Scientist who used CRISPR in HIV-infected adults among Nature’s ‘people who mattered’

The research journal Nature is out with its annual list of 10 people who mattered in the past year, highlighting those who pushed limits, in both the scientific work they did or in the scientific causes they championed. Among the four people in the biomedical field is Hongkui Deng, an immunologist whose team showed how immune cells that were CRISPR’d to be HIV-resistant could be safely used in infected adults. Ethicist Wendy Rogers earned a spot for highlighting the questionable ways in which Chinese scientists procure organs for transplantations, including possibly forced donations from political prisoners. Other notable names on the list: Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who co-discovered of the Ebola virus, and neuroscientist Nenad Sestan, who defied definitions of life and death by briefly reviving the brains of dead pigs.