><p>Follow Leaps.org @makingsenseofscience on Instagram, @leaps_org on Twitter, and @leaps.org on Facebook and LinkedIn.</p>
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Kira Peikoff is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and son.
April 09 | 2021
How a Deadly Fire Gave Birth to Modern Medicine
The Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston in 1942 tragically claimed 490 lives, but was the catalyst for several important medical advances.
Boston Public Library
On the evening of November 28, 1942, more than 1,000 revelers from the Boston College-Holy Cross football game jammed into the Cocoanut Grove, Boston's oldest nightclub. When a spark from faulty wiring accidently ignited an artificial palm tree, the packed nightspot, which was only designed to accommodate about 500 people, was quickly engulfed in flames. In the ensuing panic, hundreds of people were trapped inside, with most exit doors locked. Bodies piled up by the only open entrance, jamming the exits, and 490 people ultimately died in the worst fire in the country in forty years.
"People couldn't get out," says Dr. Kenneth Marshall, a retired plastic surgeon in Boston and president of the Cocoanut Grove Memorial Committee. "It was a tragedy of mammoth proportions."
Within a half an hour of the start of the blaze, the Red Cross mobilized more than five hundred volunteers in what one newspaper called a "Rehearsal for Possible Blitz." The mayor of Boston imposed martial law. More than 300 victims—many of whom subsequently died--were taken to Boston City Hospital in one hour, averaging one victim every eleven seconds, while Massachusetts General Hospital admitted 114 victims in two hours. In the hospitals, 220 victims clung precariously to life, in agonizing pain from massive burns, their bodies ravaged by infection.
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The scene of the fire.
Boston Public Library
Tragic Losses Prompted Revolutionary Leaps
<p>But there is a silver lining: this horrific disaster prompted dramatic changes in safety regulations to prevent another catastrophe of this magnitude and led to the development of medical techniques that eventually saved millions of lives. It transformed burn care treatment and the use of plasma on burn victims, but most importantly, it introduced to the public a new wonder drug that revolutionized medicine, midwifed the birth of the modern pharmaceutical industry, and nearly doubled life expectancy, from 48 years at the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century to 78 years in the post-World War II years.</p><p>The devastating grief of the survivors also led to the first published study of post-traumatic stress disorder by pioneering psychiatrist Alexandra Adler, daughter of famed Viennese psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, who was a student of Freud. Dr. Adler studied the anxiety and depression that followed this catastrophe, according to the <em>New York Times</em>, and "later applied her findings to the treatment World War II veterans."</p><p>Dr. Ken Marshall is intimately familiar with the lingering psychological trauma of enduring such a disaster. His mother, an Irish immigrant and a nurse in the surgical wards at Boston City Hospital, was on duty that cold Thanksgiving weekend night, and didn't come home for four days. "For years afterward, she'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night," recalls Dr. Marshall, who was four years old at the time. "Seeing all those bodies lined up in neat rows across the City Hospital's parking lot, still in their evening clothes. It was always on her mind and memories of the horrors plagued her for the rest of her life."</p><p>The sheer magnitude of casualties prompted overwhelmed physicians to try experimental new procedures that were later successfully used to treat thousands of battlefield casualties. Instead of cutting off blisters and using dyes and tannic acid to treat burned tissues, which can harden the skin, they applied gauze coated with petroleum jelly. Doctors also refined the formula for using plasma--the fluid portion of blood and a medical technology that was just four years old--to replenish bodily liquids that evaporated because of the loss of the protective covering of skin.</p><blockquote>"Every war has given us a new medical advance. And penicillin was <em>the</em> great scientific advance of World War II."</blockquote>
<p>"The initial insult with burns is a loss of fluids and patients can die of shock," says Dr. Ken Marshall. "The scientific progress that was made by the two institutions revolutionized fluid management and topical management of burn care forever."</p><p>Still, they could not halt the staph infections that kill most burn victims—which prompted the first civilian use of a miracle elixir that was being secretly developed in government-sponsored labs and that ultimately ushered in a new age in therapeutics. Military officials quickly realized this disaster could provide an excellent natural laboratory to test the effectiveness of this drug and see if it could be used to treat the acute traumas of combat in this unfortunate civilian approximation of battlefield conditions. At the time, the very existence of this wondrous medicine—penicillin—was a closely guarded military secret.</p>
From Forgotten Lab Experiment to Wonder Drug
<p>In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered the curative powers of penicillin, which promised to eradicate infectious pathogens that killed millions every year. But the road to mass producing enough of the highly unstable mold was littered with seemingly unsurmountable obstacles and it remained a forgotten laboratory curiosity for over a decade. But Fleming never gave up and penicillin's eventual rescue from obscurity was a landmark in scientific history. </p><p>In 1940, a group at Oxford University, funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, isolated enough penicillin to test it on twenty-five mice, which had been infected with lethal doses of streptococci. Its therapeutic effects were miraculous—the untreated mice died within hours, while the treated ones played merrily in their cages, undisturbed. Subsequent tests on a handful of patients, who were brought back from the brink of death, confirmed that penicillin was indeed a wonder drug. But Britain was then being ravaged by the German Luftwaffe during the Blitz, and there were simply no resources to devote to penicillin during the Nazi onslaught.</p><p>In June of 1941, two of the Oxford researchers, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, embarked on a clandestine mission to enlist American aid. Samples of the temperamental mold were stored in their coats. By October, the Roosevelt Administration had recruited four companies—Merck, Squibb, Pfizer and Lederle—to team up in a massive, top-secret development program. Merck, which had more experience with fermentation procedures, swiftly pulled away from the pack and every milligram they produced was zealously hoarded.</p><p>After the nightclub fire, the government ordered Merck to dispatch to Boston whatever supplies of penicillin that they could spare and to refine any crude penicillin broth brewing in Merck's fermentation vats. After working in round-the-clock relays over the course of three days, on the evening of December 1<sup>st</sup>, 1942, a refrigerated truck containing thirty-two liters of injectable penicillin left Merck's Rahway, New Jersey plant. It was accompanied by a convoy of police escorts through four states before arriving in the pre-dawn hours at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dozens of people were rescued from near-certain death in the first public demonstration of the powers of the antibiotic, and the existence of penicillin could no longer be kept secret from inquisitive reporters and an exultant public. The next day, the <em>Boston Globe</em> called it "priceless" and <em>Time</em> magazine dubbed it a "wonder drug."</p><p>Within fourteen months, penicillin production escalated exponentially, churning out enough to save the lives of thousands of soldiers, including many from the Normandy invasion. And in October 1945, just weeks after the Japanese surrender ended World War II, Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine. But penicillin didn't just save lives—it helped build some of the most innovative medical and scientific companies in history, including Merck, Pfizer, Glaxo and Sandoz. </p><p>"Every war has given us a new medical advance," concludes Marshall. "And penicillin was <em>the</em> great scientific advance of World War II."</p>
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Linda Marsa is a contributing editor at Discover, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and author of Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Harm Our Health and How We Can Save Ourselves (Rodale, 2013), which the New York Times called “gripping to read.” Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Science Writing, and she has written for numerous publications, including Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Nautilus, Men’s Journal, Playboy, Pacific Standard and Aeon.
April 06 | 2021
This Boy Struggled to Walk Before Gene Therapy. Now, Such Treatments Are Poised to Explode.
Conner Curran, now 10 years old, can walk more than two miles after gene therapy treatment for his Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.
Courtesy of the Curran family
Conner Curran was diagnosed with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy in 2015 when he was four years old. It's the most severe form of the genetic disease, with a nearly inevitable progression toward total paralysis. Many Duchenne's patients die in their teens; the average lifespan is 26.
But Conner, who is now 10, has experienced some astonishing improvements in recent years. He can now walk for more than two miles at a time – an impossible journey when he was younger.
In 2018, Conner became the very first patient to receive gene therapy specific to treating Duchenne's. In the initial clinical trial of nine children, nearly 80 percent reacted positively to the treatment). A larger-scale stage 3 clinical trial is currently underway, with initial results expected next year.
Gene therapy involves altering the genes in an individual's cells to stop or treat a disease. Such a procedure may be performed by adding new gene material to existing cells, or editing the defective genes to improve their functionality.
<p>That the medical world is on the cusp of a successful treatment for a crippling and deadly disease is the culmination of more than 35 years of work by Dr. Jude Samulski, a professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. More recently, he's become a leading gene therapy entrepreneur.</p><p>But Samulski likens this breakthrough to the frustrations of solving a Rubik's cube. "Just because one side is now all the color yellow does not mean that it is completely aligned," he says.</p><p>Although Conner's life and future have dramatically improved, he's not cured. The gene therapy tamed but did not extinguish his disorder: Conner is now suffering from the equivalent of Becker's muscular dystrophy, a milder form of the disease with symptoms that appear later in life and progress more slowly. Moreover, the loss of muscle cells Conner suffered prior to the treatment is permanent.</p><p>"It will take more time and more innovations," Samulski says of finding an even more effective gene therapy for muscular dystrophy.</p><p>Conner's family is still overjoyed with the results. "Jude's grit and determination gave Conner a chance at a new life, one that was not in his cards before gene therapy," says his mother Jessica Curran. She adds that "Conner is more confident than before and enjoys life, even though he has limitations, if compared to his brothers or peers."</p>
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Conner Curran holding a football post gene therapy treatment.
Courtesy of the Curran family
<p>For now, the use of gene therapy as a treatment for diseases and disorders remains relatively isolated. On paper at least, progress appears glacially slow. In 2018, there were four FDA-approved gene therapies (excluding those reliant on bone marrow/stem cell transplants or implants). Today, <a href="https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/cellular-gene-therapy-products/approved-cellular-and-gene-therapy-products" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><u>there are 10</u></a>. One therapy is solely for the cosmetic purpose of reducing facial lines and folds.</p><p>Nevertheless, experts in the space believe gene therapy is poised to expand dramatically.</p><p>"Certainly in the next three to five years you will see dozens of gene therapies and cell therapies be approved," says Dr. Pavan Cheruvu, who is CEO of Sio Gene Therapies in New York. The company is developing treatments for Parkinson's disease and Tay-Sachs, among other diseases.</p><p>Cheruvu's conclusion is supported by NEWDIGS, a think tank at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that keeps tabs on gene therapy developments. NEWDIGS predicts there will be at least 60 gene therapies approved for use in the U.S. by the end of the decade. That number could be closer to 100 if Chinese researchers and biotech ventures decide the American market is a good fit for the therapies they develop.</p>
<blockquote>"We are watching something of a conditional evolution, like a dot-com, or cellphones that were sizes of shoeboxes that have now matured to the size of wafers. Our space will follow along very similarly."</blockquote>
<p>Dr. Carsten Brunn, a chemist by training and CEO of Selecta Biosciences outside of Boston, is developing ways to reduce the immune responses in patients who receive gene therapy. He observes that there are more than 300 therapies in development and thousands of clinical trials underway. "It's definitely an exciting time in the field," he says.</p><p>That's a far cry from the environment of little more than a decade ago. Research and investment in gene therapy had been brought low for years after the death of teenager Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 while he had been enrolled in a clinical trial to treat a liver disease. Gene therapy was a completely novel concept back then, and his death created existential questions about whether it was a proper pathway to pursue. Cheruvu, a cardiologist, calls the years after Gelsinger's death an "ice age" for gene therapy.</p><p>However, those dark years eventually yielded to a thaw. And while there have been some recent stumbles, they are considered part of the trial-and-error that has often accompanied medical research as opposed to an ominous "stop" sign.</p><p>The deaths of three patients last year receiving gene therapy for myotubular myopathy – a degenerative disease that causes severe muscle weakness – promptly ended the clinical trial in which they were enrolled. However, the incident caused few ripples beyond that. Researchers linked the deaths to dosage sizes that caused liver toxicity, as opposed to the gene therapy itself being an automatic death sentence; younger patients who received lower doses due to a less advanced disease state experienced improvements.</p><p>The gene sequencing and editing that helped create vaccines for COVID-19 in record time also bolstered the argument for more investment in research and development. Cheruvu notes that the field has usually been the domain of investors with significant expertise in the field; these days, more money is flowing in from generalists.</p>
The Challenges Ahead
<p>What will be the next step in gene therapy's evolution? Many of Samulski's earliest innovations came in the laboratory, for example. Then that led to him forming a company called AskBio in collaboration with the Muscular Dystrophy Association. AskBio sold its gene therapy to <a href="https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizers-new-phase-1b-results-gene-therapy-ambulatory-boys" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><u>Pfizer</u></a> five years ago to assure that enough could be manufactured for stage 3 clinical trials and eventually reach the market.</p><p>Cheruvu suggests that many future gene therapy innovations will be the result of what he calls "congruent innovation." That means publicly funded laboratories and privately funded companies might develop treatments separately or in collaboration. Or, university scientists may depend on private ventures to solve one of gene therapy's most vexing issues: producing enough finished material to test and treat on a large scale. "Manufacturing is a real bottleneck right now," Brunn says.</p><p>The alternative is referred to in the sector as the "valley of death": a lab has found a promising treatment, but is not far enough along in development to submit an investigational new drug application with the FDA. The promise withers away as a result. But the new abundance of venture capital for gene therapy has made this scenario less of an issue for private firms, some of which have received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.</p><p>There are also numerous clinical challenges. Many gene therapies use what are known as adeno-associated virus vectors (AAVs) to deliver treatments. They are hollowed-out husks of viruses that can cause a variety of mostly mild maladies ranging from colds to pink eye. They are modified to deliver the genetic material used in the therapy. Most of these vectors trigger an antibody reaction that limits treatments to a single does or a handful of smaller ones. That can limit the potential progress for patients – an issue referred to as treatment "durability."</p><p>Although vectors from animals such as horses trigger far less of an antibody reaction in patients -- and there has been significant work done on using artificial vectors -- both are likely years away from being used on a large scale. "For the foreseeable future, AAV is the delivery system of choice," Brunn says.</p><p>Also, there will likely be demand for concurrent gene therapies that can lead to a complete cure – not only halting the progress of Duchenne's in kids like Conner Curran, but regenerating their lost muscle cells, perhaps through some form of stem cell therapy or another treatment that has yet to be devised.</p><p>Nevertheless, Samulski believes demand for imperfect treatments will be high – particularly with a disease such as muscular dystrophy, where many patients are mere months from spending the remainder of their lives in wheelchairs. But Samulski believes those therapies will also inevitably evolve into something far more effective.</p><p>"We are watching something of a conditional evolution, like a dot-com, or cellphones that were sizes of shoeboxes that have now matured to the size of wafers," he says. "Our space will follow along very similarly."</p><p>Jessica Curran will remain forever grateful for what her son has received: "Jude gave us new hope. He gave us something that is priceless – a chance to watch Conner grow up and live out his own dreams."</p>
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Ron Shinkman is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine publication Catalyst, California Health Report, Fierce Healthcare, and many other publications. He has been a finalist for the prestigious NIHCM Foundation print journalism award twice in the past five years. Shinkman also served as Los Angeles Bureau Chief for Modern Healthcare and as a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Business Journal. He has an M.A. in English from California State University and a B.A. in English from UCLA.