A health scare prompted the first ever early return from the International Space Station for a medical reason. Does it change the plan for deep space missions?
Category: biotech/medical – Page 130
GD2 CAR T Cells Show Promise Against DMG
In a small clinical trial, a CAR T-cell therapy—a type of immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer—shrank tumors in several children and young adults with diffuse midline gliomas. This fast-growing form of brain and spinal cord cancer typically causes death within a year of diagnosis.
In the trial, several participants were still alive 2 years or more after receiving the treatment.
Patients in the trial had a type of diffuse midline gliomas known as H3K27M mutant, a genetic change that is found in about 80% of younger patients with these cancers Exit Disclaimer. Researchers at Stanford University, who led the study, designed the experimental CAR T-cell therapy to target a molecule called GD2 that is produced in large amounts by H3K27M-mutant diffuse midline gliomas.
Team finds brain circuit that helps you switch gears
A new study shows how the brain abandons outdated strategies and adapts to new rules.
Most people have experienced the feeling: switching from one task to another, only to find the brain momentarily stuck in the old mode of thinking. Sometimes, even after realizing a strategy no longer works, the mind keeps returning to it anyway.
Neuroscientists call the ability to adapt and shift strategies “cognitive flexibility”—a core feature of higher cognition that allows the brain to abandon outdated rules and respond to changing conditions. Impairments in cognitive flexibility are associated with disorders including Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Lab-designed molecule offers hope for celiac disease sufferers
A research project led by the Institute for Research in Nutrition and Food Safety (INSA) and the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences at the University of Barcelona, together with the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona (IBMB) of the CSIC (which stands for Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), has successfully designed and tested a gluten-degrading molecule that is a promising ally in the management of celiac disease, an autoimmune disease whose symptoms are triggered by the consumption of gluten and other prolamins found in cereals.
At present, there is a complete lack of treatment options beyond a diet free from gluten, which is difficult to maintain in Western societies where diets rely heavily on wheat products.
The major breakthrough is that the molecule is effective at very low concentrations and at a pH of 2—the pH of the stomach—a condition that none of the molecules currently available or under development had previously achieved with efficiency. Although some of them are marketed as nutritional supplements, they are not an effective alternative to gluten-free diets.
AI model predicts B cell response to advance personalized cancer vaccines
KAIST announced on the 2nd that a team led by Professor Jeong Kyun Choi of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, in a joint study with the company ‘Neogene Logic,’ has developed a new AI model to predict neoantigens—a key element in developing personalized cancer vaccines—and has identified the importance of B cells in cancer immunotherapy. The research findings were published in the international journal *Science Advances* on December 3.
Neoantigens are protein fragments derived from cancer cell mutations that serve as unique markers distinguishing only cancer cells. Moderna and BioNTech developed their COVID-19 vaccines using the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) platform secured during their research on neoantigen-based cancer vaccines. Currently, global pharmaceutical companies are actively conducting clinical trials for cancer vaccines.
The problem is that most existing cancer vaccine technologies focus solely on T-cell-centered immune responses. B cells, along with T cells, play a key role in the immune system, and recent studies have increasingly demonstrated their importance in anti-cancer immune activity.
AI-Based Cancer Models in Oncology: From Diagnosis to ADC Drug Prediction
Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) has been influencing the way oncology has been practiced. Major issues constituting a bottleneck are the lack of data for training purposes, confidentiality preventing development, or the absence of transparency in clarifying how models operate to generate decisions. Novel Models With explainable AI, trust and utilization barriers among clinicians, researchers, and patients can be removed. With the implementation of federated learning, multiple institutions could contribute to crucial dataset’s learning information. Precise diagnosis and prescription of the right drug are essential in preventing unnecessary life losses, and economic burden to the underling system.
How dual-comb spectroscopy works and why it could reshape precision sensing
Spectroscopy has many applications, ranging from fundamental tests of quantum electrodynamics and investigations of molecular structure to environmental sensing, biomedical diagnostics and industrial monitoring. A highly promising spectroscopic instrument that has the potential to transform the field has emerged over the years: the dual-comb spectrometer, which relies on the interference of two mode-locked ultrafast lasers that produce broad frequency combs composed of evenly spaced narrow spectral lines.
A frequency comb is a spectrum of phase-coherent sharp laser lines that are evenly spaced. Such combs based on femtosecond mode-locked lasers, as pioneered at the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in the 1990s, have revolutionized measurements of frequency and time. In frequency metrology, a laser comb acts as a ruler in frequency space that conveniently links microwave and optical frequencies, and/or measures a large separation between two optical frequencies.
In the past two decades, frequency combs have found new applications. One of them is dual-comb spectroscopy. Dual-comb spectroscopy addresses the challenge of combining wide spectral coverage with high resolution and accuracy by using two optical frequency combs with slightly different repetition frequencies to map optical spectra directly into the radio-frequency domain. The method relies on time-domain interferometry and avoids mechanical scanning, enabling precise, rapid, and broadband measurements. Dual-comb spectroscopy has been implemented across the electromagnetic spectrum, from the terahertz to the visible range, with ongoing efforts towards the ultraviolet range.
The nocebo effect: How prior experience and verbal suggestion rewire the brain to make pain worse
Researchers have a better understanding of the nocebo effect and the neuroscience behind it all. Opposite of the better-known placebo effect, where positive expectations trigger genuine pain relief, the nocebo effect is the experience from negative expectations, created by prior experience, verbal suggestion, or social observation, which can drive anxiety and make pain worse.
A new study published in Nature Communications, by researchers at the University of Toronto Mississauga and McGill University, identified a brain pathway through which negative expectations can amplify pain. The findings, generated independently by the two labs without prior coordination, converged on the neurochemical cholecystokinin (CCK), which has previously been linked to nocebo pain responses in humans.
The researchers identified a specific brain pathway through which CCK acts, traveling from the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region involved in the emotional dimensions of pain, to a midbrain structure called the lateral periaqueductal gray (lPAG), where it increases pain sensitivity.