A baby has miraculously snagged a spot on the list of most influential people in science for 2025.
Nature Magazine today announced its annual list of 10 people who shaped science and one honouree was not like the others.
Unlike the physicists, geoscientists and biologists that dominated the list, KJ Muldoon is just a little boy from Pennsylvania, US.
KJ was diagnosed with an incredibly rare, deadly genetic disease called carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency shortly after he was born in August 2024.
The “one in a million” metabolic condition can cause brain damage and death, especially in infants.
About 50 per cent of babies diagnosed with the disease die in early infancy.
Doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia worked tirelessly to develop a bespoke treatment using CRISPR gene-editing technology in the hopes of saving KJ’s life.
The first of three treatment infusions was administered in February, when KJ was about seven months old.
And it seems to have worked.
Before long, KJ was gaining weight and thriving.
He became the first patient to successfully receive personalised CRISPR gene editing therapy and, after spending his first 307 days in hospital, was finally able to go home in June.
“He’s always smiling,” KJ’s mum Nicole Aaron told Nature.
Two of KJ’s doctors, paediatrician Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas and cardiologist Kiran Musunuru are now working on clinical trials to help more children.
The other “Nature’s 10″ honourees included geoscientist Mengran Du, who took a submersible 9km down into the deep sea to catch the first glimpse of new ecosystems.
Agricultural researcher Luciano Moreira was lauded for opening a factory that produces mosquitoes infected with a bacteria that helps stop the spread of human diseases.
Microbiologist and immunologist Susan Monarez was celebrated after being fired as head of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention for standing up to the Trump administration.
