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Osteoradionecrosis After Radiotherapy for Oropharyngeal Carcinoma

Among patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell #carcinoma, proton therapy for head and neck cancer was associated with a higher 3-year incidence of osteoradionecrosis compared with intensity-modulated radiation therapy.

Severe osteoradionecrosis rates were low and did not differ by modality.

This cohort study characterizes the incidence, severity, and predictors of osteoradionecrosis in patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma treated with curative-intent radiotherapy and compares outcomes between those receiving proton therapy vs intensity-modulated radiation therapy.

Blocking both drug-resistant bacteria and influenza with a broad-spectrum infection prevention approach

Secondary infections caused by bacteria or viruses during hospital care remain a long-standing global challenge, despite advances in modern medicine. In particular, mixed bacterial-viral infections in critically ill or immunocompromised patients are extremely difficult to treat and are associated with significantly increased mortality.

At the same time, the rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the frequent emergence of viral variants have exposed the limitations of existing antibiotics and vaccines. These challenges have driven growing interest in new strategies that prepare the body’s immune system in advance, enabling it to respond more rapidly and effectively when infection occurs.

Unlike conventional approaches that directly target specific pathogens, this emerging strategy focuses on priming the immune system so that immune cells can react faster and more strongly at the moment of infection.

Senescent astrocytes discovered in Alzheimer’s brains point to new treatment targets

Researchers from the NeuroAD group (Neuropathology of Alzheimer’s Disease) within the Department of Cell Biology, Genetics and Physiology at the University of Málaga, also affiliated with IBIMA–BIONAND Platform and CIBERNED, have made a pioneering breakthrough in the fight against this disease by identifying astrocytes as a promising cellular target for the development of future therapies.

The study demonstrates, for the first time, the presence of senescent astrocytes—cells that remain alive but have lost their functional capacity—in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, positioning this cellular aging process as a key mechanism in neurodegeneration.

The research, published in the journal Journal of Neuroinflammation, was led by Dr. Antonia Gutiérrez, Professor of Cell Biology and Principal Investigator of the NeuroAD group, together with Dr. Juan Antonio García León, Associate Professor of Cell Biology. Other contributors to the study include Laura Cáceres, Laura Trujillo, Elba López, Elisabeth Sánchez, and Inés Moreno.

Env-antibody coevolution identifies B cell priming as the principal bottleneck to HIV V2 apex broadly neutralizing antibody development

Two new animal studies show that B cell priming is key to induce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) against HIV and demonstrate that a single immunization that targets bNAb precursors can induce potent neutralization. Learn more in Science Immunology:

📃: https://scim.ag/4kHVwvV

B cell priming is a primary bottleneck to HIV-1 V2 apex bNAb elicitation.

Can personality change after 60? An eight-week program suggests it can

Younger and older adults alike are able to adopt new socio-emotional behaviors. Even older adults benefit from a personality intervention aimed at handling stress and challenging social situations better. This is the conclusion of a psychological aging research study conducted by researchers from Germany and Switzerland led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Wrzus (Heidelberg University) and Prof. Dr. Corina Aguilar-Raab (University of Mannheim). The study examined the effects of an intervention program in participants of varying ages. It concluded that social and emotional skills training benefits both younger and older adults.

The study is published in the journal Communications Psychology.

According to the scientific community, socio-emotional behaviors include a person’s ability to recognize, express, and regulate their feelings as well as social relationships. This ability is associated with personal traits that influence, for example, how a person typically thinks, feels, and behaves in certain situations.

Novel quantum dynamics with superconducting qubits

The prevailing view is that quantum phenomena can be leveraged to tackle certain problems beyond the reach of classical approaches. Recent years have witnessed significant progress in this direction; in particular, superconducting qubits have emerged as one of the leading platforms for quantum simulation and computation on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) processors. This progress is exemplified by research ranging from the foundations of quantum mechanics to the non-equilibrium dynamics of elementary excitations and condensed matter physics.

By utilizing the contextuality of quantum measurements to solve a 2D hidden linear function problem, we demonstrate a quantum advantage through a computational separation for up to 105 qubits on these bounded-resource tasks. Motivated by high-energy physics, we image charge and string dynamics in (2+1)D lattice gauge theories, revealing two distinct regimes within the confining phase: a weak-confinement regime with strong transverse string fluctuations and a strong-confinement regime where these fluctuations are suppressed. Turning to condensed matter, we observe novel localization in one-and two-dimensional many-body systems that lack energy diffusion despite being disorder-free and translationally invariant. Additionally, we show that strong disorder in interacting multi-level landscapes can induce superfluidity characterized by long-range phase coherence.

New AI model could cut the costs of developing protein drugs

Industrial yeasts are a powerhouse of protein production, used to manufacture vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, and other useful compounds. In a new study, MIT chemical engineers have harnessed artificial intelligence to optimize the development of new protein manufacturing processes, which could reduce the overall costs of developing and manufacturing these drugs.

Using a large language model (LLM), the MIT team analyzed the genetic code of the industrial yeast Komagataella phaffii — specifically, the codons that it uses. There are multiple possible codons, or three-letter DNA sequences, that can be used to encode a particular amino acid, and the patterns of codon usage are different for every organism.

The new MIT model learned those patterns for K. phaffii and then used them to predict which codons would work best for manufacturing a given protein. This allowed the researchers to boost the efficiency of the yeast’s production of six different proteins, including human growth hormone and a monoclonal antibody used to treat cancer.

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