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‘Pro version’ of cisplatin keeps its cancer-killing power while reducing side effects

Cisplatin is one of the most successful cancer medicines ever developed. Doctors use it to treat many cancers, including lung, ovarian, breast, testicular and head and neck cancers. However, cisplatin has a serious problem. It does not attack only cancer cells. It can also reach healthy organs and damage them. In particular, cisplatin can harm the kidneys and peripheral nerves. Patients receiving cisplatin often experience pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in their hands and feet. These side effects can become so severe that doctors must reduce the dose or stop treatment completely.

This led our research team to ask a simple question: Can we keep cisplatin’s cancer-fighting power while reducing its harmful side effects?

To explore this idea, we developed a new molecule called cisproplatin, or CPP. We can think of it as a smarter, “pro version” of cisplatin designed to remain stable while traveling through the body and become active under tumor-like conditions. The research is published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Aspirin reverses diet-driven depression-like behavior in mice

Depression is among the most common psychiatric disorders, estimated to affect between 280 million and 332 million people worldwide. This disorder is characterized by persistent sadness and hopelessness, low energy, a loss of interest in everyday activities and sometimes changes in appetite or sleep.

Several factors can contribute to the onset of depression, including genetics, chronic stress, traumatic or challenging life events and biochemical imbalances in the brain. Recent studies suggest that people’s diets can also sometimes influence their mental health and may play a role in the emergence of depressive symptoms.

Some research findings suggest that the long-term consumption of foods rich in fat is linked to an increased risk of depression. The biological processes underpinning this relationship, however, have not yet been clearly elucidated.

When It Comes to Fusion, Materials Matter

In the experiment, researchers used two different methods to pack deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen atoms that is often used in fusion, into thin foils of palladium and titanium. They then fired a beam of deuterium ions at the foils at different energies and measured how often fusion happened. Then they compared the rates from the different materials and methods with the “bare” fusion reaction (not in a material).

The team found that fusion rates depended on how the deuterium was loaded into the metal foils. The biggest effect was at the lowest energies, below 2.5 kiloelectronvolts (keV), where theory predicts fusion rates drop off sharply. Instead, researchers found a surprising plateau: Some samples showed elevated fusion rates roughly a quintillion times higher than bare fusion reactions. (A quintillion is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes.)

Researchers are not exactly sure why that’s happening, though they have some ideas and ways to test them. The electrons and defects within the material might partially shield repulsive electrostatic forces between deuterium nuclei, making it easier for them to get close together and fuse. Tuning the electronic structure, defects, and composition of materials could help make nuclear reactions happen more readily.

The Genesis Mission

The Mission is a national initiative led by the Department of Energy and its 17 national laboratories to build the world’s most powerful scientific platform to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation. It does so by enabling AI-driven, exascale-powered advances that enhance America’s energy innovation, global competitiveness, and security.

By connecting computing, data, and experimental facilities into a unified system, accelerates discovery and shortens the path from research to real-world impact, strengthening U.S. leadership in energy, security, and advanced technology.

Top environmental fund sees Japan key to AI energy challenge

Asia’s best-performing environmental fund has increased exposure to Japan as it expects the nation’s technology sector to prove increasingly pivotal in solving the artificial intelligence industry’s surging power demands.

The BNP Paribas Green Tigers Fund has returned 34% year-to-date, fueled by bets on Japanese equities that sit at the core of its stock-selection strategy, said Oscar Yang, senior portfolio manager at Impax Asset Management. The $208 million portfolio was the top-performing “dark green” strategy, the EU’s highest sustainability classification, in Asia through June 30, Bloomberg-compiled data show.

“A lot of the Japanese companies are so unique and they’re to some extent almost at a monopoly position,” Yang said. “If you cut Japanese companies’ products out of your supply chain, you just basically can’t operate, especially for leading-edge capacity.”

A Russian spy, suddenly cast into the spotlight, flees Japan

A Russian spy at the center of a secret operation to smuggle high-tech weapon components into Russia has left Japan after his activities were disclosed by The New York Times, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official said Thursday.

The operative, Maksim Vladimirovich Filchenkov, 49, had been working undercover in Japan as an employee of Russian state airline Aeroflot. Filchenkov’s role had been the focus of a Times investigation into how Russia exploited Japan’s weak espionage laws.

Filchenkov’s departure was first reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun, a major national newspaper in Japan. The newspaper said the Russian exited Japan after the Times published its investigation July 12. The Ukrainian official who confirmed the spy’s departure did so on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss intelligence publicly.

JCI: Shiley Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, USA

Shiley Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, USA.

2Department of Ophthalmology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.

3Lowy Medical Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA.

Synergistic senolyticregenerative therapy significantly extends healthspan and lifespan Translational Medicine

Current barriers to achieving radical life extension include the inability to use syngeneic, youthful mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and the anti-regenerative effects of senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) factors. We aim to overcome this by a combination approach in which senescent cell burden is reduced utilizing SenoVax™ a dendritic cell based senolytic immunotherapy combined with syngeneic pluripotent stem cell derived MSC.

We induced hepatic injury and accelerated aging using two established murine models: carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄) mediated liver injury and doxorubicin induced systemic senescence. Animals were treated with control, SenoVax, pMSCs or the combination. Outcomes included biochemical and histologic indices of liver injury, circulating and tissue biomarkers of senescence (IL-11, YKL-40, IL-6, IL-23 R) and regeneration (Klotho, FGF-2, neo-VEGF, GDF-11).

Both CCl₄ and doxorubicin induced a robust senescent phenotype characterized by increased pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic mediators and downregulation of regenerative biomarkers. Combined senolytic and pMSC therapy outperformed mono therapies and produced clear synergistic benefits, including significant biochemical improvement of liver failure parameters, reversal of accelerated aging features, and restoration of regenerative signaling pathways. Senolytic monotherapy yielded partial improvements, while pMSCs alone showed limited activity in the presence of a high senescent-cell burden.

Neutrophilderived itaconate facilitates tiered pulmonary inflammation via Kdm5bassociated epigenetic remodeling in alveolar macrophages

Lim et al. identify neutrophil-derived itaconate as a key environmental factor shaping tiered inflammatory responses in ALI. Itaconate metabolically promotes KDM5B-associated epigenetic activation of proinflammatory genes in alveolar macrophages, coordinating later-stage immune cell infiltration, including monocytes and T cells.

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