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Category: biotech/medical – Page 30

New brain cell formation stalls in adults with depression, study shows

Findings from a new study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggest that the trickle of neurons created in the adult hippocampus could be instrumental in preventing depression. Most of the brain’s 100 billion neurons are created before birth.

Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the study shows for the first time that neurogenesis stalls in the brains of adults with major depressive disorder and identifies the molecular programs that control neurogenesis, which may help researchers develop new therapies.

“Historically, depression was thought to be a disease of neurotransmitter deficiency, especially serotonin, but we now think that depression stems from multiple issues that affect our neurons’ ability to adapt to stress and changing environments,” says Maura Dupont, a professor of psychiatry who led the research.

Super-resolution microscopy reveals how a cancer drug triggers cellular breakdown

Cancer drugs are often designed to block specific molecular targets, but what happens after they enter a cell is not always well understood. A new study published in Biophotonics Discovery demonstrates how advanced imaging technology can help answer that question.

Using super-resolution microscopy, researchers tracked the cancer drug sunitinib inside living cells and observed how it altered several of the cell’s most important structures. The work provides a detailed view of drug behavior at the microscopic level and highlights the growing role of optical imaging in drug development and cellular engineering.

Sunitinib is used to treat several cancers, including kidney cancer. Its therapeutic activity has traditionally been linked to its ability to inhibit enzymes that drive tumor growth. However, researchers have increasingly recognized that where a drug travels inside a cell can also influence its effectiveness and side effects.

INTerpath001 Trial: Personalized mRNA Cancer Vaccine for Melanoma

The positive Phase 3 result therefore provides clinical validation, at the level of RFS and DMFS, of a strategy combining individualized neoantigen-directed immunotherapy with established PD-1 blockade.

It is important, however, not to extend the current findings beyond what the trial has demonstrated.

INTerpath-001 establishes efficacy endpoints in resected high-risk cutaneous melanoma. It does not yet establish that the same approach will be effective across other tumor types, nor does the currently available topline information identify which molecular or immunological characteristics predict benefit from the individualized therapy.

The Machine Metaphor That Shaped Modernity and Its Limits

Your body is a machine. Your brain is a machine. Soil is a machine. The planet is a machine.

We say these things so casually that they no longer sound like claims. They sound like common sense. We hardwire beliefs, rewire habits, debug organizations, optimize people, scale solutions. When something breaks, we go looking for the faulty component.

That metaphor built the modern world. Science, medicine, industry, computation. It did not just work; it worked spectacularly.

But every metaphor is a tool, not a truth. And this particular tool was built for closed systems with clean inputs and clean outputs. Look at what we now point it at: forests, economies, cultures, minds, and the #AI we are racing to deploy before we have agreed on what it is for.

I have argued for years that technology is the How, never the Why or the What. A machine cannot tell you what something is for, who benefits, or who pays the cost. It was never designed to.

So here is the question I could not shake while writing this: what if our deepest ecological, technological and cultural crises are not failures of intelligence at all, but failures of imagination? Failures of the stories we use to make sense of the world?

The problem with the machine story is not that it is false.

Continue reading “The Machine Metaphor That Shaped Modernity and Its Limits” | >

Investigational daily pill doubles survival in metastatic pancreatic cancer, study shows

In an international study co-led by UCLA, investigators found an investigational targeted therapy significantly extended overall survival for patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer and reduced the risk of death by 60% compared with standard chemotherapy in both the RAS G12 and the overall, or intent-to-treat (ITT) population, which included patients with and without identified tumor RAS mutations.

The team found patients who received the drug daraxonrasib, an investigational, first-in-class oral RAS(ON) multi-selective inhibitor designed to block active RAS signaling — one of the primary drivers of pancreatic cancer — lived a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for those who received investigator’s choice chemotherapy in the RAS G12 population.

The findings suggest a potential investigational treatment option for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, a disease that remains among the most lethal cancers and has limited effective therapies.

Designing supramolecular therapies to cross the blood-brain barrier

A new Northwestern Medicine study has uncovered key molecular design principles that could help supramolecular therapeutics cross the blood-brain barrier, a major challenge for this novel approach to treating neurological disorders.

Published in ACS Nano, the study examined how subtle changes in the structure of molecules called peptide amphiphiles affect their ability to move through brain endothelial cells and traverse the blood-brain barrier.

The findings provide a roadmap for developing new therapies capable of reaching the brain, including potential treatments for stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological conditions.

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