DFG priority program funds four MHH projects with 1.6 million euros. For people with severe lung diseases, transplantation of a healthy organ is often the only chance of survival. But donor lungs are in short supply. A new artificial lung could provide relief. Since 2017, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has been supporting this scientific approach with its Priority Program SPP 2014 “Towards an implantable lung”. The aim is to develop an artificial lung that can be permanently implanted as…

Since February 2021, the canton of Grisons is using saliva-based PCR mass testing within its mobile workforce as a potential means to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and reduce infection rates. Empa researchers are now leading the analysis of data from the first eight weeks of the testing regime. They observed a reduction in the incidence rate between 20 and 50%, depending on the business sector, and a noticeable reduction in the test positivity rate among those who were regularly tested….

Researchers have created a probe that glows when it detects an enzyme associated with issues that can lead to blood clots and strokes. The team of researchers, from the Department of Chemistry and the National Lung and Heart Institute at Imperial College London, demonstrated that their probe quickly and accurately detects the enzyme in modified E. Coli cells. They are now expanding this proof-of-concept study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and funded by the British Heart…

The inner workings of a “self-destruct switch” present on human cells that can be activated during an immune response have been revealed. In unprecedented detail, KAUST scientists with collaborators in China report the 3D atomic structure of the human PANX1 protein, which may help underpin new therapies that target the immune system. When cells become infected with a pathogen, the body’s immune system works to destroy the infected cells before they become a threat to surrounding tissues. This form of…

– how T cells detect invaders. T cells use their antigen receptors like sticky fingers — a team from TU Wien and MedUni Vienna was able to observe them doing so. T-cells play a central role in our immune system: by means of their so-called T-cell receptors (TCR) they make out dangerous invaders or cancer cells in the body and then trigger an immune reaction. On a molecular level, this recognition process is still not sufficiently understood. Intriguing observations have…

– for painless drug delivery with minimal side effects. A recent study from the University of Helsinki monitors the breakthrough progresses in the development of microneedles for immunotherapy and discusses the challenges regarding their production. Researchers suggest using microneedles for immunotherapy due to the high abundance of immune cells under the skin. The aim is to vaccinate or treat different diseases, such as cancer and autoimmune disorders, with minimal invasiveness and side effects. “Our study addresses the recent achievements in…

Clothing, from tank tops to parkas, helps people adapt to temperatures outdoors. But you can only put on or take off so much of it, and fluctuations in weather can render what you are wearing entirely inadequate. In a new study in ACS’ Nano Letters, researchers describe a high-tech alternative: a reversible textile they designed to trap warmth in the cold and reflect it during hot weather, all while generating small amounts of electricity. Previous attempts to develop such sophisticated…

Coded messages in invisible ink sound like something only found in espionage books, but in real life, they can have important security purposes. Yet, they can be cracked if their encryption is predictable. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have printed complexly encoded data with normal ink and a carbon nanoparticle-based invisible ink, requiring both UV light and a computer that has been taught the code to reveal the correct messages. Even as electronic records advance, paper…

Girls with mutations in the gene EPHB2 may be at increased risk of autism. After reviewing a database of gene mutations in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a team of Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) researchers decided to study a specific gene mutation that likely caused ASD in a girl. They demonstrated that the mutation was damaging to the gene, and that female, but not male, mice lacking a working copy of the gene also showed ASD-associated symptoms….

Hot paper in Angewandte Chemie … How can a highly effective drug be transported to the precise location in the body where it is needed? In the journal Angewandte Chemie, chemists at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) together with colleagues in Aachen present a solution using a molecular cage that opens through ultrasonification. Supramolecular chemistry involves the organization of molecules into larger, higher-order structures. When suitable building blocks are chosen, these systems ‘self-assemble’ from their individual components. Certain supramolecular compounds…

First 3D model with patient cells … Myotonic dystrophy is a hereditary degenerative neuromuscular disease that occurs mainly in adults, affecting about 50,000 people only in Spain. Symptoms range from difficulty walking and myotonia (great difficulty in relaxing the contracted muscles) to severe neurological problems, leading to progressive disability that unfortunately puts many of those affected in a wheelchair. This disease is very heterogeneous among patients (age of onset, progression, hereditary transmission, affected muscles), which makes the development of generic…

Scientists have revealed how an antibiotic of ‘last resort’ kills bacteria. The findings, from Imperial College London and the University of Texas, may also reveal a potential way to make the antibiotic more powerful. The antibiotic colistin has become a last resort treatment for infections caused by some of the world’s nastiest superbugs. However, despite being discovered over 70 years ago, the process by which this antibiotic kills bacteria has, until now, been something of a mystery. Now, researchers have…

Detection innovation could enhance drug development and cancer research. Small changes in the structure of DNA have been implicated in breast cancer and other diseases, but they’ve been extremely difficult to detect — until now. Using what they describe as a “chemical nose,” UC Riverside chemists are able to “smell” when bits of DNA are folded in unusual ways. Their work designing and demonstrating this system has been published in the journal Nature Chemistry. “If a DNA sequence is folded,…

Certain immune cells can cause damage to the aging central nervous system, according to a novel study by scientists of the University Hospital and the University of Würzburg. Aging is the biggest risk factor for perturbation of the nervous system, even in the absence of distinct disease or trauma. For yet unknown reasons, the impulse conducting, myelinated projections and synaptic connections between nerve cells are especially vulnerable to aging-related degeneration. These pathological alterations often manifest as cognitive, sensory, and motor…

Salk researchers and collaborators show how the protein damages cells, confirming COVID-19 as a primarily vascular disease. Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2’s distinctive “spike” proteins help the virus infect its host by latching on to healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that they also play a key role in the disease itself. The paper, published on April 30, 2021, in Circulation Research, also shows conclusively that COVID-19 is a vascular disease, demonstrating exactly how the…

New optical diffraction tomography method increases imaging speed and resolution for improved diagnostics in histopathology. Histology is the study of biological tissues at a microscopic level. Also called microscopic anatomy, histology is widely used to provide diagnosis of cancer and other diseases. For example, tissue samples obtained during surgery might help to determine whether further surgical action is needed, and further surgery may be avoided if a diagnosis can be rapidly obtained during an operation. Traditional methods in histopathology are…