A simple yeast-based food supplement may help restore the immune system’s ability to fight cancer, according to new research in mice. Scientists found that yeast beta-glucan reprogrammed early immune cells in the bone marrow, leading to stronger, longer-lasting cancer-fighting responses against colorectal, skin, and breast cancer cells.
LONGEVITY DAY — a science-fiction trailer for the Future Vision XPRIZE.
In 2035, an eighty-eight-year-old biologist with cancer and failing memory fights to restart the AI-assisted rejuvenation research that may be her last chance — three years after a catastrophic AI failure nearly convinced the world to abandon frontier research altogether.
A story about making aging optional.
Written, directed and produced by Sergio M.L. Tarrero.
Alianza Futurista • https://alianzafuturista.org.
Submitted to the Future Vision XPRIZE, presented by the XPRIZE Foundation, Google and Range Media Partners.
https://futurevisionxprize.com.
#FutureVisionXPRIZE
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.