LMO4 Enhances T Cell Cancer-Fighting Abilities. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT), University Hospital Regensburg (UKR) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) have engineered CD8+ T cells to artificially express the gene LMO4, thereby enhancing their effectiveness against tumors. T cell therapies, which use genetically engineered T cells of the human immune system as therapeutics, are revolutionizing medical oncology by effectively treating previously incurable blood cancers. However, their success against solid tumors has been limited….

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (Japan) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (Germany) have published new findings on how social norms evolve over time. They simulated how norms promote different social behavior, and how the norms themselves come and go. Because of the enormous number of possible norms, these simulations were run on RIKEN’s Fugaku, one of the fastest supercomputers worldwide. Models of indirect reciprocity describe how social norms promote cooperation. This literature stipulates that…

… could lead to more effective and efficient water purification systems. Novel approach significantly enhances the speed and efficiency of membrane production, offering promising solutions for water purification challenges. A team of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) researchers has developed a novel approach that utilizes microwave technology to more easily synthesize and fine-tune a new type of membrane which effectively purifies water from a wide range of contaminants. The membrane synthesis technique takes a few minutes, making it one of the…

Offering patients with concussion a type of brain scan known as diffusion tensor imaging MRI could help identify the one in three people who will experience persistent symptoms that can be life changing, say Cambridge researchers. Around one in 200 people in Europe every year will suffer concussion. In the UK, more than 1 million people attend Emergency Departments annually with a recent head injury. It is the most common form of brain injury worldwide. When a patient in the…

Around half of the human genome is composed of DNA fragments originating from ancient viruses. These “transposable elements” (TEs) are now known to play various roles in modulating gene expression and disease development. Now, an international team led by KAUST researchers has shown that a common transposable element called LINE-1 RNA plays a positive role in triggering bone repair, with potential applications in treating osteoporosis and many other diseases[1]. “Once termed ‘junk DNA,’ scientists thought that TEs were irrelevant or…

New printing method creates branching vessels in heart tissue that replicate the structure of human vasculature in vitro. Growing functional human organs outside the body is a long-sought “holy grail” of organ transplantation medicine that remains elusive. New research from Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) brings that quest one big step closer to completion. A team of scientists created a new method to 3D print vascular networks that consist…

Findings can be used to accelerate the creation of female stem cell lines in mice and boost efforts in medical research, drug testing, and regenerative therapies. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) have discovered a treatment which accelerates the production and quality of pluripotent stem cells in mice. This discovery that has the potential to improve disease modelling and drug testing for individuals with two X chromosomes; women, transgender men or men with an extra X chromosome in…

Researchers have developed an inexpensive bandage that uses an electric field to promote healing in chronic wounds. In animal testing, wounds that were treated with these electric bandages healed 30% faster than wounds treated with conventional bandages. Chronic wounds are open wounds that heal slowly, if they heal at all. For example, sores that occur in some patients with diabetes are chronic wounds. These wounds are particularly problematic because they often recur after treatment and significantly increase the risk of…

Device uses sound waves to gather blood pressure data from blood vessels, monitoring the response with ultrasound. Solving a decades-old problem, a multidisciplinary team of Caltech researchers has figured out a method to noninvasively and continually measure blood pressure anywhere on the body with next to no disruption to the patient. A device based on the new technique holds the promise to enable better vital-sign monitoring at home, in hospitals, and possibly even in remote locations where resources are limited….

Researchers at Michigan State University have discovered two proteins that work together to determine the fate of cells in plants facing certain stresses. Ironically, a key discovery in this finding, published recently in Nature Communications, was made right as the project’s leader was getting ready to destress. A Michigan State University researcher carefully plates Arabidopsis seeds, which consists of placing seeds in water and dropping them one at a time onto a plate with a growth substrate. Once the seeds sprout,…

Gold does not readily lend itself to being turned into long, thin threads. But researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have now managed to create gold nanowires and develop soft electrodes that can be connected to the nervous system. The electrodes are soft as nerves, stretchable and electrically conductive, and are projected to last for a long time in the body.   Some people have a “heart of gold”, so why not “nerves of gold”? In the future, it may be…

New approach for the production of resource-saving and durable catalysts benefits from varying interactions between noble metals and different carrier materials. The Objective: Best Possible Catalytic Performance Noble-metal catalysts are used in many processes in the chemical industry. A reduction of the amount of noble metal required for their production is an important contribution to a sustainable resource use. “Our approach will significantly improve the catalyst stability and ensure the formation of active noble-metal clusters even with a very low…

A team of researchers from the lab of Prof. Stein Aerts (VIB-KU Leuven) presents Nova-ST, a new spatial transcriptomics technique that promises to transform gene expression profiling in tissue samples. Nova-ST will make large-scale, high-resolution spatial tissue analysis more accessible and affordable, offering significant benefits for researchers. The research was published in Cell Reports Methods. Transcriptomics is the study of gene expression in a cell or a population of cells, but it usually does not include spatial information about where…

Not with these fatigue-detecting earbuds. UC Berkeley researchers have created earpieces that identify brain activity associated with relaxation and drowsiness. Everyone gets sleepy at work from time to time, especially after a big lunch. But for people whose jobs involve driving or working with heavy machinery, drowsiness can be extremely dangerous — if not outright deadly. Drowsy driving contributes to hundreds of fatal vehicle accidents in the U.S. each year, and the National Safety Council has cited drowsiness as a…

New technique from the CNSI at UCLA may lead to design approaches that optimize the performance of chemical reactions. The chemical and energy industries depend upon catalysts to drive the reactions used to create their products. Many important reactions use heterogeneous catalysts — meaning that the catalysts are in a different phase of matter than the substances they are reacting with, such as solid platinum reacting with gases in an automobile’s catalytic converter. Scientists have investigated the surface of well-defined…

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a rapid, noninvasive tool to track the neurons and biomolecules activated in the brain by psychedelic drugs. The protein-based tool, which is called Ca2+-activated Split-TurboID, or CaST, is described in research published in Nature Methods.  There has been mounting interest in the value of psychedelic-inspired compounds as treatments for brain disorders including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. Psychedelic compounds like LSD, DMT and psilocybin promote the growth and strengthening of…