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Category: biotech/medical – Page 14

Ultrathin silicon structures can tune mid-IR light in billionths of a second

Light in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum plays a key role in modern sensing. Because molecules interact with this kind of light in specific ways, researchers use technologies like mid-IR spectroscopy to identify biological materials, drugs and pollutants. Mid-IR light can also serve as a carrier of information in free-space optical communications, where data are transmitted through the air without using cables or fibers. Better control of mid-IR light could therefore lead to more sensitive detectors and faster communications.

Metasurfaces are one solution scientists are exploring to achieve this kind of control. These ultrathin structures are built using nanoscale patterns that can shape and direct light waves. Unfortunately, most metasurfaces developed thus far are static: Once fabricated, their optical properties are fixed, limiting their use in real-world photonic systems.

Now, researchers led by Hatice Altug in the Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory (BIOS) in EPFL’s School of Engineering have overcome this bottleneck with metasurfaces based on suspended membranes of crystalline silicon. By inducing mobile electrical charges within the silicon itself, the researchers can change how the metasurfaces respond to light in real time without changing their physical structure. The devices also achieve record optical performance, with more than an order of magnitude better performance in key metrics compared with previous mid-IR platforms based on similar materials.

New U-M Histotripsy Center to target kidney, pancreatic, brain cancers

The University of Michigan is getting a $10 million boost to research and expand the use of histotripsy, a medical advance pioneered on the Ann Arbor campus that uses precisely targeted ultrasound waves to destroy cancerous tumors without damaging surrounding tissue.

Already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat liver tumors, U-M leaders say the money will be used to advance the technology and research so histotripsy could become a future treatment option for people with kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, brain tumors, hemorrhagic stroke, blood clots, epilepsy and more.

“Michigan is at its best when our brightest minds connect to tackle the most consequential challenges of our time,” said U-M President Domenico Grasso during a Sept. 10 news conference, announcing the $10 million donation from multiple sources, including the university’s engineering department, private donors and HistoSonics, the U-M startup that commercialized the technology.

Platinum chemotherapy may cause decades’ worth of DNA changes in children’s healthy cells

The amount of DNA damage caused by certain chemotherapies used to effectively treat childhood cancer has been revealed, along with a hidden impact on the liver, paving the way for future research into new ways to mitigate these effects.

Platinum-based chemotherapy drugs are powerful at treating cancer but can have an underappreciated impact on the rest of the body. To investigate this, a team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge, the Francis Crick Institute and King’s College London used new sequencing technologies and found distinctive DNA damage in the liver. They suggest that further research could lead to new ways to protect against this.

Published in Science, the researchers also discovered that while effectively destroying cancer cells, chemotherapy can “age” a child’s healthy cells. This results in children’s healthy cells having the same number of DNA changes that adult cells gain over many decades.

Abstract: Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine, Lisbon, Portugal

6 Nuclear Dynamics and Cancer Program, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Address correspondence to: Lorenzo Galluzzi, Fox Chase Cancer Center, 333 Cottman Avenue, Room P2037, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19111–2497, USA. Email: [email protected].

The thoughts computers can’t think

Intelligence is often measured by facts known and judgments made. Schools reward memorization, work requires discernment, while AI now reduces intelligence to calculation. But intelligence is more than what can be counted, calculated, or measured. Join clinical psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, the world’s leading autism expert, to explore what the human mind is, how modern education and technology are reshaping how we think, and what is at risk when we mistake a computer’s appearance of thought for thought itself. Maria Balaska hosts.

Cacao genetics could help breeders reduce heavy metal levels in cocoa beans

Cadmium is a naturally occurring, toxic heavy metal found in many soils across Latin America and the Caribbean, where cacao trees are widely cultivated. It makes its way into cocoa seeds, called beans, that are roasted and made into chocolate, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—but some cacao varieties take up less of the toxic element than others. An international team of researchers, including Penn State scientists, found genetic differences in how two varieties managed cadmium uptake and facilitated the metal’s movement throughout the plant.

The findings—published this week (Sept. 8) in Plant and Soil—may be an early step toward breeding cacao that accumulates less cadmium, according to the collaborators from Penn State and Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria–AGROSAVIA (the Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation).

While trace amounts of cadmium in chocolate don’t present a serious risk to public health, long-term exposure to too much cadmium can lead to bone fragility as well as kidney and lung damage, explained one of the study’s two senior authors, Siela Maximova, research professor of plant biotechnology in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

Researchers chart new course for AI-powered biomedical discoveries

University of Missouri researchers are paving the way as artificial intelligence transforms biomedical research. A team from the College of Engineering and collaborators recently published one of the most comprehensive reviews to date of an emerging AI approach for biology known as flow matching. The work, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, provides scientists around the world with a roadmap for applying the technology to accelerate drug discovery, precision medicine and other biomedical advances.

“Flow matching helps computers learn how biology changes from one state to another,” said Jianlin “Jack” Cheng, a Curators’ Distinguished Professor and Paul K. and Diane Shumaker Professor in Bioinformatics. “This gives scientists a powerful new way to study everything from protein folding to cell development and cancer progression.”

AI reveals new class of cellular ‘off switch’ linked to cancer pathways

Cornell researchers have used artificial intelligence to uncover a previously unknown way cells control how proteins move inside them, a process essential for growth, communication and movement, and one that is often disrupted in cancer.

The study, published Sept.9 in the Journal of Cell Biology, shows that a little-understood protein called Avl9 acts as an “off switch” for another protein, Arf1, which helps direct where materials go inside cells. Turning Arf1 off at the right time is critical as it regulates cellular transport, otherwise cells become disorganized which leads to negative effects. The researchers also found that Avl9 is part of a broader group of proteins that may perform the same function, pointing to a previously unrecognized system cells use to keep this process in balance.

Led by Chris Fromme, professor of molecular biology and genetics at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and faculty in the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, the team used AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence software that predicts the structures of proteins and how they might interact, to search for previously unknown partners of Arf1.

Google DeepMind publishes AIpowered predictions for the effect of all 9 billion possible singlepoint mutations to human DNA

DeepMind’s catalogue of predicted DNA mutation effects, could help scientists unlock the cause of rare genetic diseases and help them find cures.

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