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Category: biotech/medical – Page 4

How the body remembers the tumor?

While we tend to quickly forget having been ill or having received a vaccine, the immune system remembers remarkably well. It has memory B cells – “trained” immune cells that circulate throughout the body in search of harmful invaders they have encountered previously; these cells can rapidly deploy targeted weapons when faced with a pathogen again. Now, researchers report that activated memory B cells can also recognize an internal enemy: cancer cells.

In patients with ovarian cancer, the researchers identified memory cells that are capable of homing in on the tumor, springing into action and producing effective antibodies against it. The new study, whose findings were published in Immunity, advances the development of vaccines and therapies based on immune memory against cancer.

The immune system’s arsenal contains hundreds of millions of B cell clones, each producing a unique antibody against a specific pathogen. These antibodies are proteins that identify their target and either neutralize it or recruit other immune cells to attack it. When a clone encounters its target for the first time, its antibody binds weakly and elicits a limited response. But some of these cells enter “training camps” – structures called germinal centers in the lymph nodes – where they undergo genetic changes and rigorous selection, emerging with much more effective antibodies. Some of these trained cells immediately become active antibody producers; others develop into memory cells that remain inactive, circulating between the blood and the lymph nodes, but able to rapidly snap into action if the body is exposed again to the pathogen.

Brain tumor map finds immune cell states that may predict meningioma recurrence

One of the most detailed maps to date of meningioma—the most common brain tumor in adults—reveals how the tumor’s surrounding environment helps drive disease behavior and patient outcomes, according to new research from Mayo Clinic.

The study, published in Nature Genetics and conducted in collaboration with scientists at Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto, combines several advanced laboratory techniques to examine tumors at an unprecedented level of detail, offering clues to why some meningiomas grow slowly while others recur or become more aggressive. The findings could lead to more precise ways to predict risk and guide treatment decisions.

Growing evidence suggests that traditional grading systems for meningioma do not fully capture the behavior of these complex tumors, prompting the development of molecular classification tools that more accurately predict which tumors are more likely to recur after surgery.

Faster biological aging consistently linked to poverty and discrimination

The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrates that social inequality, such as poverty and racism, is related to biological aging measured in the epigenome, also known as “epigenetic clocks.” Epigenetic clocks analyze patterns of chemical marks on DNA to estimate a person’s biological age or the rate at which their body is aging. These tools are increasingly used by scientists to study how environmental exposures, lifestyle and social conditions affect health across the life course.

Previous individual studies have shown that epigenetic clocks are sensitive to socioeconomic and racial or ethnic disparities. However, because multiple types of epigenetic clocks exist, it has remained unclear which measures best capture the effects of social determinants of health, at which stages of life socioeconomic exposures most affect epigenetic aging, and whether associations differ by sex or by technical factors such as the tissue in which epigenetic data are collected. This study integrates findings across many independent studies, offering a comprehensive test of whether these associations are consistent and robust.

Rare-earth-free zinc oxide achieves a first in stress-to-light conversion

Mechanoluminescent materials convert mechanical energy such as stress, strain and vibration directly into light, making them attractive as self-powered sensors that require no batteries or wiring. From biomedical sensors to self-powered infrastructure monitoring sensors, mechanoluminescent materials have a wide range of potential applications. However, high-performance mechanoluminescent materials have traditionally relied on expensive rare-earth materials or complex material compositions.

Now, a research team led by Tohoku University, in collaboration with the University of Tsukuba and Saga University, has developed a zinc oxide (ZnO) material that exhibits strong, highly sensitive mechanoluminescence without using any rare-earth elements.

The newly developed material combines high sensitivity with low cost by using zinc oxide, an earth-abundant material already found in products such as sunscreens, cosmetics and ointments.

Parkinson’s medication shows promise in treating treatment-resistant depression

For many people who suffer from depression, the condition is not just about feeling down but also about a loss of motivation and difficulty finding pleasure in activities they used to enjoy. A new study conducted in Sweden shows that a medicine used to treat Parkinson’s disease can be used as an add-on therapy to alleviate these symptoms in some patients with treatment-resistant depression. The study has been published in Nature Medicine.

The researchers at Lund University and the psychiatric services in Region Skåne have identified the potential new therapy for the condition associated with depression that involves a reduced ability to feel joy, pleasure or motivation—known as anhedonia. Those affected may lose interest in things that they previously found meaningful or rewarding.

The study is an example of what is known as drug repurposing, whereby an already approved medicine is used to treat a different condition. In this study, the researchers investigated pramipexole, which has long been used to treat Parkinson’s disease, as an add-on therapy for depression with marked anhedonia.

Popular joint pain supplement might increase Alzheimer’s risk, study says

A popular over-the-counter supplement taken for joint pain might increase people’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease, a new study says.

Glucosamine use is associated with a 25% higher odds that a person will progress from mild cognitive impairment to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, researchers report in the journal Nature Metabolism.

“While it’s an association and not proof of causality, it does raise an important clinical question that now deserves much more attention,” researcher Matt Gentry said in a news release. He’s chair of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Florida.

Respiratory Viruses Wake Up Dormant Cancer Cells

Cancer remission, in which tumor cells enter a dormant state and a patient’s symptoms subside, can persist for years or decades.1 Both the cancer cells themselves and the tumor microenvironment maintain this period of inactivity.2 While inflammation has been shown to disrupt this microenvironment, leading to metastasis, the mechanisms of this process remain unclear.

Seeing a trend in increased cancer deaths in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, cancer biologists Julio Aguirre-Ghiso at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and James DeGregori at the University of Colorado suspected that viral infections could be activating dormant cancer cells. In partnership with researchers at Utrecht University, the teams showed that inflammation from viral infections activated dormant cancer cells and increased metastasis.3 The findings, published in Nature, provide important insights into cancer remission for clinicians.

“Dormant cancer cells are like the embers left in an abandoned campfire, and respiratory viruses are like a strong wind that reignites the flames,” DeGregori said in a press release about the study findings.

Faulty protein cleanup gene tied to severe early-onset neurological disorders

Though protein clumps associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s were discovered more than a century ago, researchers remain largely unable to prevent them from forming or eliminate them from the brain. And though a variety of therapies have taken aim at tau tangles, beta-amyloid plaques and Lewy bodies, among other notorious aggregates, none have been very effective at stopping disease progression.

Rockefeller’s Hermann Steller and his team in the Strang Laboratory of Apoptosis and Cancer Biology have long been focused on understanding how the cell’s protein-degrading machines, called proteasomes, are regulated. His lab discovered that a transporter protein termed PI31 shuttles proteasomes over long distances from the nerve cell body to synapses. When this system fails, synapses become depleted of degradative capacity, and proteins that should have been eliminated accumulate. As a result, synaptic communication breaks down, protein clumps form and neuronal health deteriorates.

Now a new study in Nature Communications, led by researchers from University College London and contributed to by Steller’s lab, has identified mutations in PSMF1, the gene that produces PI31, that cause the protein to malfunction. Moreover, the scientists demonstrated that these mutations cause a spectrum of severe, very early-onset neurological disorders.

A Supplement For Joint Pain Could Accelerate Alzheimer’s Memory Loss

People with Alzheimer’s disease who took the common supplement glucosamine were 25% more likely to die within five years than those who didn’t.

That’s the key finding of a new study that my colleagues and I published in the journal Nature Metabolism.

Glucosamine is a sugar molecule that’s sold over the counter as a remedy for joint pain and arthritis. More than 40 million Americans take it each year.

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