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Category: biotech/medical – Page 11

Solid-state material turns visible light into high-energy UV at sunlight intensity, expanding solar energy potential

Two cups of warm water don’t make one cup of boiling water. But in the quantum world, multiple low-energy photons can combine to produce a single, higher-energy photon.

A research team at Kyushu University has developed a solid-state molecular material that “upgrades” visible light into ultraviolet (UV) light under ordinary outdoor sunlight, achieving a conversion efficiency of 1.9%. The study is published in Nature Communications.

Harsh UV light is something most people try to avoid in summer, yet it is indispensable in fields ranging from air purification and resin curing in 3D printing to gel hardening in dental fillings and nail art. Despite its importance, UV accounts for only about 6% of the sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, with only a fraction of that being practically usable.

Scientists reprogram brain immune cells to fight Alzheimer’s: Study

A groundbreaking study reveals that OLE, a newly discovered molecule, can restore the protective functions of brain immune cells in Alzheimer’s disease, reducing toxic plaque accumulation and enhancing memory. This research could pave the way for new therapeutic approaches to combat Alzheimer’s.

Feeding data to AI to speed up drug discovery

Developing new medicines can require thousands of chemistry experiments to identify the right recipe for a safe, effective and ideally affordable drug.

The process is slow and labor-intensive, and many of the reactions depend on hard-to-source metals that act as essential catalysts.

While artificial intelligence is helping speed up the process of drug discovery, it can only learn from the data available, and when it comes to chemical reactions, the large, high-quality data sets needed to train powerful AI tools aren’t there.

Investigating quantum and molecular plumbing in nanofluidics research

Our body contains an intricate system of tiny vessels through which blood, water and other molecules flow. When the size of the pipes shrinks to the nanoscale, where only a few molecules can fit side by side, the classical laws of physics governing the behavior of water are influenced by the atomic structure of the walls. “It’s not that classical hydrodynamics breaks down, but rather that it gets mixed with the condensed matter physics of the solid walls,” says Nikita Kavokine, tenure-track assistant professor and leader of the EPFL Quantum Plumbing Lab.

How liquids, and water in particular, behave at scales of a few nanometers is one of the big gaps in modern physics. For example, in some experiments, it has been observed that water flows through carbon nanotubes orders of magnitude faster than expected. Scientists are trying to understand phenomena that biology has mastered after millions of years of evolution.

“At the nanometer scale, our body leverages specific properties of water to filter molecules with high energy efficiency,” explains Kavokine. Aquaporins, for example, are protein channels embedded in cell membranes that use these molecular-scale interactions to let water pass while blocking ions and other molecules.

Erucamide molecule strengthens the eye’s response to damage in retinal disease

Many conditions that cause vision loss share a common feature: the gradual breakdown of the retina, the light-sensing tissue at the back of the eye. Although scientists know some of the structural changes that ensue as this damage progresses, less is understood about the molecular signals that shape how the retina copes with disease.

Now, a team at Scripps Research, in collaboration with UC San Diego and the Lowy Medical Research Institute, has found that a naturally occurring molecule called erucamide plays a role in how cells communicate in the retina. Their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, found that while erucamide levels drop as light-sensing cells known as photoreceptors begin to die, restoring the molecule activates cellular responses that support retinal stability. These findings suggest that erucamide may be part of a natural protective response in the retina and could offer a new way to slow the progression of diseases that lead to vision loss.

“The retina doesn’t simply deteriorate; in fact, it actively responds to injury,” says senior author Martin Friedlander, a professor at Scripps Research. “Our work identifies erucamide as a signaling molecule that helps coordinate that response.”

Jumping the clock: Engineering ageing in biomedicine

Engineering the age(ing) of tissues in vitro could lead to more representative and predictive models for the ageing population. This forum introduces methodological approaches for ‘age engineering’ (‘ageneering’) and further discusses future applications of age-matched cells, matrices, and microtissues in predictive disease modelling, biomarker discovery, and age-specific pharmacotoxicology.

Autonomous medical AI outperforms doctors in simulated EHR cases

MIRA, an autonomous AI agent tested in a sandboxed electronic health record, diagnosed 574 real emergency department cases with 88.9% accuracy and outperformed physicians in a matched 311-case comparison. The system ordered tests, generated medication plans, and made admission decisions in simulation, but the authors stress that prospective validation, governance, and physician oversight are still essential.

Pan-cancer neurotransmitter receptor alterations define neuroregulatory subtypes with prognostic significance

Luo et al. characterize a comprehensive molecular portrait of neurotransmitter receptor genes across 33 cancer types using multidimensional omics data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and other independent cohorts. They identify clinically relevant neuroregulatory subtypes with distinct molecular features, advancing the emerging field of cancer neuroscience.

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