Scientific Achievements that Marked the Year

If 2025 made one thing clear in biomedical science, it's that the next major leap depends not only on discovering more, but on better distribution: data, technology, medications, industrial capacity, and public trust. This tension (dizzying innovation versus persistent inequality) permeates the 2025 edition of Nature’s 10, the annual list by Nature that recounts, through ten personal stories, some of the scientific and political milestones that have defined the year. It is neither an award nor a ranking: it is a way to read the year through its protagonists.

This time, the selection has a distinct biomedical focus. Several of the ten profiles are directly linked to how the world is preparing for the next health emergency, how precision medicine is being accelerated, and how new paths are being forged in the face of classic threats such as infections. The result is a kind of future map: global governance for pandemics, gene therapies beginning to cross the bounds of the impossible, and public health strategies fighting against mosquitoes and bacteria with increasingly sophisticated tools.

Matsoso and the next global response

The scene, almost described as a late-night on-call, summarizes the political dimension of health. On April 16, in Geneva and around 2:00 AM, the nearly 190 countries of the WHO managed to agree on the draft of the first global pandemic treaty, after more than three years of negotiation. Leading the process was Precious Matsoso, co-chair of the negotiating group, a veteran of global health and a key figure in policies on access to medications –including antiretrovirals for HIV– in South Africa.

Precious Matsoso, co-chair of the WHO Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) / Chris de Beer-Procter / Nature

The treaty is born with an obsession: to prevent the world from repeating the COVID-19 pattern, where rapid exchange of samples and data enabled the development of vaccines and treatments, but access to these benefits was profoundly unequal. In the text, one of the most sensitive points is the mechanism of access to pathogens and benefit-sharing (PABS), still pending finalization, while the agreement enters a phase where it will need national ratifications to become fully binding. And yet, the mere fact of having reached this point places Matsoso as a symbol of an uncomfortable truth: science can rush ahead, but without shared rules, the outcome can be unfair—and, therefore, fragile.

Susan Monarez, victim of political pressure

Susan Monarez rejected orders from the U.S. government to dismiss scientists from the CDC. / Alyssa Schukar / Nature

Decisions that shape public health are often made under high political pressure. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is the federal public health agency of the United States. Susan Monarez was dismissed less than a month after taking office as head of the CDC, in a context of institutional clash over decisions on vaccine policy and health guidelines. At her confirmation hearing before the Senate, she openly defended that "vaccines save lives" and rejected a causal link between vaccines and autism.

Sarah Tabrizi and her work against Huntington's

In the strictly clinical realm, one of the most powerful stories is that of Sarah Tabrizi, a neurologist and researcher involved in decades of efforts against Huntington's disease. In September, she saw how the treatment she had been researching, AMT-130, based on a virus that shuts down the production of the toxic protein, reduced clinical deterioration by 75% in patients treated with high doses.

Sarah Tabrizi leads the Huntington's center at University College London. / Jessica Hallett / Nature

Beyond the specific case, the underlying message points to a new scenario where gene therapy is entering a phase where it not only "reaches the clinic" but begins to contest historically untreatable diseases.

But dilemmas also arise: how to measure real benefits, how to sustain long-term follow-up and—once again—how to ensure access if progress depends on complex and costly platforms.

The first personalized CRISPR

The most media-covered case on the list is probably that of baby KJ Muldoon, the first known recipient of a personalized CRISPR therapy. Born in August 2024, KJ was diagnosed with an ultra-rare condition, CPS1 deficiency, which prevents protein processing and leads to the accumulation of ammonia in the blood, with the risk of brain damage.

His story encapsulates the conceptual leap of genetic editing from therapies designed for thousands of patients to a treatment built for a single mutation in one person, manufactured against the clock and with a coordinated industrial-academic framework.

Yifat Merbl and antimicrobial defense

Alongside the race in gene therapy, Nature highlights the work of systems biologist Yifat Merbl, who, by studying proteasomes (cellular recycling centers), discovered a new dimension of the immune system. Her team found peptides generated by these protein shredders with sequences compatible with antimicrobial activity, and observed that, in response to bacterial infections, cells can modify components of the proteasome to promote the production of defensive fragments.

Yifat Merbl at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. / Daniel Rolider / Nature

In a context of antibiotic resistance, the interest is clear: it's not just about discovering new drugs, but understanding if the body itself hides libraries of defensive molecules ready to be utilized, designed, or amplified. The idea that an ordinary protein might contain, potentially, multiple therapeutic functions opens an exciting new path for future biomedicine.

Mosquito breeding to reduce dengue

Health is also at stake on the ground, in factories and neighborhoods, and here appears Luciano Moreira. Nature portrays him within a facility in Curitiba (Brazil) where Aedes aegypti are bred under controlled conditions: the center produces over 80 million mosquito eggs per week. The goal is not to exacerbate the problem, but to combat it: deploying mosquitoes with biological strategies that reduce their capacity to transmit viruses like dengue and, generally, arboviruses that increasingly pressure health systems.

The profile serves as a reminder that not all health innovations come in the form of molecules or algorithms: sometimes they are infrastructures, logistics, social acceptance, and political continuity. Fighting the mosquito, amid its geographic expansion due to environmental changes and urbanization, requires science, yes, but also perseverance and scale.