Researchers at the University of Scotland have discovered a protein that can influence viruses developing and even can control cancer. Now the fight is on to fully understand how it works in the hope of turning the laboratory research into a treatment.

The protein is called Hira. Technically it is a histone（组蛋白）complex, but it is easier to understand in terms of what it can do. Three years ago Dr Taranjit Singh Rai and colleagues at the Beatson Cancer Institute and Glasgow University reported that Hira could possibly suppress the division of cells that causes cancer. In the course of that research, Dr Rai found out something unusual. In the lab they have established that the Hira protein has a role to play in the anti-viral fight, thus, making it have a fundamental role to play in fighting against cancer.

The trick in using it to fight diseases may lie in increasing Hira levels in our cells. “I think what researchers might be interested in is how we can increase levels of this protein to deal with the viruses better, Dr Rai said.

Dr Rai has led an international study and support has come from Cancer Research UK and the results are published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. But there is a major concern that the research is still limited to the laboratory.

It is going to take some time, probably years, before this work can move out of the lab and into clinics and hospitals. But the researchers are excited Hira will one day be the basis of a new approach in medicine.

When you see someone you know, the easiest way to recognize them is by their face—but not everyone can do this. Many people have prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which is a neurological（神经病学的）condition where the part o the brain that recognizes faces fails to develop. It can stop people recognizing partners, family members, friends or even their own reflection. It was once though to be caused by brain injury (acquired prosopagnosia) but now a genetic link has been proved (development prosopagnosia).

Acquired prosopagnosia is a very rare but as many as one in 50 people may have developmental prosopagnosia. There’s no specific treatment, but training programmes are being developed to help improve facial recognition.

For many, the situation can be dangerous. I’ve heard stories of people being robbed by strangers claiming to be family members, or of children wandering off strange men.

It was only is this century that researchers began to realize exactly how many people in this world were quietly living with the condition.

Like a blind person who can recognize family members by their footsteps, prosopagnosics are forced to develop unusual ways of discovering who it is they’re meeting or talking to. From the obvious markers like hair and voice, to the way one sits, stands or walks, they rely on dozens of means to get through ordinary life.

Faces are an important part of identity. Not to be recognized feels terrible—it’s as if you’ve been overlooked, like someone’s saying you don’t matter. But it’s nothing to the pain of knowing that you’re hurting people’s feelings constantly, and yet being completely unaware that you’re doing it in the moment. To be alienated（隔离的）from the world of faces is a strange position to be in, but I’m comforted by the thought that articles like this will do a little to help people forgive me and others like me.

Scientists developed vaccines (疫苗)against a new disease in less than 12 months. And yet，18 months after the first of these vaccines, against COVID-19, were put on the market, just 15% of people in developing countries have been fully vaccinated. Such unfairness costs lives and uncovers a long-standing problem that some countries have been forced to depend on others for life-saving science and technology. It is unacceptable, for example, that in Africa, a continent of 54 independent countries and 1.2 billion people, 99% of vaccines are from other countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO)is searching for a way to get vaccines to more people more easily.Last year, the WHO started a program called the mRNA vaccine technology center. The goal of the program is to develop and produce mRNA vaccines and treatments(for COVID-19 and other diseases) in developing countries from the technology used in developed countries highly successful COVID-19 vaccines.

More importantly，the cooperation (合作)between universities and companies based in developing countries is needed to realize the goal. On July 8th,the USA National Institutes of Health, where much of the research on mRNA vaccines was carried out, joined this program to help build vaccine technology centers in developing countries.

Besides the necessity of fairness, outbreaks would end sooner if every country could depend on its own defence. As Larry Brilliant，a scientist of the US National Institutes of Health who helps wipe out smallpox(天花)，told Nature，“Fairness is often thought of as a burden(负担)，but it is a strategic need in the battle against COVID-19.”