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Category: biotech/medical – Page 10

Pregnancy complications linked to long-term risk of peripheral artery disease

Women who experience pregnancy complications such as gestational diabetes, preeclampsia or preterm delivery have a significantly increased long-term risk of developing peripheral artery disease (PAD) later in life, according to a new study published in PLOS Medicine by Casey Crump of the University of Texas, U.S., and colleagues.

PAD, a condition in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to the limbs, affects more than 230 million people worldwide and is a strong predictor of future stroke, ischemic heart disease and premature mortality. Adverse pregnancy outcomes have been identified as risk factors for other cardiovascular diseases, but their association with long-term PAD risk had not been well established.

‘Cellular behavioromics’ reveals how immune cells swarm during sepsis

Despite the best efforts of intensive care unit (ICU) staff and physicians and the most advanced life support, Dr. Bryan Yipp, witnesses many deaths in the ICU attributed to sepsis. “Sepsis is the body’s overwhelming immune response to an infection, and sometimes that response can cause death,” says Yipp, a critical care physician and clinician-scientist at the Cumming School of Medicine. “While many cases involve people with long-term illnesses, seemingly healthy people can be at work or home one moment and then, within hours, be admitted to the ICU.”

Earlier this year, 41-year-old NASCAR race champion Kyle Busch died after pneumonia progressed to sepsis. Yipp says a recent discovery in his lab, published in Science, could lead to new treatments for this often-fatal condition.

Researchers expand simulation tool to help design the next generation of photonic and quantum devices

Many modern technologies, from optical communications and artificial intelligence (AI) hardware to advanced sensors and medical imaging, depend on photonic and semiconductor devices that precisely control the interaction between light and electrons. Designing these devices, however, remains a major challenge because existing simulation tools often require researchers to choose between modeling an entire device or capturing the detailed behavior of electrons. Few can do both within the same model.

Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a new computational approach that extends the widely used open-source particle-in-cell (PIC) method with condensed-matter physics. The result is a single platform that can simulate a much broader range of light-matter interactions in metals, semiconductors and emerging quantum materials.

Published in Computer Physics Communications, the research, “Particle-in-cell simulations of quantum plasmas,” demonstrates how an established plasma physics tool can be adapted to study condensed-matter systems, opening new possibilities for designing photonic and quantum technologies.

Engineered enzyme erases a stubborn mark of aging by up to 70% in human tissue samples

A biotech company called Revel Pharmaceuticals is looking into ways to reverse aging, and the company’s science team, along with researchers from the company Calico and the University of Colorado, may be a step closer to realizing the so-called fountain of youth. The team recently published their study in Nature Communications detailing how they engineered an enzyme capable of reversing a particular form of age-related damage and demonstrated its competence with test results.

One common sign of aging in the cells of living organisms is a type of protein damage called Nε-carboxymethyl-lysine (CML). CML is part of a group of harmful compounds aptly named “AGEs” (or advanced glycation and lipoxidation end products). Oddly enough, it is also part of the Maillard reaction, known for causing the browning in cooked food that creates rich, savory flavors, complex aromas and golden-brown crusts. In living organisms, CML builds up on long-lived proteins, like those in skin, blood vessels and the eye. This stiffens tissues and can fuel chronic inflammation through an immune-signaling receptor called “RAGE.”

“The engagement of the CML-RAGE axis triggers a signaling cascade that activates NF-κB and stimulates the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines and profibrotic growth factors. In the context of the central nervous system, CML accumulation has been linked to oxidative stress and mitochondrial damage in microglia, further disrupting brain homeostasis during aging,” the authors of the new study explain.

Kindness emerges intuitively in young children before reflection catches up, study finds

While humans are inherently social beings, psychology studies suggest that their social skills are gradually fine-tuned over time and with experience. Understanding when different social skills emerge and how they typically develop could help devise new strategies that encourage people to behave prosocially and cooperate with others around them.

Researchers at London School of Economics, University of Stavanger and University of Milan-Bicocca recently carried out a study exploring how social behaviors emerge and become stable across childhood. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behavior, suggest that while kindness and cooperation are intuitive behaviors in early childhood, they later become deliberate and part of children’s personal disposition.

“Our study was initially motivated by the wish to extend findings of our previous paper in Scientific Reports,” Elena Nava, senior author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

Genome tool places large genetic sequences precisely in rice and tobacco without DNA breaks

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a new way to add large pieces of genetic information to plants, overcoming a challenge that has limited plant biotechnology for decades. The advance could help scientists build more complex traits into plants in the future, supporting research into areas such as crop resilience, sustainable agriculture, biotechnology and the use of plants as scalable platforms for producing therapeutics and biologics.

Published in Nature Biotechnology, the study introduces a new genome engineering approach that allows scientists to place large genes into specific locations within plant genomes. The approach was successfully demonstrated in both tobacco and rice, opening new possibilities for future research in agricultural biotechnology, synthetic biology and plant-based biomanufacturing.

Physics-based AI could boost biomedical imaging and autonomous vehicle sensors

A research team led by UCLA and the University of Rochester has demonstrated a promising evolution of an imaging system designed to capture details within “complex media,” which scatter light, from depicting structures inside body tissue to seeing obstacles through heavy fog. The system uses physics-based machine learning to improve an existing imaging technique.

In tests with standard calibration images obscured by complex media, the new system more than doubled the signal-to-noise ratio compared with a previous generation of the technology. The system also created images in near real time—thousandths of a second. The findings are published in the journal Light: Science & Applications.

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