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Category: biotech/medical – Page 34

Harnessing mechanobiology to combat kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease affects an estimated 37 million people in the U.S., and for many, there is no cure. But a new research project at Washington University in St. Louis seeks to change that by uncovering the mechanical basis of kidney cell injury.

To tackle chronic kidney disease, Guy Genin, the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the WashU McKelvey School of Engineering, and Jeffrey Miner, the Eduardo and Judith Slatopolsky Professor of Medicine in Nephrology at WashU Medicine, teamed up with Hani Suleiman, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The interdisciplinary team, with expertise spanning medicine, cell biology, genetics and engineering, received a five-year $4 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

With the NIH’s support, the team plans to study the mechanobiology of podocytes, specialized cells in the kidney that help filter blood.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have received a $4 million grant to study specialized cells that could help treat kidney disease.

Challenging Over 150 Years of Immunotherapy: Scientists Unveil New Weapon That Kills Cancer Without the Immune System

Two bacteria working in harmony show powerful antitumor effects. The approach could transform treatment for immunocompromised patients. A research team led by Professor Eijiro Miyako at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), working in collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo Co

A stunning first look at the viruses inside us

You are mostly but not entirely human. If we crunch the numbers, 8% of your genome actually comes from viruses that got stranded there. This viral detritus is a souvenir from our evolutionary past, a reminder that viruses have been with us from the very beginning.

Usually, this 8% of your DNA—the viral bits—are kept silent. Scientists call it part of the “dark matter” in your genome.

Now scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have published a first look at a key viral protein. In a study published in Science Advances, LJI researchers revealed the first three-dimensional structure of a protein from one of these ancient “human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs).”

Breathwork can induce altered states of consciousness linked with changes in brain blood flow

Breathwork while listening to music may induce a blissful state in practitioners, accompanied by changes in blood flow to emotion-processing brain regions, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by Amy Amla Kartar from the Colasanti Lab in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, U.K., and colleagues.

These changes occur even while the body’s stress response may be activated and are associated with reporting reduced negative emotions.

The popularity of breathwork as a therapeutic tool for psychological distress is rapidly expanding. Breathwork practices that increase ventilatory rate or depth, accompanied by music, can lead to altered states of consciousness (ASCs) similar to those evoked by psychedelic substances.

MRI technology inspires quantum advancement with 2D materials

The same technology behind MRI images of injury or disease also powers nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which is used to analyze biological molecules for research on diseases and therapeutics. While NMR spectroscopy produces valuable data about the structure of molecules, the resolution is too low to sense individual atoms.

Now, quantum researchers at Purdue University are advancing an approach that could improve the resolution of NMR spectroscopy to the atomic scale and may also have applications in developing quantum computing and quantum communications.

“Conventional NMR spectroscopy is limited to measuring large samples of molecules. We’re interested in developing technologies that can detect and analyze a ,” said Tongcang Li, professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Science and of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering.

AI prescribes new electrolyte additive combinations for enhanced battery performance

Batteries, like humans, require medicine to function at their best. In battery technology, this medicine comes in the form of electrolyte additives, which enhance performance by forming stable interfaces, lowering resistance and boosting energy capacity, resulting in improved efficiency and longevity.

Finding the right electrolyte for a battery is much like prescribing the right medicine. With hundreds of possibilities to consider, identifying the best additive for each battery is a challenge due to the vast number of possibilities and the time-consuming nature of traditional experimental methods.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are using models to analyze known electrolyte additives and predict combinations that could improve battery performance. They trained models to forecast key battery metrics, like resistance and energy capacity, and applied these models to suggest new additive combinations for testing.

World’s first: China doctors transplant pig lung into brain-dead man

World’s first pig lung transplant in brain-dead man lasts nine days in China.

In a medical first, a pig lung was transplanted into a brain-dead human, where it functioned for nine days.

Surgeons at Guangzhou Medical University, China, performed the cross-species lung transplantation.

The recipient, a 39-year-old man who had suffered a brain hemorrhage, received the left lung from a Chinese Bama Xiang pig that had undergone genetic modifications.

Study finds type 2 diabetes blood factors drive breast cancer aggression

People with type 2 obesity-driven diabetes tend to have more aggressive breast cancers, but no one knows exactly why. A new study by researchers at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and published in Communications Biology found that tiny particles in the blood, known as exosomes, which are altered by diabetes, can reprogram immune cells inside tumors, making them weaker and allowing the cancer to grow and spread more easily.

“This is the first study to directly link exosomes from people with type 2 diabetes to suppressed inside human breast tumors,” said corresponding author Gerald Denis, Ph.D., the Shipley Prostate Cancer Research Professor at BU.

In the study, researchers used samples from to grow 3D tumor models in the lab. Known as patient-derived organoids, these models contain the originally found in the tumor. These mini-tumors were treated with blood exosomes from people with and without diabetes but also without any cancer. The researchers analyzed the organoids using single-cell RNA sequencing to see how the exosomes affected the immune cells and the tumor itself.

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