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Category: biotech/medical – Page 52

New AI tool maps the hidden universe of small molecules

The human body and its gut microbiome produce thousands of small molecules that shape how the body functions—influencing immunity, metabolism and more. Identifying what those molecules actually are has been one of the biomedical sciences’ most persistent bottlenecks. More than 80% of compounds detected in a typical biological sample cannot be matched to any known structure using current methods.

Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) and Cornell University have developed a tool that begins to change that. AIMe, short for AI Molecule Explorer, uses a form of artificial intelligence called neuro-symbolic AI to predict, organize and search the mass spectra of more than 100 million known small organic molecules—effectively building a vast searchable map of chemical space that can accelerate hypothesis generation and compound identification.

The work is a collaboration between Frank Schroeder, professor at BTI and in Cornell’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Carla Gomes, professor of computing and information science and director of Cornell’s AI for Science Institute.

Ultrafast electrons and lasers reveal unexpectedly strong radiation signals in common semiconductors

Detecting radiation is key to technologies ranging from particle accelerators and scientific instruments to medical imaging and security screening. But current detectors must often make trade-offs, providing signals that are strong but slow or fast but weak. The trade-off between signal strength and speed can limit precision detection.

In new research, Stanford University researchers worked with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on a unique experimental setup to detect radiation across a range of materials.

What they found surprised them. Not only did the researchers observe an unexpectedly strong ultrafast radiation signal, they also found that the charge within the materials acted differently than expected.

Tau’s Surprise Birthplace Offers a Clue to How Alzheimer’s Tangles Begin

Two groundbreaking studies have fundamentally challenged established paradigms of Alzheimer’s disease progression by revealing previously unrecognized mechanisms of neurodegeneration. First, researchers from Columbia University overturned long-held assumptions about the tau protein, discovering that it is produced locally in neuronal dendrites rather than migrating from axons as previously believed, suggesting that neurotoxic tau accumulation can originate directly at the synaptic level. Second, a concurrent study from Washington University in St. Louis demonstrated that the destructive immune response exacerbating brain damage is initiated outside the central nervous system; the harmful T-cells found in the brain are actually activated and instructed by peripheral dendritic cells located in lymph nodes and other extraneural tissues. Together, these paradigm-shifting discoveries identify localized dendritic tau production and peripheral immune system modulation as critical new drivers of Alzheimer’s pathology, significantly expanding our understanding of the disease and opening novel avenues for therapeutic intervention.

In healthy neurons, tau proteins are normally concentrated in axons, the long projections that transmit signals. In Alzheimer’s disease, tau accumulates in the cell body and dendrites and clumps together into filaments and tangles. The prevailing explanation has been that mature axonal tau detaches from microtubules and redistributes into these compartments. Many researchers are trying to find ways to block the travel of tau to prevent or treat the disease.

But the new study, published in Nature Neuroscience, proposes a very different explanation for tau’s presence in the dendrites: The proteins are born there.

Using a new imaging technique the researchers developed to pinpoint the birthplace of any protein (read more about the technique below), Ramachandran’s team found that tau proteins are synthesized solely in a neuron’s dendrites.

T Cell Therapy Shows Promise in Treating Aggressive Brain Cancer

Furthermore, the researchers observed that in over half of the participants, the tumors stopped growing or reduced in size for as long as three years post-treatment—including one participant whose cancer has remained to this day in complete remission. B7-H3-targeting CAR-T cell therapy could bring new hope to patients living with treatment-resistant recurrent glioblastomas who currently have few, if any, options, the team says.

“We are excited about figuring out how to treat currently untreatable cancers,” says Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, United Technologies Corporation Professor in Cancer Research and professor of immunobiology and of medicine at Yale School of Medicine and one of the study’s co-principal investigators.

Collaborators on the study included a neurosurgical team at Beijing Tiantan Hospital led by Nan Ji, MD, and a team led by Gangxiong Huang, MD, at Tcelltech, a biotech company preparing clinical grade CAR-T cells.