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Sitting above each kidney are two small endocrine glands about the size of walnuts. These are the adrenal glands, responsible for producing hormones that help control some of the body’s most critical functions. Among these hormones, cortisol is particularly critical for survival. Often referred to as the “stress hormone,” it helps the body adapt to a wide range of challenges—both emotional and physical, such as trauma or infection—by regulating overall metabolism. Despite its central role in stress and endocrine biology, how the adrenal gland is built and how it functions remains poorly understood.

Now, researchers led by Kotaro Sasaki and Michinori Mayama of the School of Veterinary Medicine have developed a lab-grown organoid system that recapitulates the complex tissue structure, development, and function of the developing human adrenal cortex—the outer layer of the adrenal gland—providing a powerful platform to study its biology. These results, published in Cell Stem Cell, help establish a foundation for regenerative therapies targeting adrenal diseases.

“The adrenal cortex is a major endocrine organ and central to our stress response,” says Sasaki, the Richard King Mellon Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences. “Despite its importance, adrenal biology has lagged behind that of other organs. Our goal was to create a mini adrenal gland in a dish to better understand how the human adrenal forms and begins to function.”

The concept of “prediabetes” may be on its way out. Some experts are proposing a shift to staging type 2 diabetes instead, arguing that the current label can be misleading and may delay more proactive treatment. A stage-based approach could better reflect disease progression and encourage earlier intervention.

Leaders in the diabetes field are proposing eliminating the prediabetes label in favor of type 2 diabetes stages.

Systemic candidiasis is an opportunistic fungal infection that has been difficult to treat effectively. Research published in a paper in the April edition of Cell Host & Microbe suggests that immune metabolic reprogramming could be a new strategy to fight the infection rather than developing another specific antifungal medication.

The fungus Candida albicans causes infections that range from superficial on the skin and nails to invasive into organs and the bloodstream. In recent decades, systemic candidiasis has increased due to more patients with immunosuppression from disease or treatments, prolonged antibiotic exposure, and certain conditions such as kidney disease. Management of systemic candidiasis has become more difficult because of antifungal drug resistance, limited early diagnostic tools, and absence of approved fungal vaccines.

According to Partha Biswas, DVM, Ph.D., lead author of the paper, and a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Renaissance School of Medicine (RSOM) at Stony Brook University, these challenges have become roadblocks to treating systemic candidiasis and illustrate the need for new and different therapeutic strategies.

Now online! Cellular senescence, defined by six major hallmarks, is a program that halts cell division while rewiring chromatin, metabolism, microenvironment sensing, and immune interactions to either suppress or promote cancer and is an exciting frontier for precision therapy.