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Scientists find new way to overcome cell’s natural defenses against self-amplifying mRNA vaccines

The innovation could enable protection at lower doses, meaning vaccines could be rolled out further and faster than was previously imaginable, and opens new possibilities in gene therapy, cancer immunotherapy, and protein replacement therapies.

Scientists at Queen Mary University of London have found a way to overcome cell’s natural defenses against self-amplifying mRNA vaccines, thereby allowing them to produce significantly more of their target protein. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

MRNA-based vaccines were central to getting us out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike conventional vaccines, which use a low dose of the virus to build immunity, RNA vaccines tell your cells to produce a protein which teaches your body how to fight the virus.

A glimpse of the solar system’s origins: Striking details on the molecules inside a meteorite

Researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory have teamed up to get a fresh look at the complex makeup of meteorites and glimpse into our solar system’s past.

Powerful spectrometry found only at the MagLab identified the vast array of organic compounds inside two meteorites, and Brookhaven scientists followed up with images detailing the structure of some of those extraterrestrial molecules. Their research suggests that the chemical foundation for life is deeply woven into the fabric of the universe and broadens our understanding of the cosmic ingredients that rained down on early Earth, potentially kickstarting life as we know it. The study was published in The Planetary Science Journal.

“This can shed light on how much complex organic material is out in space,” said Joseph Frye-Jones, who led the mass spectrometry research as a Florida State University graduate research assistant and is the lead author on the paper.

Blood test trends may help identify patients at increased risk of cancer

Blood test trends alongside unexplained weight loss can improve triage for cancer testing, according to a study by Brian Nicholson and colleagues from the University of Oxford, UK, published Sept. 17 in the journal PLOS Medicine.

Abnormal blood test results, such as low hemoglobin or increased platelet counts, can provide clues about a patient’s risk of developing cancer. However, monitoring trends over repeat tests could provide further clues in some instances by identifying cancer-related changes in blood test results that do not appear abnormal. Assessing patterns in blood test abnormalities and trends alongside unexplained weight loss could enhance cancer risk assessment and support earlier diagnosis.

In this study, researchers examined trends in blood test results among patients with unexplained weight loss, a common non-specific symptom associated with multiple cancer types. The goal was to determine whether trends in 26 commonly used blood tests in primary care could improve cancer risk stratification compared with abnormalities on single blood tests.

Quantum computer boldly goes where no quantum computer has gone before: Space

There’s big news from the quantum world. A quantum computer has been used in space for the first time. The device was aboard a spacecraft in low Earth orbit and demonstrated technology that could eventually help solve a problem that has been bugging satellites for years.

The issue is that when orbiting satellites send their raw data back down to Earth, bottlenecks and bandwidth limits slow everything down. One way to overcome this would be to process the raw data in situ before sending it.

So a team of physicists led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna came up with a way that could eventually do just that. Their solution was to build a quantum photonic processor that uses individual light particles, or photons, to perform complex operations using compact optical hardware.

DarkSide detector puts ‘nuclear’ dark matter to the test

Researchers at the DarkSide collaboration have unveiled results from a seven-year experiment that tested whether dark matter particles could exist as composites of smaller, elementary particles. While the search turned up no direct evidence of this “ultraheavy nuclear” dark matter, results from the DarkSide-50 detector could lay the groundwork for future experiments, helping physicists work out whether dark matter has an internal structure.

The research has been published in Physical Review D.

A tiny stellar system may be a ‘satellite of a satellite’

Astronomers using data from the Euclid space telescope have discovered an exceptionally faint stellar system near the Fornax dwarf galaxy. Called Fornax-7, it appears to contain only about 170 times the mass of the sun in stars. The discovery paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 13.

The lambda cold dark matter model of the universe predicts that dark matter halos of any mass should host their own smaller subhalos. This is well established for galaxies with masses similar to the Milky Way’s, which have many dwarf satellites, but it has never been confirmed for hosts much less massive than the Milky Way.

The current record-holder is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which has candidate ultra-faint companions. Finding a satellite around something as small as the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Fornax dSph), roughly 100 times less massive than the LMC, would extend “the observed hierarchical formation of satellite systems nearly two orders of magnitude below the LMC,” researchers write in the paper.

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