What if certain signs of the disease were to manifest subtly during sleep, long before the first memory problems appear? This is the line of inquiry being explored by a team of researchers at ULiège.
A team of scientists from the University of Liège (GIGA Neurosciences), supported by the Stop Alzheimer’s Foundation, has analyzed the sleep patterns of more than 500 healthy people. Among middle-aged participants, a higher frequency of nocturnal micro-awakenings was found to be associated with a greater genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, whereas this link was not observed in young adults. This research, published in the journal Sleep, suggests that the study of sleep could, in the long term, contribute to the early identification of vulnerable individuals.
License plate readers are widely used in the US. A new product marketed to police departments promises to add the ability to sense phones and other devices in passing cars.
Longtime NASA astronaut Mike Fincke is stepping away from his role at the space agency. The news comes months after he experienced a medical emergency aboard the International Space Station, which forced a premature end to the journey for him and three crewmates.
Fincke’s last day at the space agency is Wednesday, NASA said in a news release.
Although he is leaving NASA, Fincke said he remains “deeply committed to the work of exploration.”
Scientists are optimistic that existing drugs that could one day slow or reverse our ageing.
For centuries, people have pursued the dream of eternal youth. It might seem like the stuff of myth or science fiction, but researchers have been making fascinating progress in understanding what happens in our bodies as we age. There’s optimism that we might soon be able to use drugs to slow down or even reverse how we age, extending the number of years we live healthy, productive lives. What’s more, some of us might be taking these drugs already.
On today’s episode, Lucy Hockings speaks to Dr Andrew Steele, author of Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old to find out whether we might drink from the fountain of youth in our lifetime.
00:00 Intro. 01:07 Questions about anti-ageing. 02:05 Cosmetic and cellular anti-ageing. 03:48 What is biological age? 05:51 What is ageing? 07:55 Is it a humanitarian crisis? 09:23 Lifespan and healthspan. 10:53 Can we slow down our ageing? 12:29 Is there a drug? 14:10 Therapies for ageing. 16:01 When could this happen? 17:10 Anti-ageing advice. 18:45 Outro.
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You can listen to more episodes of The Global Story here. Making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, Monday to Friday, from the BBC 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13x… credit: Getty —————- This is the official BBC World Service YouTube channel. If you like what we do, you can also find us here: Instagram 👉🏽 / bbcworldservice Twitter 👉🏽 / bbcworldservice Facebook 👉🏽 / bbcworldservice BBC World Service website 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio Thanks for watching and subscribing! #BBCWorldService #WorldService #ageing #youth.
For more than 70 years, the drug 6-thioguanine (6-TG) has been used to treat leukemia. Although its clinical effects have been studied extensively, scientists are still uncovering the molecular mechanisms that determine whether cells succumb to the drug or survive its attack.
Now, researchers at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, together with collaborators at the University of Oxford, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of Dundee, have identified an unexpected player in this process: the protein NUDT5. Their paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.
The discovery builds directly on a recent breakthrough from the Kubicek and Huber laboratories. In that work, researchers showed that NUDT5 performs a critical cellular function independently of its enzymatic activity. Instead of acting primarily as a catalyst, NUDT5 was found to serve as a molecular scaffold that helps organize cellular metabolism. This unusual behavior has direct consequences for the action of the important cancer drug.
Mereu et al. present ESPACE, a single-cell multi-omic atlas of the human pancreas spanning fetal development, adulthood, and type 2 diabetes. Combining transcriptomics, chromatin accessibility, and spatial imaging, they uncover a rare population of plastic centroacinar cells and hidden diversity among hormone-producing islet cells, informing pancreas regeneration and disease.
In the image above, a faint trail of stars can be seen stretching across the galaxy. These structures, known as globular cluster stellar streams, are coherent stellar structures that retain a record of their dynamical history and can provide unique insights into the evolution of galaxies and the nature of dark matter.
Globular cluster stellar streams offer astronomers a unique opportunity to map otherwise invisible dark matter and study how it behaves. For many years, they have been difficult to observe because they are extremely faint. However, advances in large astronomical data sets and sophisticated analysis techniques have recently made stellar streams one of the most promising tools in galactic astronomy.
Now, Ph.D. student Julie Kiel Holm from the Niels Bohr Institute and associate professor Sarah Pearson from DTU Space, together with an international team of researchers, have made a discovery that has never been seen before. Their findings have just been published in Nature.
Researchers have achieved a major breakthrough in brain cancer research by developing the most comprehensive map to date of isoform diversity in glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer in adults. Using advanced long-read single-cell sequencing, the team uncovered thousands of previously unknown tumor-specific genetic isoforms that had remained invisible to conventional approaches. The discovery reveals a new source of potential therapeutic targets, including candidates that could be harnessed for future personalised cancer vaccines and immunotherapies. The findings were published in Nature Communications.
Glioblastoma is notoriously difficult to treat because tumor cells within the same patient can behave, grow and respond to treatment differently. Understanding this cellular diversity is essential for developing more effective therapies.
Every gene in the human body can produce slightly different versions of its genetic instructions, known as isoforms. These variations can profoundly influence cellular function and in cancer, may determine whether tumour cells are recognised by the immune system or evade detection. Until now, the technology used to study individual cancer cells could read only short fragments of genetic information, limiting researchers’ ability to study full-length isoforms in individual cells.
