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Category: biotech/medical – Page 496

Wireless antennas harness light to decode cellular communication signals

Monitoring electrical signals in biological systems helps scientists understand how cells communicate, which can aid in the diagnosis and treatment of conditions like arrhythmia and Alzheimer’s.

But devices that record electrical signals in and other liquid environments often use wires to connect each electrode on the device to its respective amplifier. Because only so many wires can be connected to the device, this restricts the number of recording sites, limiting the information that can be collected from cells.

MIT researchers have now developed a biosensing technique that eliminates the need for wires. Instead, tiny, wireless antennas use light to detect minute electrical signals.

Discovery of enzyme pathway may lead to lifesaving leishmaniasis treatments

A breakthrough in understanding how a single-cell parasite makes ergosterol (its version of cholesterol) could lead to more effective drugs for human leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that afflicts about 1 million people and kills about 30,000 people around the world every year.

The findings, reported in Nature Communications, also solve a decades-long scientific puzzle that’s prevented drugmakers from successfully using azole antifungal drugs to treat , or VL.

About 30 years ago, scientists discovered the two species of single-cell parasites that cause VL, Leishmania donovani and Leishmania infantum, made the same lipid sterol, called ergosterol, as fungi proven susceptible to azoles antifungals. These azoles antifungals target a crucial enzyme for sterol biosynthesis, called CYP51.

Calling for Reinforcements: A New Way to Recruit Immune System Helpers Could Lead to Better Flu Vaccines

Each year, flu causes hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of hospitalizations worldwide. Although the best way to protect against serious illness is annual vaccination, the influenza vaccine’s effectiveness is far from perfect. In the past decade, CDC estimates of flu vaccine effectiveness have ranged from a low of 19% to a high of 48%, spurring calls for development of more effective flu vaccines. Now, NIH-funded researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have taken a new approach to crafting flu vaccines that resulted, both in mice and human tonsil tissue, in a more broadly protective immune response compared to currently available flu vaccines. The studies were led by Mark M. Davis, Ph.D., and the findings appeared in Science.

The trouble with current vaccines

Currently, flu vaccines are formulated annually to contain up to four strains of human influenza virus that are predicted to circulate widely in the coming season. For example, the 2024–2025 seasonal flu vaccine contains two strains of the influenza viurs A subtype and one of influenza virus B subtype. Each virus strain includes a viral protein called hemagglutinin (HA) that the virus uses to attach to and enter human cells. The immune system recognizes and responds to components of a virus or a vaccine—the antigens—by generating protective antibodies and T cells. On exposure to the flu virus, a subset of flu-specific T cells, called CD4+ helper T cells, provides signals to generate and activate antibody-producing B cells. Ideally, a swarm of HA-matched antibodies is produced following vaccination and will protect the vaccinated person from infection by flu virus strains represented in that year’s vaccine.

Antiviral Medication Use Is Associated With Reduced Dementia Risk: Amy Proal, PhD

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Scientists Have Finally Cracked the Code of Cellular Communication

Researchers at UC San Diego have developed SMART, a software package capable of realistically simulating cell-signaling networks.

This tool, tested across various biological systems, enhances the understanding of cellular responses and aids in advancing research in fields like systems biology and pharmacology.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) have developed and tested a new software tool called Spatial Modeling Algorithms for Reactions and Transport (SMART). This innovative software can accurately simulate cell-signaling networks — the intricate systems of molecular interactions that enable cells to respond to signals from their environment. These networks are complex due to the many steps involved and the three-dimensional shapes of cells and their components, making them challenging to model with existing tools. SMART addresses these challenges, promising to accelerate research in fields such as systems biology, pharmacology, and biomedical engineering.

AI-powered algorithm enables personalized age transformation for human faces

Researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Maryland recently developed MyTimeMachine (MyTM), a new AI-powered method for personalized age transformation that can make human faces in images or videos appear younger or older, accounting for subjective factors influencing aging.

This algorithm, introduced in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server, could be used to broaden or enhance the features of consumer-facing picture-editing platforms, but could also be a valuable tool for the film, TV and entertainment industries.

“Virtual aging techniques are widely used in (VFX) in movies, but they require good prosthetics and makeup, often tiresome and inconvenient for actors to wear regularly during shooting,” Roni Sengupta, the researcher who supervised the study, told Tech Xplore.

Scientists Have Discovered a Cancer “Fingerprint,” Revolutionizing Early Detection

Different types of cancer have distinct molecular “fingerprints” that can be identified in the early stages of the disease with remarkable accuracy. Small, portable scanners can detect these fingerprints within just a few hours, according to a study published today in Molecular Cell.

Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona made this breakthrough, paving the way for non-invasive diagnostic tests that could identify various types of cancer more quickly and at earlier stages than current methods allow.

The study centers around the ribosome, the protein factories of a cell. For decades, ribosomes were thought to have the same blueprint across the human body. However, researchers discovered a hidden layer of complexity – tiny chemical modifications which vary between different tissues, developmental stages, and diseases.

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