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Category: biotech/medical – Page 343

Latest Alzheimer’s Drugs Can Add Years of Independence to Patient Lives

While researchers continue to work on a full cure for Alzheimer’s disease, they’re finding treatments that can help manage symptoms and delay their onset, including the recently approved next-gen therapies lecanemab and donanemab.

Both treatments have been approved by US regulators in the last couple of years, and they work by clearing out some of the amyloid protein plaques in the brain that are linked to Alzheimer’s. However, there’s some debate over how effective they are.

To quantify the effectiveness of lecanemab and donanemab in more meaningful terms, researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine (WashU Medicine) recruited 282 volunteers with Alzheimer’s, analyzing the impacts of taking these drugs over an average of nearly three years.

Brain-like computer steers rolling robot with 0.25% of the power needed by conventional controllers

A smaller, lighter and more energy-efficient computer, demonstrated at the University of Michigan, could help save weight and power for autonomous drones and rovers, with implications for autonomous vehicles more broadly.

The autonomous controller has among the lowest power requirements reported, according to the study published in Science Advances. It operates at a mere 12.5 microwatts—in the ballpark of a pacemaker.

In testing, a rolling robot using the controller was able to pursue a target zig-zagging down a hallway with the same speed and accuracy as with a conventional digital controller. In a second trial, with a lever-arm that automatically repositioned itself, the new controller did just as well.

Researchers identify mutations that can lead to resistance to some chemotherapies

Investigators at Mass General Brigham have uncovered how resistance to chemotherapies may occur in some cancers. Researchers focused on a pathway that harnesses reactive oxygen species (ROS) to kill cancer cells. The study found that mutations to VPS35, a key player in this pathway, can prevent chemotherapy-induced cell death. These results, published in Nature, could help pinpoint treatment-resistant tumors.

“ROS play an important role in healthy and diseased cells, but pathways that sense and control cellular ROS levels are not well understood,” said corresponding author Liron Bar-Peled, Ph.D., of the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research at Mass General Cancer Center (MGCC), a member of the Mass General Brigham health care system. “A clearer understanding of ROS could help us understand why chemoresistance occurs in some cases.”

Low concentrations of ROS are required for normal cell signaling, but higher levels of ROS can damage cells and contribute to diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. Researchers know that mitochondria play an important role in ROS production, but it has been unclear if ROS-sensing proteins influence the mitochondria. If they do, this could impact responses to some anti-cancer treatments.

Study identifies gut sensor that propels intestines to move

After every meal, the intestines perform an action called peristalsis—moving food through their hollow interiors with coordinated contractions and relaxations of the smooth muscle.

For more than a century, scientists have known that nerve cells in the gut propel the colon to move, allowing the organ to perform its life-sustaining function. But exactly how these intestinal nerve cells do their job has remained elusive.

Now a new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has identified the mechanism behind this phenomenon, showing that the gut’s motility is altered by exercise, pressure, and inflammation.

Anti-amyloid drug shows signs of preventing Alzheimer’s dementia

An experimental drug appears to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s-related dementia in people destined to develop the disease in their 30s, 40s or 50s, according to the results of a study led by the Knight Family Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network-Trials Unit (DIAN-TU), which is based at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The findings suggest—for the first time in a clinical trial—that early treatment to remove amyloid plaques from the brain many years before symptoms arise can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s dementia.

The study is published in The Lancet Neurology.

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