Editor’s note:We have declared both finalists the winners of the 2021 STAT Madness popular vote. They are a team from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which developed a gene-editing technique with the potential to effectively treat and even cure herpes; and a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which devised a liquid solution that coats the small intestine with a temporary adhesive, a noninvasive technique with possible applications ranging from efficient drug delivery to treating diabetes. Read more about the entries here
This year’s Editors’ Pick was awarded to the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center lab of Dan Barouch, which developed the inoculation that became Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 shot, a single-dose, easily shipped and stored vaccine that holds promise as a game-changer for protecting hard-to-reach populations.