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Towana Looney can hardly contain her anticipation as she waits to get wheeled to an operating room at the NYU Langone Health hospital in New York City for an historic procedure. ... She volunteered to become the first living person in the world to get a kidney from a new kind of genetically modified pig. Scientists hope this kind of pig will someday provide an unlimited supply of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs that could alleviate the chronic shortage of organs for transplantation and save thousands of patients every year. (Stein, 12/17)

Children aren’t just little adults, goes the saying in pediatrics. But with little financial incentive for companies to develop kid-specific treatments, pediatricians are often left to use adult medicines and medical devices off-label for their patients — or none at all. (Palmer, 12/16)

Scientists at Northwestern Medicine and Penn State are developing a tool to train computer vision and artificial intelligence to evaluate placentas at birth for abnormalities. A computer program, PlacentaVision, can analyze a photograph of a placenta after birth to detect signs of infection and neonatal sepsis, which can be life-threatening and affects millions of newborns globally, Northwestern Medicine said in a press release. (Asplund, 12/16)

Just over a year ago the PREVENT calculator to predict cardiovascular risk was released by the American Heart Association. It was acclaimed for improving on a 2013 model that didn’t take into account companion conditions such as kidney disease or type 2 diabetes, or include people from more diverse backgrounds. (Cooney, 12/16)

Scientists are sounding new alarms about man-made organisms whose constituent molecules are mirror images of what's found in nature and could pose unprecedented risks to humans, animals and the environment. While the ability to create "mirror life" is probably at least a decade away, researchers already have synthesized mirror-image biological systems that could be used in the development of new drugs. (Reed, 12/17)

Althea Jordan sits in her white recliner while her physical therapist, Danielle Heltzel, kneels on the floor in front of her to go through a series of exercises to help move her legs. “Did I ask if your knees hurt? Are they sore? They ache?” Heltzel asked. Jordan mumbles quietly affirming some leg pain. She’s in the late stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, but the 73-year-old is also recovering from a recent virus, making her quieter than usual. (Krebs, 12/16)

Taxi drivers and ambulance drivers -- two groups of people with jobs that require frequent spatial and navigational processing -- had the lowest proportions of deaths attributed to Alzheimer's disease, an analysis of U.S. death certificates showed. Of nearly 9 million people who had died with occupational information, 3.88% had Alzheimer's disease listed as a cause of death. However, only 1.03% of taxi drivers and 0.74% of ambulance drivers died from Alzheimer's disease, according to research led by Anupam Jena, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. (George, 12/16)