A team of scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center (The Institute) has made a landmark discovery that sheds light on how the immune system protects the gut during infection. By studying intestinal worms—also known as helminths—the team, led by Professor Irah King, uncovered a previously unknown immune mechanism that preserves intestinal function in the presence of persistent infection.
Their finding, published in the journal Cell, could pave the way for new treatments for helminth infections, which affect over two billion people worldwide at some point in their lives, as well as for other intestinal diseases.
The results could also help revisit older therapeutic strategies that were previously dismissed due to an incomplete understanding of biological processes.
Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a common bacterium that lives in the intestines of animals and humans, and it is often used to identify fecal contamination within the environment. E. coli can also easily develop resistance to antibiotics, making it an ideal organism for testing antimicrobial resistance—especially in certain agricultural environments where fecal material is used as manure or wastewater is reused.
Among the tens of thousands of ant species, incredible “intelligent” behaviors like crop culture, animal husbandry, surgery, “piracy,” social distancing, and complex architecture have evolved.
Yet at first sight, the brain of an ant seems hardly capable of such feats: it is about the size of a poppy seed, with only 0.25m to 1m neurons, compared to 86bn for humans.
Now, researchers from Israel and Switzerland have shown how “swarm intelligence” resembling advance planning can nevertheless emerge from the concerted operation of many of these tiny brains. The results are published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.
There are more than 100,000 people on organ transplant lists in the U.S., some of whom will wait years to receive one—and some may not survive the wait. Even with a good match, there is a chance that a person’s body will reject the organ. To shorten waiting periods and reduce the possibility of rejection, researchers in regenerative medicine are developing methods to use a patient’s own cells to fabricate personalized hearts, kidneys, livers, and other organs on demand.
Ensuring that oxygen and nutrients can reach every part of a newly grown organ is an ongoing challenge. Researchers at Stanford have created new tools to design and 3D print the incredibly complex vascular trees needed to carry blood throughout an organ. Their platform, published June 12 in Science, generates designs that resemble what we actually see in the human body significantly faster than previous attempts and is able to translate those designs into instructions for a 3D printer.
“The ability to scale up bioprinted tissues is currently limited by the ability to generate vasculature for them—you can’t scale up these tissues without providing a blood supply,” said Alison Marsden, the Douglas M. and Nola Leishman Professor of Cardiovascular Diseases, professor of pediatrics and of bioengineering at Stanford in the Schools of Engineering and Medicine and co-senior author on the paper. “We were able to make the algorithm for generating the vasculature run about 200 times faster than prior methods, and we can generate it for complex shapes, like organs.”
Researchers have identified a form of molecular motion that has not previously been observed. When what are known as “guest molecules”—molecules that are accommodated within a host molecule—penetrate droplets of DNA polymers, they do not simply diffuse in them in a haphazard fashion, but propagate through them in the form of a clearly-defined frontal wave. The team includes researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and the University of Texas at Austin.
“This is an effect we did not expect at all,” points out Weixiang Chen of the Department of Chemistry at JGU, who played a major role in the discovery. The findings of the research team are published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The new insights are not only fundamental to our understanding of how cells regulate signals, but they could also contribute to the development of intelligent biomaterials, innovative types of membranes, programmable carriers of active ingredients and synthetic cell systems able to imitate the organizational complexity of the processes in living beings.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)-led research team has adopted gyromagnetic double-zero-index metamaterials (GDZIMs)—a new optical extreme-parameter material—and developed a new method to control light using GDZIMs. This discovery could revolutionize fields like optical communications, biomedical imaging, and nanotechnology, enabling advances in integrated photonic chips, high-fidelity optical communication, and quantum light sources.
The study published in Nature was co-led by Prof. Chan Che-Ting, Interim Director of the HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study and Chair Professor in the Department of Physics, and Dr. Zhang Ruoyang, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Physics at HKUST.
All humans who have ever lived were once each an individual cell, which then divided countless times to produce a body made up of about 10 trillion cells. These cells have busy lives, executing all kinds of dynamic movement: contracting every time we flex a muscle, migrating toward the site of an injury, and rhythmically beating for decades on end.
Cells are an example of active matter. As inanimate matter must burn fuel to move, like airplanes and cars, active matter is similarly animated by its consumption of energy. The basic molecule of cellular energy is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which catalyzes chemical reactions that enable cellular machinery to work.
Caltech researchers have now developed a bioengineered coordinate system to observe the movement of cellular machinery. The research enables a better understanding of how cells create order out of chaos, such as during embryonic development or in the organized movements of chromosomes that are a prerequisite to faithful cell division.
As companies such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink begin human trials of high-risk brain implants, a new proposal calls for a major change in how the U.S. handles injuries caused by the devices.
The article published in Science suggests a “no-fault” compensation program to help patients harmed by devices like brain-computer interfaces (BCIs)—even when no one is legally at fault.
These devices, which are implanted in the brain to treat serious conditions like epilepsy or paralysis, can offer life-changing benefits. But they also come with serious risks such as seizures, strokes or even death. And when something goes wrong, patients often have no way to get help or compensation.
In recent years, ADCs have emerged as a transformative therapeutic modality in oncology, offering a promising avenue for the treatment of bladder cancer. ADCs combine the specificity of monoclonal antibodies with the potent cytotoxicity of chemotherapeutic agents, enabling targeted delivery of payloads to tumor cells while sparing healthy tissues. This unique mechanism of action has led to significant advancements in the treatment landscape, particularly for cancers that are resistant to conventional therapies (5). In bladder cancer, ADCs have demonstrated remarkable efficacy by targeting specific tumor-associated antigens, such as nectin-4 and HER2, thereby inducing tumor cell apoptosis and inhibiting metastasis. For example, Enfortumab vedotin (targeting NECTIN-4) achieved a median overall survival of 12.9 months in the EV-301 trial (vs. 9.0 months with chemotherapy) (6). Similarly, trastuzumab deruxtecan, a HER2-directed ADC, has demonstrated promising antitumor activity in HER2-expressing bladder cancer (7), offering a potential therapeutic option for this subset of patients.
Despite these promising developments, several challenges persist in the clinical application of ADCs for bladder cancer. Key issues include the durability of therapeutic responses, the management of off-target toxicities, and the heterogeneity of antigen expression across different patient subtypes (8). Moreover, the optimal integration of ADCs with existing treatment paradigms, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors and chemotherapy, remains an area of active investigation (9). Addressing these challenges is crucial for maximizing the therapeutic potential of ADCs and improving patient outcomes.
This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the current landscape of ADC-based therapies for bladder cancer, with a focus on their mechanisms of action, clinical efficacy, and safety profiles. We systematically review ongoing clinical trials, highlighting the most promising ADC candidates and their respective targets. Furthermore, we explore emerging strategies to enhance the precision and durability of ADC therapies, including the development of novel linkers, payloads, and antibody engineering techniques. By synthesizing the latest clinical data, this review aims to offer valuable insights into the future directions of ADC research and their potential to revolutionize bladder cancer treatment. Our findings underscore the importance of continued innovation in ADC technology and the need for personalized approaches to overcome the limitations of current therapies, ultimately paving the way for more effective and safer treatment options for patients with bladder cancer.