An FDA-approved vitamin D receptor agonist may help break the dense matrix surrounding pancreatic cancer tumors safely, offering a potential combination therapy.
Category: biotech/medical
Gut microbes unlock hormone signaling that regulates gut movement, study suggests
Millions of people worldwide are periodically or chronically affected by gut-related conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and gastroenteritis. Uncovering the physiological and biological processes that contribute to gut health could thus be highly valuable, as it might help devise more effective interventions to prevent and treat these ailments.
The transit of food, fluids and waste through the intestine is known to be coordinated by various interacting systems in the body, including gut wall muscles, neurons in the gastrointestinal tract and hormones. A growing body of research has also been exploring the crucial contribution of bacteria and other microorganisms residing in the digestive tract, which are collectively referred to as the gut microbiome.
Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Laval University recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding how these gut microbes interact with specific sex hormones and nerve cells that control the movement of muscles in the intestines.
Researchers identify brain ‘entrapment’ patterns associated with depression
Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified distinctive patterns in how the brain transitions between activity states in people with depression, providing new insight into why depressive symptoms can feel persistent and difficult to overcome.
Published online in Nature Communications, the study combined advanced neuroimaging techniques with mathematical modeling to examine how the brain moves between functional activity states over time. The findings suggest that depression may involve a form of “brain-state entrapment,” in which the brain becomes more likely to enter certain patterns of activity and less likely to transition out of them.
“Many patients describe depression as feeling stuck in negative patterns of thought, mood and behavior,” said Yael Jacob, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Dennis S. Charney, MD, Depression and Anxiety Discovery Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and senior author of the paper. “Our findings suggest that this experience of being ‘stuck’ may reflect measurable changes in the brain’s underlying dynamics.”
Physicists introduce phase contrast to electron microscopy, delivering sharper images of our body’s tiniest proteins
Nearly 100 years ago, a seemingly simple discovery revolutionized the microscope. The introduction of phase contrast, which garnered a Nobel Prize in 1953, brought into clear view structures inside cells that had previously been too faint or washed out for biologists to study.
UC Berkeley physicists have now adapted the phase-contrast technique to the electron microscope, which has about 10,000 times the magnification of microscopes using optical light. The study is published in the journal Science.
The addition of a so-called laser phase plate has the potential to greatly improve cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM), a technique for determining the structure of molecules that itself revolutionized the understanding of proteins and accelerated new drug discovery starting a decade ago.
Scientists discover collagen, the human body’s most abundant protein, is liquid-like inside cells
Collagen, the protein that builds skin, bones, tendons and organs, exists inside cells as a liquidlike droplet rather than the long, rigid rod seen in textbooks over the last half-century, according to a new study from the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona.
The finding, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, is the first direct observation of how the most abundant protein in the human body, which accounts for around a third of total protein mass, exists naturally inside living cells.
“Inside a cell, collagens are not rigid molecules as one had assumed. They are in fact very pliable, taking a liquid condensate form much like oil in a drop of water,” explains ICREA Research Professor Vivek Malhotra, senior author of the study at the CRG in Barcelona.
The Host Immune Response to Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71): From Viral Immune Evasion to Immunopathology and Prognostic Biomarkers of Severe Disease—A Narrative Review
Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) is a critical global pathogen, primarily causing Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease (HFMD) but frequently leading to severe neurological complications, including fatal neurogenic pulmonary edema (PE). This review elucidates the complex interplay between viral pathogenesis and the host immune response. EV-A71 utilizes receptors like SCARB2 and PSGL-1 for entry, while its proteases (2Apro, 3Cpro) efficiently evade innate immunity by cleaving key signaling adaptors (MAVS, TRIF), suppressing Type I IFN response. Critical to disease progression is the age-dependent vulnerability in infants and the subsequent shift toward immunopathology. Severe disease is driven by a systemic cytokine storm and T cell dysregulation, characterized by a loss of control from Treg cells and a profound Th17/Treg imbalance, resulting in high levels of pathogenic cytokines (e.g., IL-17A, IFN-γ).
CRISPR enzyme precisely detects and shreds DNA in cancer mutations once considered ‘undruggable’
In 2020, Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work on the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology that allows scientists to precisely modify DNA by cutting it at specific locations. Six years later, a new study in Nature by a team led by Doudna has uncovered a powerful new approach to selectively kill cancer cells using a CRISPR enzyme called Cas12a2.
Once the enzyme detects cancer-specific genetic signatures, it begins to shred chromatin—a mixture of DNA and proteins that forms chromosomes—within the targeted cell.
Many cancers are driven by mutations in tumor suppressor proteins such as TP53, which is altered in nearly half of all cases. Yet these mutations have remained difficult to treat because they lack binding pockets for traditional drugs to latch onto. As a result, many cancer-causing mutations have long been considered undruggable.