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Category: biotech/medical – Page 18

Abstract: Enhancing tumor cell susceptibility to macrophage-mediated phagocytosis in PancreaticCancer…

Deng Pan & team discover tumor pyrimidine synthesis shapes macrophage anti-tumor responses in mice, establishing a paradigm for tumor–macrophage metabolic crosstalk and revealing new therapeutic opportunities:

The figure shows inactivation of de novo pyrimidine synthesis promotes macrophage-mediated tumor control and phagocytosis.

1Department of Basic Medical Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

2Tsinghua-Peking Joint Centre for Life Sciences and.

3Center for Quantitative Biology, Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China.

Organ-specific proteomic aging clocks predict disease and longevity across diverse populations

Wang, Xiao and colleagues develop and validate organ-specific proteomic aging clocks across large population cohorts in the UK, the USA and China, which show strong performance in tracking organ aging and predicting the risk of morbidity and mortality.

Scientists find cancer-fighting isotope hidden in accelerator waste

The photons in a particle accelerator’s beam dump are intense, high-energy radiation byproducts of the main physics experiment.

A team of researchers at the University of York states that this powerful radiation, specifically the photons, can be captured and repurposed. It can be utilized to create materials necessary for cancer treatment.

The target isotope, copper-67, is a highly valuable asset in oncology. The method shows potential for generating this rare isotope, which is used for both diagnosing and treating cancer.

DNA transcription is a tightly choreographed event: How RNA polymerase II regulates the dance

Life’s instructions are written in DNA, but it is the enzyme RNA polymerase II (Pol II) that reads the script, transcribing RNA in eukaryotic cells and eventually giving rise to proteins. Scientists know that Pol II must advance down the gene in perfect sync with other biological processes; aberrations in the movement of this enzyme have been linked to cancer and aging. But technical hurdles prevented them from precisely determining how this important molecular machine moves along DNA, and what governs its pauses and accelerations.

A new study fills in many of those knowledge gaps. In a paper published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, researchers used a single-molecule platform to watch individual mammalian transcription complexes in action. The result is a clear view of how this molecular engine accelerates, pauses, and shifts gears as it transcribes genetic information.

“What’s really striking is how this machine functions almost like a finely tuned automobile,” says Shixin Liu, head of the Laboratory of Nanoscale Biophysics and Biochemistry. “It has the equivalent of multiple gears, or speed modes, each controlled by the binding of different regulatory proteins. We figured out, for the first time, how each gear is controlled.”

Rare Earth Element Crystals Found Forming in a Plant For The First Time

Scientists have just discovered an incredible superpower hidden away in the tissues of the fern Blechnum orientale, a plant that can collect and store rare earth elements.

The findings could lead to a more sustainable way of gathering mineral resources that we are increasingly reliant upon.

There are 17 rare earth elements in total, and these metallic materials are now deeply embedded in all kinds of tech – from wind turbines and computers, to broadband cables and medical instruments. They’re not actually that rare, but they are difficult and expensive to extract from the Earth’s crust in a useful form.

First-in-human trial of CRISPR gene-editing therapy safely lowered cholesterol, triglycerides

Research Highlights: In a Phase 1, first-in-human trial, a one-time infusion of an investigational CRISPR-Cas9 therapy targeting angiopoietin-like protein 3 (ANGPTL3) was safe and reduced LDL cholesterol by nearly 50% and reduced triglycerides by…

Where are all the trillion dollar biotechs?

Of the many trends people chase in biotech, the only one that proves sure and consistent is declining returns. Even after adjusting for inflation, the number of new drugs approved per $1 billion of R&D spending has halved approximately every nine years since 1950. Deloitte’s forecast R&D IRR for the top 20 pharmas fell below the industry’s cost of capital (~7–8%) between 2019 and 2022. In other words, while the industry remained profitable overall, the incremental economics of R&D investment were value-eroding rather than value-creating. So, while other industries have a reason to treat the current market downturn as transient, the business of developing medicine has a more fundamental problem to deal with — it is quite literally shrinking out of existence.

Pesticides and other common chemical pollutants are toxic to ‘good’ gut bacteria, lab-based screening indicates

A large-scale laboratory screening of human-made chemicals has identified 168 chemicals that are toxic to bacteria found in the healthy human gut. These chemicals stifle the growth of gut bacteria thought to be vital for health. The research, including the new machine learning model, is published in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Most of these chemicals, likely to enter our bodies through food, water, and environmental exposure, were not previously thought to have any effect on bacteria.

As the bacteria alter their function to try and resist the chemical pollutants, some also become resistant to antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin. If this happens in the human gut, it could make infections harder to treat.

Diamond defects, now in pairs, reveal hidden fluctuations in the quantum world

In spaces smaller than a wavelength of light, electric currents jump from point to point and magnetic fields corkscrew through atomic lattices in ways that defy intuition. Scientists have only ever dreamed of observing these marvels directly.

Now Princeton researchers have developed a diamond-based quantum sensor that reveals rich new information about magnetic phenomena at this minute scale. The technique uncovers fluctuations that are beyond the reach of existing instruments and provides key insight into materials such as graphene and superconductors. Superconductors have enabled today’s most advanced medical imaging tools and form the basis of hoped-for technologies like lossless powerlines and levitating trains.

The underlying diamond-based sensing methods have been under development for half a decade. But in a Nov. 27 paper in Nature, the team reported roughly 40 times greater sensitivity than previous techniques.

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