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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 15, 2025, 5:08 PM EDTBy Kaitlin SullivanTwo months after she was born, Eliana Nachem got a cough that wouldn’t go away. Three weeks later, she also started having runny stool, prompting a visit to her pediatrician. Eliana didn’t have allergies or a gastrointestinal condition; instead, tests pointed to a problem with her immune system. At 4 months old, Eliana received her diagnosis: severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID. Babies born with the extremely rare disease do not develop the cells required for a functioning immune system. Every germ becomes a potentially fatal threat and to stay healthy, children with the condition must live in a completely sterile environment. Without treatment, kids usually do not live past their second birthday.“I expected the worst, then I immediately went into research mode,” Eliana’s father, Jeff Nachem, said. The Nachems also got to work turning their home into a germ-free fortress, rehoming their pets, never opening the windows and opening the doors to outside as sparingly as possible. Eliana was kept inside, and on the rare instance when visitors came by, the family had disposable gowns, gloves and masks for them to wear. (SCID is sometimes referred to as “bubble boy disease.”) Eliana also started on a temporary therapy that replaced a missing enzyme in her body, called adenosine deaminase (ADA).In the midst of the strict protocol, they learned about a clinical trial in Los Angeles — 2,600 miles from their home in Fredericksburg, Virginia — that could help their daughter live a normal life.Jeff, Caroline and Eliana Nachem with Dr. Donald Kohn before Eliana’s gene therapy for ADA-SCID.Courtesy Caroline NachemScientists have identified about 20 gene variants that cause SCID. Eliana’s form of the disease, ADA-SCID, is diagnosed in fewer than 10 children born in the U.S. each year. (Under 100 babies are diagnosed with any form of SCID in a given year.)In 2014, when she was just 10 months old, Eliana was one of 62 children enrolled in a clinical trial for a gene therapy for ADA-SCID. In a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers followed up on the results of that Phase 2 clinical trial. The update reported that all 62 kids, who received the treatment from 2012 to 2019, are alive today. In 59 of them, including Eliana, the gene therapy completely restored immune function, without requiring any additional treatment — a success rate of 95%.“This is one of the most successful gene therapy trials for an ultra-rare genetic disease that we have,” said Dr. Talal Mousallem, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Duke University School of Medicine. He was not involved with the trial. Correcting stem cellsThe treatment begins with doctors harvesting stem cells from the patient’s own bone marrow. These stem cells are purified in a lab, and then modified using an inactivated form of the virus that causes HIV. Instead of carrying the human immunodeficiency virus, this version carries the ADA gene that people with ADA-SCID are missing, reinserting the gene into the stem cell DNA. Before the customized treatment is reinfused back into the patient, they must undergo chemotherapy to get rid of the body’s existing stem cells and make room for the new ones. Once back in the body, the cells — which no longer carry the virus, just the gene it left behind — get to work building an immune system over the next year.“It’s a one-time delivery vehicle that takes the gene into the DNA of the stem cell, so every time it divides to make other cells, those cells carry that ADA gene,” said Dr. Donald Kohn, a pediatric bone marrow transplant physician at UCLA’s Broad Stem Cell Research Center, who led the trial. A less risky optionGene therapy clinical trials are underway for four subtypes of SCID, but the standard of care is still a bone marrow transplant, which builds an immune system using stem cells from a donor. The treatment can be risky and side effects further down the line.It’s ideal for bone marrow transplants to occur between siblings — who share about half of the same DNA — but two siblings only have about a 25% chance of being a match. In most cases, the donor is not a sibling, which introduces the risk that the donor’s immune cells will attack the recipient’s body, a phenomenon called graft-versus-host disease.The risk of graft-versus-host means kids who receive functioning stem cells from another person have to be on immunosuppressant drugs following the transplant, which keep the foreign cells from attacking their immune system.“Which slows down the progress, because you are suppressing the immune system while also trying to build an immune system,” Kohn said. People also have to undergo much higher doses of chemotherapy before receiving a donor bone marrow transplant than they do before undergoing gene therapy. “There can be effects [later in life] from being treated with chemotherapy, including growth, endocrine or fertility effects,” said Dr. Whitney Reid, an attending physician in the division of allergy and immunology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who was not involved in the trial. With gene therapy, “you can give those patients much lower doses of chemotherapy and there is a much lower chance of rejection,” she said. Eliana “was able to go from living in isolation to being able to go to preschool and go swimming in a public pool and play on a playground, and do all the things that every other kid gets to do,” her father said. Courtesy Caroline Nachem Having another therapy for ADA-SCID is particularly important, Reid added. Changes in the ADA gene cause toxins to build up in clumps of white blood cells called lymphocytes. This can cause hearing loss and learning difficulties as kids get older. Unlike other types of SCID, “it doesn’t only affect the immune system,” Reid said. Mousallem, of Duke University, said he hopes the success of this trial will open the door to gene therapies for other rare diseases that often go untreated, as well as SCID caused by other gene variants. “The data is great for ADA-SCID, and it is our hope that one day this becomes the standard of care,” he said. Eliana turns 12 years old next week and loves going to dance classes.“It’s amazing that she was able to go from living in isolation to being able to go to preschool and go swimming in a public pool and play on a playground, and do all the things that every other kid gets to do,” her father said. Eliana still undergoes testing twice a year to make sure her immune system hasn’t weakened. So far, so good.“We think it’s a lifelong therapy,” Kohn said. “Some of these kids are now 15 years old and are living normal lives. We treated them when they were little babies and now they’re going to prom.”Kaitlin SullivanKaitlin Sullivan is a contributor for NBCNews.com who has worked with NBC News Investigations. She reports on health, science and the environment and is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.

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Oct. 30, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Rob Wile and Jared PerloSome of the largest companies in America have begun capping or reducing their head counts, blaming the promise of productivity with artificial intelligence for their decisions.Yet, so far, there is uneven evidence that the promised cost-savings from AI are actually worth what companies are putting into it. This leaves some experts questioning whether AI could be serving as a fig leaf for companies that are laying off employees for old-fashioned reasons, such as financial underperformance or global economic uncertainty.“It’s much easier for a company to say, ‘We are laying workers off because we’re realizing AI-related efficiencies’ than to say ‘We’re laying people off because we’re not that profitable or bloated, or facing a slowing economic environment, etc,’” David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in an email to NBC News.“Whether or not AI were the reason, you’d be wise to attribute the credit/blame to AI,” wrote Autor, an expert on AI’s impact on workers.Amazon joins other large companies in justifying recent job cuts by pointing to AI.David Ryder / Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThis week, Amazon announced it had begun a reorganization that would result in the elimination of 14,000 roles — and said AI was a leading cause. “The world is changing quickly,” Amazon Senior Vice President Beth Galetti wrote Tuesday. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”Yet a few hours later, a different Amazon representative tried to downplay the role that AI played in the layoff decisions.“AI is not the reason behind the vast majority of reductions,” said the representative, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to give her name. “Last year, we set out to strengthen our culture and teams by reducing layers,” among other measures, she said. “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work.” The representative declined to comment on the apparent mismatch between this second statement about AI and Amazon’s earlier comments.But that disparity — coming from a company as large and disciplined as Amazon — highlights how difficult it can be for the public to verify what companies say about AI and its role in personnel decisions.AI’s elusive returnsAmazon joins plenty of other companies in justifying recent job cuts by pointing to AI.Walmart recently signaled that it intends to keep headcount flat over the next several years, largely as a result of AI. Goldman Sachs announced a fresh round of layoffs this month, saying it planned to reduce human roles that AI could potentially perform.Salesforce recently reduced its workforce by 4,000, citing “the benefits and efficiencies” of AI. One might think that these companies were all seeing huge benefits from AI, the kind of returns that would make these difficult — and expensive — layoffs worthwhile. Indeed, the number of companies that report being focused on AI’s return on investment has surged in recent months, according to data from AlphaSense, an AI research firm.So where, exactly, are all these benefits? That’s where it gets tricky.Recent studies have found significant limits on the productivity of AI, at least in its current manifestation. Out of 1,250 firms surveyed by Boston Consulting Group for a September report, 60% said they had seen “minimal revenue and cost gains despite substantial investment” in AI. Only 10% of the organizations involved in a similar Deloitte survey said they were getting “significant return on investment from agentic AI,” or systems that can make decisions beyond simply following prompts.Nonetheless, more large American companies than ever are using, investing in and measuring the business impact of generative AI, according to a new report from UPenn’s Wharton School and GBK Collective. But like the other surveys, the Wharton report shows mixed results. “It’s great if you can shave 20 minutes off an email or half an hour reading a report. But that’s not going to leapfrog anything,” said Stefano Puntoni, faculty co-director of Human-AI Research at Wharton and an author of the study.More large U.S. companies than ever are using, investing in and measuring the impact of AI.Chona Kasinger / Bloomberg via Getty ImagesPerformance issues? Many of the same companies that are making layoff announcements while touting AI investments have also been under increased financial pressure. Amazon’s layoffs announcement comes ahead of its third quarter earnings results, set to be released Thursday. While analysts expect improvement, there is growing concern about increased competition for Amazon’s AWS cloud platform from AI. After hitting an all-time high in January, shares of Amazon have been largely flat this year and are about 6% below that record.Meanwhile, Salesforce shares are down about 29% from a December 2024 high. Some analysts have questioned whether implementing more AI will be enough to stave off the threat posed by AI to Salesforce’s core product lineup.“No matter what the current state of the company, the narrative is negative and just about impossible to disprove,” wrote Jackson Ader, an analyst with KeyBanc Capital financial group.Some of the companies enacting job cuts are simply looking to rein in spending — including firms at the core of the AI boom. Last week, Facebook-parent Meta announced it was cutting 600 roles in its AI unit over concerns that it had become “bloated.” Rival Microsoft has announced three separate rounds of layoffs this year, and says it is looking to cut costs elsewhere in the company in order to pay for its massive AI investments. Yet even firms far from Silicon Valley are getting swept up. UPS said Tuesday it had eliminated 34,000 roles from its operational division, which includes drivers and package handlers — a 70% increase from its previous target. UPS also plans to reduce its reliance on seasonal hires and significantly cut back on vehicle leases. These changes are “powered by automation,” the company said — corporate shorthand for AI. UPS is “freeing up our network to grow in the best parts of the market,” a spokesperson said. “AI and robotics help to make jobs safer, while also reducing repetitive tasks.”Rob WileRob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.Jared PerloJared Perlo is a writer and reporter at NBC News covering AI. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

October 23, 2025

Oct. 22, 2025, 2:08 PM EDTBy Elizabeth CohenWhen a radiologist reviewed Deirdre Hall’s mammogram images last summer, everything seemed fine. There were no shadows or lumps or irregular patches that could signal cancer.The doctor gave it a second look for one reason: artificial intelligence software had drawn a circle around an area in the upper part of her left breast that it found suspicious.Because the AI software had put up that red flag, Hall, 55, got an order for an ultrasound that led to a biopsy. There were four cancerous tumors in the spot AI had identified.“This would have been completely missed without the AI,” said Dr. Sean Raj, chief medical officer and chief innovation officer at SimonMed Imaging in Tempe, Arizona, where Hall had her mammogram.Not only was Hall’s breast tissue dense, but the layers of tissue crisscrossed over each other in a particularly complicated pattern.“It camouflaged the cancer,” said Raj, a breast imaging specialist. “Even I could have missed it.”They caught her cancer at Stage 1, said Hall, who’s a respiratory therapist at a local hospital.“They didn’t find anything in the lymph nodes, which they were grateful for,” she said. “I’m so glad they caught it early.” “I’m glad it was found,” Deirdre Hall said about the software program that detected suspicious images on her mammogram.Courtesy Deirdre HallWhen reading women’s routine mammograms, radiologists are increasingly augmenting their eyes with artificial intelligence. While many major medical centers have adopted the technology enthusiastically, some experts point to concerns, including a lack of studies in the U.S. showing that AI actually saves lives and does not needlessly raise concerns about benign growths. Experts train AI software by feeding it hundreds of thousands, or sometimes millions of mammogram images. Some of the images contain cancerous tumors, and, over time, the AI learns to distinguish the often subtle differences between malignant and benign tissue. Some AI programs, like the one used on Hall, identify a suspicious area. Others predict the chance that a woman will develop breast cancer. At the University of California, San Francisco, researchers are using AI to try to speed up the time from a mammogram to cancer diagnosis. In a study released this week, the radiologists used the technology to flag suspicious-looking mammograms so those patients could be seen more quickly. For patients with breast cancer, that AI triage cut the average time from mammogram to biopsy by 87%, from 73 days to nine days. The study was posted Tuesday to the preprint server MedRxiv. (Studies posted to preprint servers have not been peer-reviewed.) AI software used by SimonMed Imaging, where Hall had her mammogram, marked an area suspicious for cancer.Courtesy Deirdre HallHowever, Dr. Sonja Hughes, vice president of community health at Susan G. Komen, a breast cancer organization, said more research is needed before AI is used as the standard of care. “We’re not there yet,” she said. “We don’t have enough research or enough data.”Dense breasts: Finding a snowball in a blizzardMammograms have saved countless lives, but they’re imperfect. Dense breast tissue, which is a risk factor for developing cancer, makes mammograms harder to interpret. About 40% of U.S. women have dense breasts, according to the American Cancer Society. “It’s like trying to find a snowball in a blizzard,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, a professor of oncology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.The Food and Drug Administration has authorized many AI programs for mammograms, with varying rates of accuracy. The AI software used on Hall’s mammogram, called Lunit, accurately identified cancers 88.6% of the time, according to a 2024 JAMA Oncology study of more than 8,800 women in Sweden who got mammograms. Another study published in Radiology noted that AI software caught cancers that were missed by two radiologists. However, in the Sweden study, AI gave a false positive 7% of the time, saying there might be a tumor when there wasn’t one. A false positive can trigger more testing and anxiety while waiting for results. With any mammogram, the chance of having a false positive result is about 10%, according to research.A doctor interprets the screening’s resultsMajor academic medical centers using AI in their imaging centers include the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and MedStar Health.In all centers, the software is used along with, not instead of, a radiologist’s eyes, as FDA regulations require a doctor to interpret mammograms. Some breast imaging experts see advantages to this human-machine combination.“The nice thing about AI is that it doesn’t get tired,” said Dr. Lisa Abramson, associate professor of radiology at Mount Sinai. “It’s not going to replace the job or the expertise of radiologists, but I think it’s only going to enhance our ability to detect more and more breast cancers.”Brawley, the Johns Hopkins professor, said AI could help women who don’t have access to radiologists who specialize in breast imaging, and instead have their mammograms read by general radiologists.A study using RadNet’s software found that without AI, specialists correctly identified breast cancers 89% of the time, compared with 84% for generalists. With AI, the accuracy for both groups rose to about 93%.“It’s incredibly subjective when a human reads a mammogram,” Brawley said. “Maybe it’s going to reduce the disparities in how these things are read.”Does AI cost more? Typically, academic medical centers don’t charge patients extra for the use of AI software, and they can’t charge insurance companies for it, since there’s no billing code specifically for the AI, according to Susan G. Komen, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. SimonMed, which has centers in 11 states, and RadNet, which has centers in eight states, don’t charge for an initial layer of AI on mammograms, although patients are charged $40 and $50 respectively if they opt to have their images run through a second set of the technology.Drawbacks of AIBrawley worries that AI might be too good at its job.According to the American Cancer Society, it’s possible that mammograms flag some tumors that are technically cancerous, but not life-threatening. The patient then undergoes the physical, emotional, and financial toll of treating a tumor that was never going to hurt her.“It’scancer, but it’s not genetically programmed to grow, spread, or kill,” Brawley said. “I am worried that AI may help us find even more of these tumors that don’t need to be found.”Brawley pointed to the lack of data in the U.S. that shows AI actually saves women’s lives.Last month, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Davis, announced a $16 million, two-year study at seven medical centers to take a deeper look at the technology.There are several other concerns about using AI in mammography. The technology isn’t perfect, and some worry that doctors could make mistakes if they become too dependent on it, according to an article last year in RadioGraphics. That’s why radiologists emphasize that AI is a tool, not a solution in itself. “It’s not going to replace the job or the expertise of radiologists,” said Abramson, the breast radiologist at Mount Sinai. “I think it’s only going to enhance our ability to detect more and more breast cancer.” Another concern is that if AI is trained mainly on breast images of white women, it could be less accurate for women of color, since genetic differences can make tumors look different.Hall, the Arizona patient, said she’s not necessarily a fan of AI in general — she says she finds the technology “creepy” — but she’s glad she paid $50 for the extra AI on her mammogram. “I don’t love all this AI stuff, but I definitely love this for me or anyone else in my position,” she said. “No matter how it was found, I’m glad it was found.” Guidance for mammogramsGuidance from the United Services Preventive Services Task Force recommends women to get a mammogram every other year starting at age 40. According to American Cancer Society guidelines:Women 45 to 54 should get mammograms every year.Women 55 and older can switch to a mammogram every other year, or they can choose to continue yearly mammograms.Dr. Shanthi Sivendran, senior vice president at the American Cancer Society, offers guidance for more accurate breast cancer screening. Try to go to the same place every year so radiologists can compare your images over time.Ask if a center uses radiologists who’ve completed a fellowship in breast imaging. In some rural or underserved areas, it may be harder to find these specialists, and so women should seek out radiologists who primarily read breast images. Try to find a center that can either provide or direct you to follow-up care, such as additional imaging, in case your mammogram finds something suspicious. According to FDA regulations, your mammogram report should state if you have dense breasts. If you do, ask your doctor about whether you might need additional imaging tests. Elizabeth CohenElizabeth Cohen is a Peabody Award-winning journalist and a health contributor to NBC News. She is the author of the book “The Empowered Patient.”

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