ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic researchers have created a detailed map of the pulvinar, a deep brain region that could help doctors more precisely target brain stimulation therapies for people with drug-resistant epilepsy. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, reveal that brain regions separated by only a few millimeters connect to entirely different
According to the Cleveland Clinic, a quarter of cancer deaths can be attributed to one source: cachexia. Cachexia is a syndrome that accompanies underlying chronic illness and causes unwanted muscle and fat loss, reducing quality of life and sometimes even limiting treatment options.
A new study led by Thales Papagiannakopoulos, Ph.D., an incoming Salk professor, published in Science, points to a potential new target for preventing cachexia.
The researchers found that a common genetic subset of lung cancer is more prone to cachexia and that tumors from this subtype talk to the brain through sensory neurons in the lung. Silencing these sensory nerves to disrupt the tumor-to-brain connection reduced cachexia, as did blocking the production of the lipid signaling molecule prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) through dietary changes.
Today, more people are living past 100 than ever before — even though the maximum human lifespan hasn’t moved past 115 years. But is that about to change?
The Limit host Daniel T. Allen spent months talking to medical researchers, biohackers, and centenarians. He also went through a battery of tests worth over $12,000 at a longevity clinic to find out how long he might live.
In this episode, Business Insider looked into what could radically extend human lifespan, including FDA-approved drugs, cellular reprogramming, and Bryan Johnson’s $2 million \.
The theory of immune regulation involves a homeostatic balance between T-helper 1 (Th1) and T-helper 2 (Th2) responses. The Th1 and Th2 theories were introduced in 1986 as a result of studies in mice, whereby T-helper cell subsets were found to direct different immune response pathways. Subsequently, this hypothesis was extended to human immunity, with Th1 cells mediating cellular immunity to fight intracellular pathogens, while Th2 cells mediated humoral immunity to fight extracellular pathogens. Several disease conditions were later found to tilt the balance between Th1 and Th2 immune response pathways, including HIV infection, but the exact mechanism for the shift from Th1 to Th2 cells was poorly understood. This review provides new insights into the molecular biology of HIV, wherein the HIV life cycle is discussed in detail.
The researchers also built in a warning signal. When the cell received a confusing instruction—the biological equivalent of two commands arriving at once—it produced a separate alert instead of continuing as if nothing had happened.
To show how the system might one day be used in medicine, the team programmed cells to secrete IL-15, an immune protein that can help activate cancer-fighting immune cells.
The experiments relied on engineered circuits delivered into cells under controlled lab conditions. The authors note several challenges ahead, including avoiding unwanted RNA interactions, limiting leaky genetic switches, and finding reliable ways to insert larger circuits into cell genomes.
Nanoparticles are widely used in medicine to deliver drugs, genes or imaging agents to specific parts of the body. Once a nanoparticle reaches a cell, however, many things can happen—it can reach its target, be degraded, interact with proteins that help transport it, or interact with proteins that hinder its transport.
A longstanding problem in designing nanomedicines has been understanding what happens to nanoparticles at the cellular level, but scientists have faced many challenges. For example, optical microscopy imaging techniques provide only a generalized view of nanomedicine localization.
On the other hand, proteomics approaches require cell lysis, which disrupts the natural distribution of proteins around the nanoparticle, making it difficult to understand how nanoparticles are transported within the cell. Another method—proximity labeling—enables in situ investigation of intracellular protein-protein interactions, but it relies on genetically engineered enzyme fusion, which limits its applicability across diverse systems.