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ALS is a cruel disease. It robs the body of its ability to control itself—the ability to move, the ability to communicate. While there are currently no effective treatments to reverse its debilitating symptoms, Allen Institute researchers have opened a window of hope.

For the first time ever, scientists have developed a precise genetic toolkit that can target the exact nerve cells destroyed by the disease and potentially deliver therapies where they are needed most—a discovery that could dramatically speed up the quest for a cure. The findings were recently published in the journal Cell Reports.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and devastating disease that gradually kills off motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. As these neurons die, people with ALS lose the ability to move, speak, and eventually breathe. Despite decades of research, there’s still no effective treatment or cure. Unlike many other brain cells, motor neurons in the spinal cord have been extremely hard to reach with genetic tools. This has slowed down research and made it hard to test new treatments in the cells that matter most.

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In 1912, astronomer Victor Hess discovered strange, high-energy particles known as “cosmic rays.” Since then, researchers have hunted for their birthplaces. Today, we know about some of the cosmic ray “launch pads”, ranging from the Sun and supernova explosions to black holes and distant active galactic nuclei. What astronomers are now searching for are sources of cosmic rays within the Milky Way Galaxy.

In a pair of presentations at the recent American Astronomical Society meeting, a team led by Michigan State University’s Zhuo Zhang, proposed an interesting place where cosmic rays originate: a pulsar wind nebula in our own Milky Way Galaxy. A pulsar is a rapidly rotating neutron star, formed as a result of a supernova explosion. High-energy particles and the neutron star’s strong magnetic field combine to interact with the nearby interstellar medium. The result is a pulsar wind nebula that can be detected across nearly the whole electromagnetic spectrum, particularly in X-rays. It makes sense that this object would be a source of cosmic rays. Pulsars are found throughout the Galaxy, which makes them a useful category in the search for cosmic ray engines in the Milky Way.

The Vela Pulsar is a good example of a pulsar wind nebula. The pulsar is at the center, and the surrounding cloudiness is the nebula. Courtesy NASA.
The Vela Pulsar is a good example of a pulsar wind nebula. The pulsar is at the center, and the surrounding cloudiness is the nebula. Courtesy NASA.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered that cancer can be detected in the bloodstream a full three years before it’s spotted by doctors for an official diagnosis.

As detailed in a partially government-funded study published in the journal Cancer Discovery last month, the team found that genetic material being shed by cancer tumors can show up in the bloodstream far earlier than previously thought, paving the way for promising new cancer screening methods that could potentially head off the disease long before it gets more serious.

In some cases, the advanced detection could make the difference between being able to beat the cancer or not, according to the researchers.

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Neuroblastoma, a pediatric cancer of the nervous system, remains the leading cause of cancer-related death in young children, particularly when the disease has spread. Despite aggressive treatment regimens that include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy, metastatic neuroblastoma often proves incurable, largely because the cancer can evade or resist standard therapies.

One approach, known as differentiation therapy, attempts to coax immature neuroblastoma cells into developing into mature, noncancerous nerve cells. But current differentiation treatments, such as retinoic acid (RA), are only partially effective: many patients fail to respond, and nearly half of those who do eventually relapse due to resistance.

Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University in Sweden have identified an alternative approach—targeting the antioxidant enzymes PRDX6 and GSTP1—that may sidestep the limitations of RA. The study, “Combined targeting of PRDX6 and GSTP1 as a potential differentiation strategy for neuroblastoma treatment,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that dual inhibition of these enzymes not only kills some neuroblastoma cells but also transforms others into healthy, active neurons.

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Physicists at the University of Liège have succeeded in sculpting the surface of water by exploiting surface tension. Using 3D printing of closely spaced spines, they have combined menisci to create programmed liquid reliefs, capable of guiding particles under the action of gravity alone. This is a promising advance for microscopic transport and sorting, as well as marine pollution control. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Have you ever tried tilting a liquid in a glass? It’s completely impossible. If you tilt the glass, the surface of the liquid will automatically return to the horizontal … except for a small—barely visible—curvature that forms near the edge of the glass. This curvature is called a meniscus. And this meniscus is due to capillarity, a force acting on a millimeter scale and resulting from the of the liquid.

What would happen if we could create lots of little menisci over a large surface? What if these small reliefs could add up to form slopes, valleys, or even entire landscapes … liquid? This is exactly what scientists from the GRASP laboratory at the University of Liège, in collaboration with Brown University (U.S.), have succeeded in doing.

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During her uncle’s treatment in 2003, Green experienced what she refers to as a “divine download”—an electrifying idea inspired by her college internships at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Institute of Optics. “If a satellite in outer space can tell if a dime on the ground is face up or face down, and if a cell phone can target just one cell phone on the other side of the planet,” she recalls thinking, “surely we should be able to harness the technology of lasers to treat cancer just at the site of the tumor, so we won’t have all of these side effects.”

In the nearly two decades that followed, Dr. Green rerouted her career, earned a physics PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham—the second Black woman to do so—and dove into cancer treatment research, with physics as her guide. In 2009, she developed a treatment that uses nanoparticles and lasers in tandem: Specially designed nanoparticles are injected into a solid tumor, and, when the tumor is hit with near infrared light, the nanoparticles heat up, killing the cancer cells. In a preliminary animal study published in 2014, Green tested the treatment on mice, whose tumors were eliminated with no observable side effects.

When Hadiyah-Nicole Green crossed the stage at her college graduation, she felt sure about what would come next. She’d start a career in optics—a good option for someone with a bachelor’s degree in physics—and that would be that.

Life, though, had other plans. The day after she graduated from Alabama A&M University, she learned that her aunt, Ora Lee Smith, had cancer. Smith and her husband had raised Green since she was four years old, after the death of Green’s mother and then grandparents.

Her aunt “said she’d rather die than experience the side effects of chemo or radiation,” says Green, now a medical physicist and founder and CEO of the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation.

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🏗️ Q: What are the potential benefits of off-worlding heavy industry to space?

A: Space-based manufacturing can produce sustainable energy, food, and water for a trillion-dollar space economy, allowing Earth to recover as a garden planet for future generations.

Space-Based Manufacturing.

🧬 Q: How can microgravity in low-Earth orbit advance biotech manufacturing?

A: Enable unique manufacturing of protein crystals, tissues, and novel drugs impossible on Earth, with high-throughput production of exceptional quality organoids for Alzheimer’s and cancer drug testing.

☀️ Q: How can space-based solar power solve Earth’s energy challenges?

Continue reading “How to Build in Space — for Life on Earth” | >