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Category: biotech/medical – Page 4

A research team affiliated with UNIST has unveiled a novel extracorporeal blood purification technology that captures and removes bacteria from the bloodstream by leveraging sticky, clot-like surfaces. This breakthrough could pave the way for new treatments against deadly systemic infections, including sepsis, even those caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The work is published in Advanced Science.

Led by Professor Joo H. Kang, from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST, the research team announced the development of an innovative extracorporeal bacterial purification device that utilizes artificial blood clots. Similar to dialysis, the technique involves extracting infected blood outside the body, adsorbing bacteria onto artificial thrombi, and then returning the purified blood to the patient.

The newly developed extracorporeal blood purification device (eCDTF) features a spiral structure inserted into the central tube. Inside this spiral, artificial blood clots are embedded, which attract and trap bacteria flowing through the tube. Composed solely of without any cellular components like , these artificial thrombi facilitate effective bacterial adhesion to the device’s surface.

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Scientists have uncovered a critical role for rapid DNA repair in maintaining genome stability. A new study reveals that repair of double-strand breaks (DSBs) in nuclear DNA in plants serves as a powerful safeguard against the integration of foreign DNA from chloroplasts—a phenomenon that, while important for evolution, can be highly destabilizing to the genome. The research expands our knowledge about plant genome evolution and also has relevance to the medical field.

The findings, presented by Dr. Enrique Gonzalez-Duran and Prof. Dr. Ralph Bock from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Nature Plants, shed new light on endosymbiotic gene transfer (EGT)—an ongoing evolutionary process in which genes from organelles such as chloroplasts and mitochondria are relocated into the nuclear genome.

While successful gene transfers help the nucleus to better coordinate its function with that of the organelles, they also pose risks: Mutations arising from DNA insertion can disrupt essential nuclear genes and provoke harmful rearrangements.

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Researchers have identified how variations in a gene called TRIO can influence brain functions and result in distinct neurodevelopmental diseases. The study, published in the journal eLife, could pave the way for future therapeutic developments.

TRIO encodes a diverse group of proteins that control the function and structure of the cytoskeleton—a cell’s internal scaffolding. Rare damaging variants in this gene have been identified in individuals with , , schizophrenia, and related disorders. However, the mechanisms underlying the associations aren’t yet understood.

“It’s really extraordinary that different variants in this can have such dramatically different effects on and function,” says Anthony Koleske, Ph.D., Ensign Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and the study’s senior author.

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From river-clogging plants to disease-carrying insects, the direct economic cost of invasive species worldwide has averaged about $35 billion a year for decades, researchers said Monday.

Since 1960, damage from non-native plants and animals expanding into new territory has cost society more than $2.2 trillion, more than 16 times higher than previous estimates, they reported in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The accelerating spread of —from mosquitoes to to tough-to-eradicate plants—blights agriculture, spreads disease and drives the growing pace of species extinction.

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Putting hypersensitive quantum sensors in a living cell is a promising path for tracking cell growth and diagnosing diseases—even cancers—in their early stages.

Many of the best, most powerful quantum sensors can be created in small bits of diamond, but that leads to a separate issue: It’s hard to stick a diamond in a cell and get it to work.

“All kinds of those processes that you really need to probe on a , you cannot use something very big. You have to go inside the cell. For that, we need nanoparticles,” said University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Ph.D. candidate Uri Zvi. “People have used diamond nanocrystals as biosensors before, but they discovered that they perform worse than what we would expect. Significantly worse.”

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Wenzhou Medical University researchers have reimagined the spleen as a viable site for islet transplantation, enabling long-term diabetes control without the burden of full immunosuppression. Nanoparticle-driven spleen remodeling allowed transplanted mouse, rat, and human islets to restore normal blood sugar in diabetic rodents and cynomolgus macaques.

In type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys native beta cells, the housed within pancreatic clusters called islets of Langerhans. Islet transplantation transfers these clusters from donor pancreases into the portal vein of the recipient’s liver, where they settle in the hepatic microvasculature. Once in place, they resume insulin secretion to reduce or eliminate injections and restore .

Liver-based transplantation has significant drawbacks. Immune attack, low oxygen tension, and the rigidity of hepatic tissue often destroy most transplanted islets within hours. Upward of 70% of cells are destroyed before engraftment, forcing reliance on multiple donors per recipient and blunting therapeutic success.

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In recent years, scientists discovered something strange: When mice with Alzheimer’s disease inhale menthol, their cognitive abilities improve.

It seems the chemical compound can stop some of the damage done to the brain that’s usually associated with the disease.

In particular, researchers noticed a reduction in the interleukin-1-beta (IL-1β) protein, which helps to regulate the body’s inflammatory response – a response that can offer natural protection but one that leads to harm when it’s not controlled properly.

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