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Category: biotech/medical – Page 38

From AI to Organoids: How Growing Brain-like Structures are Advancing Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is usually built with silicon chips and code. But scientists are now exploring something very different. In 2025, they are growing brain organoids, which are small, living structures made from human stem cells. These organoids act like simple versions of the human brain. They form real neural connections and send electrical signals. They even show signs of learning and memory.

By linking organoids with AI systems, researchers are beginning to explore new computational approaches. Recent studies have shown that organoids possess the ability to recognize speech, detect patterns, and respond to input. Living brain tissue may help create AI models that learn and adapt faster than traditional machines. Early results indicate that organoid-based systems could offer a more flexible and energy-efficient form of intelligence.

Brain Organoids and the Emergence of Organoid Intelligence.

New computer program mimics cell behavior for faster medical discoveries

Using mathematical analysis of patterns of human and animal cell behavior, scientists say they have developed a computer program that mimics the behavior of such cells in any part of the body. Led by investigators at Indiana University, Johns Hopkins Medicine, the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Oregon Health & Science University, the new work was designed to advance ways of testing and predicting biological processes, drug responses and other cell dynamics before undertaking more costly experiments with live cells.

With further work on the program, the researchers say it could eventually serve as a “digital twin” for testing any drug’s effect on cancer or other conditions, gene environment interactions during brain development, or any number of dynamic cellular molecular processes in people where such studies are not possible.

Funded primarily by the Jayne Koskinas Ted Giovanis Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and leveraging prior knowledge and data funded by the Lustgarten Foundation and National Foundation for Cancer Research, the new study and examples of cell simulations are described online July 25 in the journal Cell.

Natural Molecule Shows Remarkable Anti-Aging Results After Just 28 Days

A clinical study shows that pterostilbene, a natural compound, significantly improves signs of aging in the skin, pointing to a new direction in skincare science. As interest in anti-aging skincare continues to surge, scientists in China have conducted a clinical trial to test the effectiveness o

EpInflammAge: Epigenetic-Inflammatory Clock for Disease-Associated Biological Aging Based on Deep Learning

We present EpInflammAge, an explainable deep learning tool that integrates epigenetic and inflammatory markers to create a highly accurate, disease-sensitive biological age predictor. This novel approach bridges two key hallmarks of aging—epigenetic alterations and immunosenescence. First, epigenetic and inflammatory data from the same participants was used for AI models predicting levels of 24 cytokines from blood DNA methylation. Second, open-source epigenetic data (25 thousand samples) was used for generating synthetic inflammatory biomarkers and training an age estimation model. Using state-of-the-art deep neural networks optimized for tabular data analysis, EpInflammAge achieves competitive performance metrics against 34 epigenetic clock models, including an overall mean absolute error of 7 years and a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.85 in healthy controls, while demonstrating robust sensitivity across multiple disease categories. Explainable AI revealed the contribution of each feature to the age prediction. The sensitivity to multiple diseases due to combining inflammatory and epigenetic profiles is promising for both research and clinical applications. EpInflammAge is released as an easy-to-use web tool that generates the age estimates and levels of inflammatory parameters for methylation data, with the detailed report on the contribution of input variables to the model output for each sample.

Respiratory Viruses Can Wake Up Breast Cancer Cells in Lungs

Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center (MECCC), and Utrecht University have found the first direct evidence that common respiratory infections, including COVID-19 and influenza, can awaken dormant breast cancer cells that have spread to the lungs, setting the stage for new metastatic tumors. The findings published today in Nature, obtained in mice, were supported by research showing increases in death and in metastatic lung disease among cancer survivors infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Programmable nanospheres unlock nature’s 500-million-year-old color secrets

Half a billion years ago, nature evolved a remarkable trick: generating vibrant, shimmering colors via intricate, microscopic structures in feathers, wings and shells that reflect light in precise ways. Now, researchers from Trinity have taken a major step forward in harnessing it for advanced materials science.

A team led by Professor Colm Delaney from Trinity’s School of Chemistry and AMBER, the Research Ireland Center for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research, has developed a pioneering method, inspired by nature, to create and program structural colors using a cutting-edge microfabrication technique.

The work could have major implications for environmental sensing, biomedical diagnostics, and photonic materials. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Columbia scientists turn yogurt into a healing gel that mimics human tissue

Scientists at Columbia Engineering have developed an injectable hydrogel made from yogurt-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) that could revolutionize regenerative medicine. These EVs serve both as healing agents and as structural components, eliminating the need for added chemicals. The innovation leverages everyday dairy products like yogurt to create a biocompatible material that mimics natural tissue and enhances healing.

RNA-seq outperforms DNA methods in detecting actionable cancer mutations

Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto researchers are reporting that targeted RNA sequencing can detect clinically actionable alterations in 87% of tumors and provide decisive findings where DNA-seq either fails, returns no variant, or is not informative.

Cancer treatments have seen tremendous improvements in recent years, in part due to highly specific targeting and .

DNA-based methods dominate molecular cancer diagnostics but struggle to detect and assess splice site consequences. RNA sequencing enables sensitive fusion detection and direct assessment of transcript-level disruption caused by splicing mutations.

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