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Category: biotech/medical – Page 239

Virtual reality software uncovers new details in pediatric heart tumors

New cutting-edge software developed in Melbourne can help uncover how the most common heart tumor in children forms and changes. And the technology has the potential to further our understanding of other childhood diseases, according to a new study.

The research, led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and published in Genome Biology, found the software, VR-Omics, can identify previously undetected cell activities of cardiac rhabdomyoma, a type of benign heart tumor.

Developed by MCRI’s Professor Mirana Ramialison, VR-Omics is the first tool capable of analyzing and visualizing data in both 2D and 3D virtual reality environments. The innovative technology aims to analyze the spatial genetic makeup of to better understand a specific disease.

Photon ‘time bins’ and signal stability show promise for practical quantum communication via fiber optics

Researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz IPHT) in Jena, Germany, together with international collaborators, have developed two complementary methods that could make quantum communication via fiber optics practical outside the lab.

One approach significantly increases the amount of information that can be encoded in a ; the other improves the stability of the quantum signal over long distances. Both methods rely on standard telecom components—offering a realistic path to secure through existing fiber networks.

From hospitals to government agencies and industrial facilities—anywhere must be kept secure—quantum communication could one day play a key role. Instead of transmitting electrical signals, this technology uses individual particles of light—photons—encoded in delicate quantum states. One of its key advantages: any attempt to intercept or tamper with the signal disturbs the , making eavesdropping not only detectable but inherently limited.

Platform enables tunable photonic crystals with integrated spin-orbit coupling and controlled laser emission

A team of researchers has developed a novel method for using cholesteric liquid crystals in optical microcavities. The platform created by the researchers enables the formation and dynamic tuning of photonic crystals with integrated spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and controlled laser emission. The results of this research have been published in the journal Laser & Photonics Reviews. The team is from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology, and the Institut Pascal at Université Clermont Auvergne.

“A uniform lying helix (ULH) structure of a cholesteric phase liquid crystal is arranged in the optical cavity. The self-organized helix structure with the axis lying in the plane of the cavity acts as a one-dimensional periodic photonic lattice. This is possible due to the unique properties of liquid crystals, which are elongated molecules that resemble a pencil,” explains Prof. Jacek Szczytko from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, where research on novel optical microcavities is being conducted.

A cholesteric structure is a made up of layers of almost parallel oriented molecules lying in a single plane. From layer to layer, the orientation of the molecules is gently twisted, which altogether builds up a helical structure reminiscent of DNA helixes or ‘piggyback’ noodles. The direction perpendicular to the layers of molecules determines the axis of the helix formed.

Engineers create first immunocompetent leukemia device for CAR T immunotherapy screening

A team of researchers led by NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Weiqiang Chen has developed a miniature device that could transform how blood cancer treatments are tested and tailored for patients.

The team’s microscope slide-sized “leukemia-on-a-chip” is the first laboratory device to successfully combine both the physical structure of bone marrow and a functioning human immune system, an advance that could dramatically accelerate new immunotherapy development.

This innovation comes at a particularly timely moment, as the FDA recently announced a plan to phase out requirements for and other drugs, releasing a comprehensive roadmap for reducing animal testing in preclinical safety studies.

Triglycerides may play an important role in brain metabolism

While glucose, or sugar, is a well-known fuel for the brain, Weill Cornell Medicine researchers have demonstrated that electrical activity in synapses—the junctions between neurons where communication occurs—can lead to the use of lipid or fat droplets as an energy source.

The study, published in Nature Metabolism, challenges “the long-standing dogma that the brain doesn’t burn fat,” said principal investigator Dr. Timothy A. Ryan, professor of biochemistry and of biochemistry in anesthesiology, and the Tri-Institutional Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The paper’s lead author, Dr. Mukesh Kumar, a postdoctoral associate in biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine who has been studying the cell biology of fat droplets, suggested that it makes sense that fat may play a role as an energy source in the brain like it does with other metabolically demanding tissues, such as muscle.

Inhibiting enzyme could halt cell death in Parkinson’s disease, study finds

Putting the brakes on an enzyme might rescue neurons that are dying due to a type of Parkinson’s disease that’s caused by a single genetic mutation, according to a new Stanford Medicine-led study conducted in mice.

The study has been published in Science Signaling.

The genetic mutation causes an enzyme called leucine-rich repeat kinase 2, or LRRK2, to be overactive. Too much LRRK2 changes the structure of brain cells in a way that disrupts crucial communication between neurons that make the and cells in the striatum, a region deep in the brain that is part of the dopamine system and is involved in movement, motivation and decision-making.

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