Category: biotech/medical – Page 44
We finally have a more natural method to kill cancer.
A study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suggests that a vitamin K precursor, menadione, may offer a highly targeted way to kill prostate cancer cells.
Unlike traditional treatments that push cancer into dormancy, menadione acts as a pro-oxidant, disrupting a key lipid called PIP. This lipid helps cells manage waste, and without it, cancer cells become overwhelmed and ultimately burst.
The study, published in Science, demonstrated significant tumor suppression in both mice and human cancer cells. Researchers believe this method could offer a safer and more definitive resolution for prostate cancer while minimizing the risk of resistance.
Beyond cancer, menadione also shows promise in treating X-linked myotubular myopathy, a severe genetic muscle disorder. Importantly, menadione’s safety profile appears favorable, as it is commonly used in animal feed to support vitamin K production.
The findings suggest that menadione could be especially beneficial for prostate cancer patients under active surveillance, potentially delaying or even preventing progression.
With low side effects and a highly selective approach, this research offers new hope for effective, minimally invasive cancer treatment options.
To mimic the conditions of the human brain, the researchers opted not to use a mouse model for MS, instead advancing a model that uses the marmoset, a nonhuman primate. Compared to mouse brains, marmoset and human brains have a higher ratio of white matter (the “wires” of the brain) to gray matter (neuronal cell bodies). The marmoset model creates multiple lesions that closely resemble those seen in human MS and that can be tracked in real time using MRI imaging. Because these lesions can be induced experimentally, the model offers a look at the earliest stages of inflammation and immune responses that lead to MS-like demyelination.
One key player identified was a specific type of astrocyte, one of the support cell types in the brain, that turns on a gene called SERPINE1 or plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI1). They found SERPINE1-expressing astrocytes in vulnerable brain borders before visible damage occurs, clustering near blood vessels and the fluid-filled ventricles of the brain and signaling future areas of lesion development. These astrocytes also appeared to influence the behavior of other cells near the lesion area, including the ability of immune cells to enter the brain and contribute to inflammation, as well as the precursor cells involved in myelin repair.
Given that SERPINE1-expressing astrocytes accumulated at the edges of growing lesions, where damage happens but healing also begins, their potential dual role in coordinating signals that could lead to either tissue repair or further damage was an unexpected wrinkle that will require further study. It’s possible that the earliest responses could be a part of a protective mechanism that becomes overwhelmed as the injury progresses. It’s also possible that the same mechanism could itself become disease-causing.
Using an animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers have created a four-dimensional brain map that reveals how lesions similar to those seen in human MS form. These findings, published in Science, provide a window into the early disease state and could help identify potential targets for MS treatments and brain tissue repair.
The researchers combined repeated MRI imaging with brain-tissue analysis, including gene expression, to track the onset and development of MS-like lesions. They uncovered a new MRI signature that can help detect brain regions at risk for damage weeks before any visible lesions occur. They also identified “microenvironments” within affected brain tissue based on observed patterns of neural function, inflammation, immune and support cell responses, gene expression, and levels of damage and repair.
“Identifying the early events that occur after inflammation and teasing apart which are reparative versus which are damaging, can potentially help us identify MS disease activity sooner and develop treatments to slow or stop its progression,” said the author.
The discovery of a mini aurora above a light-emitting polymer material reveals an electron-ejection process that might be useful in field-emission displays and material fabrication.
Auroras occur in the night sky when charged solar-wind particles, such as protons and electrons, are deflected by Earth’s magnetic field and interact with molecules in the atmosphere. Researchers have now found an aurora-like emission coming from a light-emitting polymer [1]. The surprising display consisted of flashes of green light above the polymer surface. The researchers explained the emission as the result of electrons being ejected from the polymer and interacting with a vapor of organic molecules. The discovery suggests that these polymers might be useful as electron emitters for applications such as spectroscopy, medical technology, and lithography.
Jun Gao from Queen’s University in Canada is amazed by auroras, and he’s even gone out on cold nights to look for them. But he was not prepared for the aurora that showed up in his lab two years ago. He and his student at the time, Dongze Wang, were testing failure modes for polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells, or PLECs, used in light sources and display devices. These cells are organic semiconductors that are electrochemically doped on one side to have excess electrons (making an n-type semiconductor) and on the other side to have electron deficiencies, or holes (making a p-type semiconductor). Electrons crossing the p – n boundary can fill holes and produce red light.
No evidence for ‘wind turbine syndrome’ claims: Windmill noise is no more stressful than traffic sounds, study suggests
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A team of cognitive neuroscientists and acoustic engineers at Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poland, has found no evidence that wind turbine noise causes mental impairment. In their study, published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communication, the group conducted experiments exposing human volunteers to various noises and measured a range of impacts.
Over the past several years, several groups and individuals around the world, most particularly in the U.S., have conceived of the idea of something called “wind turbine syndrome”—a theory that suggests noise from windmills can cause mental illness, or other health problems such as cancer. To date, such claims have not been backed up by research or any other type of proof. In this new effort, the research team in Poland sought to find out if there is any merit to the theory.
The researchers recruited 45 students at a local university who listened to various noises while wearing devices that measured their brainwaves. The researchers intentionally chose young volunteers because prior research has shown they are more sensitive to noise than older people.
Scientists Have Discovered Shocking Amounts of Microplastics in the Brain — And It Could Be Increasing Our Risk of Dementia
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The brain has higher concentrations of plastic particles compared to other organs, with increased levels found in dementia patients.
In a comprehensive commentary published in Brain Medicine, researchers highlight alarming new evidence of microplastic accumulation in human brain tissue, offering critical insights into potential health implications and prevention strategies. This commentary examines findings from a groundbreaking Nature Medicine article by Nihart et al. (2025) on the bioaccumulation of microplastics in the brains of deceased individuals.
The research reveals that human brains contain approximately a spoonful of microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs), with levels three to five times higher in individuals with documented dementia diagnoses. Even more concerning, brain tissue exhibited MNP concentrations seven to thirty times higher than those found in other organs, such as the liver or kidneys.
The brain’s ability to process information is known to be supported by intricate connections between different neuron populations. A key objective of neuroscience research has been to delineate the processes via which these connections influence information processing.
Researchers at the University of Padova, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the contribution of excitatory and inhibitory neuron populations to the brain’s encoding of information. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, show that information processing is maximized when the activity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons is balanced.
“Our research was inspired by a fundamental question in neuroscience: how does the structure of the brain shape its ability to process information?” Giacomo Barzon, co-author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “The brain continuously receives and integrates sensory inputs, and neurons do not act in isolation—they are part of complex, recurrent networks. One particularly intriguing feature of these networks is the balance between the activity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, which has been observed across different brain regions.”
New study from Wenxing Qin, Yuran Duan, Zhiqiang Hu, Yueru Hou, Daqian Xu and colleagues (Zhejiang University School of Medicine) unveils a novel mechanism by which the metabolic enzyme PCK1 hinders cGAS-STING activation by competitively consuming GTP, consequently fostering tumor immune evasion.
This study unveils a novel mechanism by which the metabolic enzyme PCK1 hinders cGAS-STING activation by competitively consuming GTP, consequently fosterin.
Analysis of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) is commonly used for molecular profiling in patients with advanced-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The authors of this Review summarize the available evidence on the potential utility of incorporating ctDNA in the management of those with early stage and locally advanced NSCLC and propose interventional studies to provide the necessary additional evidence.
Measurement of CSF flow and brain motion in Chiari malformation type I subjects undergoing posterior fossa decompression surgery
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Radiologically, Chiari malformation type I (CM-I) is characterized by cerebellar tonsil herniation of at least 5 mm through the foramen magnum. In symptomatic cases, posterior fossa decompression (PFD) surgery is often performed and improves symptoms in approximately 75% of patients. However, the surgery involves risks, and identifying which candidates will benefit from surgery is important. It has previously been shown that the amount of tonsillar descent does not correlate with symptom severity or surgical outcomes. The authors hypothesized that using advanced neuroimaging methods to directly measure CSF flow and brain motion will give insights regarding which patients have the greatest likelihood of cerebral dynamic improvements from surgery.
Here, the authors evaluated 108 CM-I patients (age 19–70 years), 61 of whom underwent PFD surgery. The authors used phase-contrast MRI to measure CSF flow/stroke volume and cine displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) imaging to measure brain motion, with a goal to predict postsurgical cerebral dynamic improvements from presurgical images.
The authors found that CSF stroke volume increased after PFD surgery by 28.9% (p = 0.014), brainstem motion decreased after surgery by 17.3% (p = 0.002), and cerebellum motion decreased 45.2% (p < 0.001). Notably, the amount of CSF flow increase after surgery had no relationship to tonsillar descent (R = 0.059, p = 0.767) but did relate to the amount of presurgical CSF flow (R = −0.518, p = 0.005). Likewise, improvements to brain motion were better predicted by the amount of presurgical motion (brainstem, R = −0.638, p < 0.001; cerebellum, R = −0.878, p < 0.001) than by tonsillar descent (brainstem, R = −0.312, p = 0.093; cerebellum, R = −0.620, p < 0.001).