Exosomes have huge potential for drug delivery, but drug loading can be difficult. Here, the authors report on fusogenic lipid nanoparticles which, when mixed with exosomes rapidly fuse, non-destructively loading large drugs without compromising exosome biological functions, and demonstrate neurological application.
The phrase “MRI for AI” rolls off the tongue with the seductive clarity of a metaphor that feels inevitable. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, describes the goal in precisely those terms, envisioning “the analogue of a highly precise and accurate MRI that would fully reveal the inner workings of an AI model” (Amodei, 2025, para. 6). The promise is epistemic X‑ray vision — peek inside the black box, label its cogs, excise its vices, certify its virtues.
Yet the metaphor is misguided not because the engineering is hard (it surely is) but because it mistakes what cognition is. An artificial mind, like a biological one, is not a spatial object whose secret can be exposed slice by slice. It is a dynamical pattern of distinctions sustained across time: self‑referential, operationally closed, and constitutionally allergic to purely third‑person capture. Attempting to exhaust that pattern with an interpretability scanner is as quixotic as hoping an fMRI might one day disclose why Kierkegaard chooses faith over reason in a single axial slice of BOLD contrast.
Phenomenology has warned us for more than a century that interiority is not an in‑there to be photographed but an ongoing enactment of world‑directed sense‑making. Husserl’s insight that “consciousness is always consciousness of something” (Ideas I, 1913) irreversibly welds experience to the horizon that occasions it; any observation from the outside forfeits the very structure it hopes to catch.
Results from the VITAL randomized controlled trial reveal that vitamin D supplementation helps maintain telomeres, protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that shorten during aging and are linked to the development of certain diseases.
The new report, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is based on data from a VITAL sub-study co-led by researchers at Mass General Brigham and the Medical College of Georgia, and supports a promising role in slowing a pathway for biological aging.
“VITAL is the first large-scale and long-term randomized trial to show that vitamin D supplements protect telomeres and preserve telomere length,” said co-author JoAnn Manson, MD, principal investigator of VITAL and chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased public awareness of the importance of mask use for personal protection. However, when the mesh size of mask fabrics is small enough to capture viruses, which are usually around one hundred nanometers in size, the fabric typically also restricts air flow, resulting in user discomfort. Researchers from Japan have now developed a new filter material that effectively captures nanoparticles, although further improvements are needed to make it suitable for comfortable mask use.
In a study published this month in Materials Advances, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo have developed a filter capable of capturing nanoparticles such as viruses. While the filter demonstrates high filtration efficiency, its airflow resistance is currently higher than the standards required for face masks, indicating that additional development is necessary before it can be used for personal protective equipment.
The filter is constructed from nanosheets consisting of an ordered mesh composed of porphyrins, which are flat, ring-shaped molecules with a central hole. The tiny holes in the porphyrin molecules are suitably sized to allow the easy passage of the small gas molecules in air while blocking the movement of larger particles, such as viruses. The nanosheets are then supported on a fabric modified with nanofibers containing pores of several hundred nanometers to form the filter.
Despite improvements to air filtration technology in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the smallest particles—those of automobile and factory emissions—can still make their way through less efficient, but common filters. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Drexel University’s College of Engineering have introduced a new way to improve textile-based filters by coating them with a type of two-dimensional nanomaterial called MXene.
Recently published in the journal C—Journal of Carbon Research, the team’s research reports that a non-woven polyester textile—a low-cost material with low filtration efficiency—coated with a thin layer of MXene nanomaterial can turn it into a potent filter capable of pulling some of the finest nanoparticles from the air.
“It can be challenging for common filters to contend with particles less than 100 nanometers, which include those emitted by industrial processes and automobiles,” said Michael Waring, Ph.D., a professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, and co-author of the research. “Being able to augment a filter, through a simple coating process, to make it effective against these emissions is a significant development.”
Researchers have identified a type of chemical compound that, when applied to insecticide-treated bed nets, appears to kill the malaria-causing parasite in mosquitoes.
Published in the journal Nature, the multi-site collaborative study represents a breakthrough for a disease that continues to claim more than half a million lives worldwide every year. A lab at Oregon Health & Science University played a key role, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of the National Institutes of Health, supported the research.
Michael Riscoe, Ph.D., professor of molecular microbiology and immunology in the OHSU School of Medicine, designed and synthesized the anti-malarial drugs, termed ELQs, that were then screened in the lab of Flaminia Catteruccia, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and Irene Heinz Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Researchers at the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University in China have uncovered a sharply rising burden of skin cancer in older adults driven largely by population growth and affecting men twice as often.
Skin cancer already ranks among the costliest malignancies to treat, and an aging world means more time for ultraviolet damage to accumulate. Previous research shows older patients now make up nearly three-quarters of new cases, yet global data capturing the full scope and trend in those over 65 remains scarce.
In the study, “Burden of Skin Cancer in Older Adults From 1990 to 2021 and Modelled Projection to 2050,” published in JAMA Dermatology, researchers mined the Global Burden of Diseases 2021 registry to quantify how melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma affect adults aged 65 and older worldwide.
A breakthrough study, led by scientists at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, has uncovered how daylight can boost the immune system’s ability to fight infections.
The team focused on the most abundant immune cells in our bodies, called neutrophils, which are a type of white blood cell. These cells move quickly to the site of an infection and kill invading bacteria.
The researchers used zebrafish, a small freshwater fish, as a model organism, because its genetic makeup is similar to ours and the fish can be bred to have transparent bodies, making it easy to observe biological processes in real time.
Our cells rely on microscopic highways and specialized protein vehicles to move everything—from positioning organelles to carting protein instructions to disposing of cellular garbage. These highways (called microtubules) and vehicles (called motor proteins) are indispensable to cellular function and survival.
The dysfunction of motor proteins and their associated proteins can lead to severe neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. For example, the dysfunction of Lis1, a partner protein to the motor protein dynein, can lead to the rare fatal birth defect lissencephaly, or “smooth brain,” for which there is no cure. But therapeutics that target and restore dynein or Lis1 function could change those dismal outcomes—and developing those therapeutics depends on thoroughly understanding how dynein and Lis1 interact.
New research from the Salk Institute and UC San Diego captured short movies of Lis1 “turning on” dynein. The movies allowed the team to catalog 16 shapes that the two proteins take as they interact, some of which have never been seen before. These insights will be foundational for designing future therapeutics that restore dynein and Lis1 function, since they shine a light on precise locations where drugs could interact with the proteins.