Feng et al. demonstrate that high levels of glutamate are a characteristic of cancer. The METTL3/m6A/CD98 axis in cancer-associated fibroblasts promotes glutamate secretion, which in turn promotes the exhaustion of CD8+ T cells and inhibits the formation of immune memory. Targeting glutamate can sensitize neoadjuvant immunochemotherapy.
Some brain cells can resist the toxic processes associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Scientists have now identified the “cellular hazmat team” that keeps neurons healthy.
Neurodegenerative diseases like dementia are characterized by proteins that aggregate in the brain and kill neurons. Tau proteins are one of the main culprits, but they’re not always villains.
In their functional state, they help to stabilize brain structures and facilitate nutrient transport. But misfolded tau proteins clump together, and a higher degree of clumping indicates more advanced neurodegenerative diseases.
In the race for lighter, safer and more efficient electronics—from electric vehicles to transcontinental energy grids—one component literally holds the power: the polymer capacitor. Seen in such applications as medical defibrillators, polymer capacitors are responsible for quick bursts of energy and stabilizing power rather than holding large amounts of energy, as opposed to the slower, steadier energy of a battery.
However, current state-of-the-art polymer capacitors cannot survive beyond 212 degrees Fahrenheit (F), which the air around a typical car engine can hit during summer months and an overworked data center can surpass on any given day.
In Nature, a team led by Penn State researchers reported a novel material made of cheap, commercially available plastics that can handle four times the energy of a typical capacitor at temperatures up to 482 F.
Sink your teeth into this.
Japanese scientists are advancing human clinical trials of a drug that could allow people to regrow lost teeth.
The treatment targets a gene called USAG1, which normally shuts down tooth development after your adult teeth come in. By blocking that gene, researchers are essentially restarting the body’s natural tooth-growth process.
Phase I trials began in September 2024 with 30 adult men missing at least one tooth. If successful, the treatment could potentially be available by around 2030.
Dentures? Implants?
What if you could just… grow a new tooth?
Would you try this?
This study provides detailed electro-clinical characterization of surgically treated MOGHE patients and highlights the impact of SEEG on their outcome.
Objective Epilepsy surgery is an effective treatment option for patients with medically refractory epilepsy due to mild malformation of cortical development with oligodendroglial hyperplasia (MOGHE). The success of surgery depends on the accurate localization of the epileptogenic zone, which can be challenging due to the subtle imaging features. The aim of this project was to provide an in-depth electro-clinical characterization of MOGHE in patients with medically intractable epilepsy, and to assess the role of stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) in tailoring the resection and optimizing surgical outcome.
In a new study, published in Cell, researchers describe a newfound mechanism for creating proteins in a giant DNA virus, comparable to a mechanism in eukaryotic cells. The finding challenges the dogma that viruses lack protein synthesis machinery, and blurs the line between cellular life and viruses.
Protein production is accomplished in cellular life by decoding messenger RNA (mRNA) sequences in a process referred to as translation. In fact, most genes have some function related to protein synthesis. However, viruses are not and do not contain cells.
“In contrast to living organisms, viruses cannot replicate independently and rely on a host cell to perform many of the biological processes required to reproduce. Although viruses encode proteins involved in DNA replication and transcription, the dogma is that all viruses share a universal dependence on the host cell translation machinery for viral protein synthesis,” explain the authors of the new study.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a method to predict when someone is likely to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease using a single blood test. In a study published in Nature Medicine, the researchers demonstrated that their models predicted the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms within a margin of three to four years.
This method could have implications both for clinical trials developing preventive Alzheimer’s treatments and for eventually identifying individuals likely to benefit from these treatments.
More than seven million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, with health and long-term care costs for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia projected to reach nearly $400 billion in 2025, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. This massive public health burden currently has no cure, but predictive models could help efforts to develop treatments that prevent or slow the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms.
As aging populations and rising diabetes rates drive an increase in chronic wounds, more patients face the risk of amputations. UC Riverside researchers have developed an oxygen-delivering gel capable of healing injuries that might otherwise progress to limb loss.
Injuries that fail to heal for more than a month are considered chronic wounds. They affect an estimated 12 million people annually worldwide, and around 4.5 million in the U.S. Of these, about one in five patients will ultimately require a life-altering amputation.
The new gel, tested in animal models, targets what researchers believe is a root cause of many chronic wounds: a lack of oxygen in the deepest layers of the damaged tissue. Without sufficient oxygen, wounds languish in a prolonged state of inflammation, allowing bacteria to flourish and tissue to deteriorate rather than regenerate.