Science - USA (2022-01-21)

SCIENCE science.org

PHOTO: NICOLAS BRADETTE

when the government would pay for use

of Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s

drug, aducanumab. Marketed under the

name Aduhelm, the antibody targets the

abnormal buildup of the sticky brain

protein amyloid. It won approval from

the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

(FDA) in June 2021 despite conflicting

clinical trial results and skepticism among

many scientists about its safety and

effectiveness. On 11 January, President Joe

Biden’s administration proposed to cover

Aduhelm’s $28,200-per-year price tag only

for Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in a

randomized controlled clinical trial—a

restriction that would also apply to future

FDA-approved antiamyloid drugs. The

policy is designed to enable researchers to

collect more data on the risks and benefits

of the drug. The agency expects to make a

final decision in the spring.

A boost for ‘challenge’ trials

BIOMEDICINE | Supporters of research in

which people are intentionally infected

with a disease to test vaccines have

received a $2 million boost to advocate

for expanding the use of such “challenge

trials.” Open Philanthropy, an organization

funded largely by Facebook co-founder

Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, his

spouse, this month committed the money

to the nonprofit 1Day Sooner. It was

founded in April 2020 to recruit and repre-

sent volunteers for challenge trials to test

vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, work that

two U.K. research groups are conducting.

The new funding will cover one-third of

1Day Sooner’s budget for the next 2 years,

as it explores challenge trials’ potential in

diseases such as those caused by Group A

Strep, shigella, and tuberculosis bacteria,

1Day Sooner co-founder Josh Morrison

says. Challenge trials can sound risky, but

managers typically provide proven, con-

ventional treatments to the volunteers if

the experimental vaccine doesn’t work and

they become seriously ill.

Decades on, EPA nixes pollutant

TOXICOLOGY | Highlighting just how

slowly the wheels of science-based regula-

tion can grind, the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) will, for the first

time in 3 decades, add a new chemical to

the list of air pollutants it regulates. The

decision to regulate 1-bromopropane, a

solvent used by dry cleaners and auto shops,

comes 20 years after researchers first raised

concerns about the chemical’s potential

effects on human health and 12 years after

groups formally petitioned the agency to

act. In 1990, Congress gave EPA the power

to expand a list of nearly 200 pollutants it

regulates under the Clean Air Act. But the

agency had never exercised that power until

this month. EPA says it will next propose

how it will regulate the solvent—which

could take a year to finalize.

University of Michigan fires chief

#METOO | The University of Michigan

(UM) last week terminated its president,

immunologist and physician Mark Schlissel,

for conducting a yearslong affair with a sub-

ordinate. UM’s Board of Regents found he

used his university email account from 2019

to 2021 to send suggestive and flirtatious

messages to the co-worker—behavior the

regents called “egregious” and “inconsistent

with promoting the dignity and reputa-

tion” of the university. Schlissel himself had

denounced such relationships in July 2021,

when he announced a new university policy,

according to The Ann Arbor News. He told

the newspaper there would be zero toler-

ance for someone in a leadership position

to “solicit a personal or romantic relation-

ship with someone they have a supervisory

authority or career influence over,” adding,

“That’s exceptionally important because

of the power dynamic. It makes it difficult

sometimes for folks to effectively say no.”

The regents last week named former UM

President Mary Sue Coleman, a chemist, as

interim president.

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

Arctic hares are epic hoppers

R

abbits and their relatives tend to be homebodies,

rarely straying more than a few kilometers.

But at least one arctic hare traveled a record

388 kilometers. She averaged 8 kilometers per

day, and one day hopped 31 kilometers. The animal

was one of 25 arctic hares (Lepus arcticus) outfitted with

satellite tracking tags on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian

High Arctic, near northern Greenland. Sandra Lai, a

wildlife biologist at the University of Quebec in Rimouski,

and colleagues attached the transmitters in September

2019 and tracked them through the winter. Like the long-

distance champion, most of the tagged hares traveled

southwest for more than 100 kilometers, the researchers

reported last month in Ecology. They suspect the hares

were migrating to find food near Lake Hazen, one of the

largest lakes north of the Arctic Circle, where the region’s

milder climate encourages plant growth.

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