CAR T cell therapy has proven effective in treating various haematological cancers. However, not all patients respond equally well to treatment. In a recent clinical study, researchers from the University of Leipzig Medical Center and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology identified several biomarkers that are associated with the response to CAR T cell therapy in multiple myeloma, a malignant tumour disease in the bone marrow. The findings have been published in the prestigious journal Nature Cancer. CAR…
Ora Hazak has always been fascinated by plants and is studying the signals that roots send to the rest of the organism. She aims to understand this communication in order to develop climate change-resistant crops. Ora was just three when her mother first asked her to water the plants. It was a request that kindled a passion that has not ebbed since. She was 15 when she first attempted to cross red and white garden balsam, obtaining a mixture of…
Some materials are transparent to light of a certain frequency. When such light is shone on them, electrical currents can still be generated, contrary to previous assumptions. Scientists from Leipzig University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have managed to prove this. “This opens new paradigms for constructing opto-electronic and photovoltaic devices, such as light amplifiers, sensors and solar cells,” says Inti Sodemann Villadiego, Professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Leipzig University. The scientists have published their findings…
A long-awaited breakthrough opens the door to a new type of atomic clock and the investigation of fundamental questions in physics. After decades of investigation, researchers made an extraordinary quantum leap – both figuratively and literally: They have identified the exact laser frequency that excites the atomic nucleus of the element thorium-229 to make a quantum leap from one energy level to a closely adjacent one. This kind of laser nuclear excitations opens the door to new types of atomic…
Chemical and heat treatment of sewage sludge can recover phosphorus in a process that could help address the problem of diminishing supplies of phosphorus ores. Valuable supplies of phosphorus could be recovered from sewage sludge ash, which remains after the sludge has been burned for electric power generation. The method has been developed by chemical engineers Yuuki Mochizuki and Naoto Tsubouchi at Hokkaido University’s Center for Advanced Research of Energy and Materials. Their work is published in the journal Resources,…
EU project HyFlow: Over three years of research, the consortium of the EU project HyFlow has successfully developed a highly efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective hybrid energy storage system (HESS) that can meet high energy and power demands. The researchers achieved this by combining a high-performance vanadium redox flow battery with a supercapacitor with water-based electrolytes. With one of the demonstrators developed in the HyFlow project, major energy consumers such as enterprises, municipal utility companies, medical facilities, and data centres can…
Some families call it a trial of faith. Others just call it a curse. The progressive neurological disease known as spinocerebellar ataxia 4 (SCA4) is a rare condition, but its effects on patients and their families can be severe. For most people, the first sign is difficulty walking and balancing, which gets worse as time progresses. The symptoms usually start in a person’s forties or fifties but can begin as early as the late teens. There is no known cure….
… and generates six-week antibody response equivalent to standard regimen. Study highlights need for defined markers of mpox immunity to inform public health use. A dose-sparing intradermal mpox vaccination regimen was safe and generated an antibody response equivalent to that induced by the standard regimen at six weeks (two weeks after the second dose), according to findings presented today at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Global Congress in Barcelona. The results suggest that antibody responses contributed…
The chemical industry has been using a reaction with explosive chemicals for over 100 years – now Mülheim scientists have discovered a safer alternative. The Ritter Group of the Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim/Ruhr has recently published an exciting paper about Aryldiazonium with “Science”. Explosions and poisoning. Serious injuries and even deaths. In the history of the chemical industry there have been repeated accidents, sometimes fatal, often caused by dangerous and explosive chemicals that are required for certain…
Chemokines are signalling proteins that orchestrate the interaction of immune cells against pathogens and tumours. To understand this complex network, various techniques have been developed to identify chemokine-producing cells. However, it has not yet been possible to determine which cells react to these chemokines. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have developed a new class of genetically modified mice that enables the simultaneous identification of chemokine producers and sensors. Using the chemokine Ccl3 as…
Cichlid fishes exhibit differing degrees of curiosity. The cause for this lies in their genes, as reported by researchers from the University of Basel in the journal Science. This trait influences the cichlids’ ability to adapt to new habitats. Exploratory behavior is one of the fundamental personality traits of animals – and these traits influence their probability of survival, among other things. For example, curious individuals can inhabit different areas in their habitats compared to more cautious conspecifics. At the…
Samples reveal evidence of changes experienced by the surface of asteroid Ryugu, some probably due to micrometeoroid bombardment. Analyzing samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has revealed new insights into the magnetic and physical bombardment environment of interplanetary space. The results of the study, carried out by Professor Yuki Kimura at Hokkaido University and co-workers at 13 other institutions in Japan, are published in the journal Nature Communications. The investigations used electron waves…
SpatialData is a freely accessible tool to unify and integrate data from different omics technologies accounting for spatial information, which can provide holistic insights into health and disease. Biological processes are framed by the context they take place in. A new tool developed by the Stegle Group from EMBL Heidelberg and the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) helps put molecular biology research findings in a better context of cellular surroundings, by integrating different forms of spatial data. In a tissue,…
A $20 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will support the establishment and operation of the National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences (NCEMS) at Penn State. The center will enable research that uses existing, publicly available data to glean new insights about how complex biological systems, such as cells, emerge from simpler molecules. Findings from the research could eventually inform the development of disease treatments and other applications such as minimizing the negative effects…
Compact, low-power system opens doors for photon-efficient drone and satellite-based environmental monitoring and mapping. Researchers have developed a compact and lightweight single-photon airborne lidar system that can acquire high-resolution 3D images with a low-power laser. This advance could make single-photon lidar practical for air and space applications such as environmental monitoring, 3D terrain mapping and object identification. Single-photon lidar uses single-photon detection techniques to measure the time it takes laser pulses to travel to objects and back. It is particularly…
Uveitis experts provide an overview of an underestimated imaging technique. Uveitis is a rare inflammatory eye disease. Posterior and panuveitis in particular are associated with a poor prognosis and a protracted course of the disease. Diagnosis and monitoring can be challenging for healthcare professionals. Fundus autofluorescence (FAF) is a fast and non-invasive imaging technique that supports this. Researchers from the University Hospital Bonn and the University of Bonn, together with experts from Berlin, Münster and Mannheim, have drafted a review…
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