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Category: biotech/medical – Page 9

Insilico Medicine AI Drug Rentosertib Cuts Biological Age on Six Independent Protein Clocks

Didn’t say by how much unless I skimmed over it.

Not proven yet. The study found a coordinated shift in blood proteins associated with younger predicted biological age in treated IPF patients. It cannot prove the drug reversed the aging process itself, because all study participants had IPF — a disease that alters the very protein patterns the clocks are trained on. The critical next test, which Nobel laureate Michael Levitt explicitly named, is a trial in healthy volunteers without IPF. If the biological age signal persists in people without the disease confound, the case for systemic geroprotective activity becomes substantially stronger. The ongoing Phase III trial in IPF (320 patients, 47 centers in China) is designed to assess lung function, not aging per se — but its larger sample may provide additional proteomic data over a longer time horizon.

What makes rentosertib different from other longevity drugs like rapamycin or metformin?

Rapamycin, metformin, and the senolytic combination dasatinib plus quercetin are repurposed drugs: they were developed for other indications (organ transplant, diabetes, and cancer, respectively) and discovered through subsequent research to interact with aging-relevant pathways. None was designed with aging biology as the primary specification. Rentosertib was. Insilico’s AI platform scored TNIK — the drug’s molecular target — against the 12 hallmarks of aging framework, found it relevant to six hallmarks, and designed a molecule specifically to inhibit it. That makes rentosertib, if its geroprotective effects are confirmed in further studies, the first drug created from scratch specifically for the biology of aging to produce a clinical signal in humans.

A single IV treatment retrains immune cells to fight autoimmune diseases in early trial

CAR T-cell therapy is an immune-reprogramming procedure that turns a patient’s own immune cells into cancer-fighting specialists. The entire process is complex, but researchers have now found a faster way to achieve similar effects using a single intravenous (IV) drip of a harmless engineered virus.

Scientists discover cells that cheat death and rebuild damaged tissue

Scientists discovered a population of cells that can start the process of programmed cell death, survive it, and then help rapidly rebuild damaged tissue. Their descendants become far more resistant to future damage, revealing a mechanism that could improve healing but may also help cancers return after treatment.

Longitudinal dynamics of gene expression and metabolomics in an aging population cohort

Multiomic profiling provides a comprehensive physiological overview at the molecular level, but understanding of its spatiotemporal dynamics remains limited in human populations. We profiled longitudinal whole-blood gene expression and metabolite levels in 335 females over 8 years. Levels of 5,061 genes and 181 metabolites changed over time, with individual trajectories often diverging from population-level trends. Longitudinally variable genes showed cell type specificity and enrichment for aging-relevant pathways, including cardiometabolic and neurodegenerative disorders. Longitudinal trajectories were further shaped by genetics, circadian rhythm, seasonality, and environmental pollutant exposures. Integrative analyses revealed extensive static and time-variable cross-omic connectivity.

Group raises awareness of brain aneurysm signs as survivor shares story

Brain aneurysms can be fatal and sometimes debilitating, and, in most cases, there are not many ways to prevent them. But a local group is working to raise awareness about the warning signs and symptoms.

For Carly Nunn, surviving a brain aneurysm has been a long road.

“I was very, very scared, afraid, not knowing what was happening,” Nunn said.

Eight years ago, Nunn was a college student at the University of Cincinnati when she began to feel something was wrong.

“I started feeling kind of off and weird, and it eventually led to me losing all feeling in the right side of my body,” she said.

Nunn said her roommate, a nursing student, acted quickly to get her medical help.

Continue reading “Group raises awareness of brain aneurysm signs as survivor shares story” | >

Life uses 4 DNA letters. Scientists just made 8 work

Researchers at UC San Diego have demonstrated that a key cellular enzyme can accurately read an eight-letter genetic alphabet, doubling the four letters used by all known life on Earth. Detailed imaging revealed that RNA polymerase handles synthetic DNA letters in surprisingly similar ways to natural ones. The finding brings scientists closer to building expanded genetic systems that could perform entirely new biological functions.

Decoding the DNA switches behind gene regulation

Understanding gene regulation may be key to interpreting human disease genetics. Genes are regulated in part by stretches of DNA called enhancers, which define when, where and how strongly each gene is turned on. Mapping enhancers and how they function in specific cell types is necessary for understanding gene regulation and disease-related genetic variants. But the location and activity of enhancers are highly cell type-specific, making it difficult to accurately predict enhancer–gene interactions.

In recent years, researchers have developed several computational models to predict enhancer–gene regulatory interactions using measurements of chromatin state and three-dimensional contacts.

These models have produced enhancer–gene maps spanning hundreds of cells and tissues. However, these methods remain limited, and confirming their accuracy is difficult because the necessary experiments have been done in only a handful of cell types.

Chemists overturn 40-year assumption about a key class of superconductors

Scientists at Warwick have shown that a material treated for 40 years as a uniform, textbook superconductor is in fact a patchwork of different crystal structures throughout its bulk, using an advanced 3D imaging technique to see deep inside the crystal for the first time.

High-temperature superconductivity is widely regarded as one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the past 40 years. It promises technologies built on electricity that flows with zero resistance and magnets far more powerful than anything possible today, and it underpins research into future power grids, medical scanners and quantum computers.

The study, published in Physical Review Letters and led by researchers in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick working with the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France, looked inside a type of superconductor called a cuprate, a copper-based material that can carry electricity with no resistance at unusually high, though still very cold, temperatures.

Using sound waves to turn iron and water into magnetic nanoparticles

Iron rusts on its own, slowly, over months or years. Now, researchers at Tohoku University have found a way to compress the process of metal reacting with water to form oxide, taking mere hours and using nothing more than ultrasound. Details were published in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry.

Spinel-type iron oxide nanoparticles are widely used in magnetic materials, adsorbents, catalysts, magnetic separation and biomedical research. Conventional synthesis methods typically start with soluble iron salts, which are then converted into particles using chemicals such as ammonia or sodium hydroxide.

The Tohoku University team took a different approach, generating the nanoparticles directly from iron powder and water activated by ultrasound.

Diamond quantum sensors can detect heart magnetism at room temperature without skin contact

Physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have developed a technology that uses quantum sensors to measure biomagnetic signals, such as heart activity. Researchers from the DIAQNOS (DIAmond-based Quantum Sensing for NeurOSurgery) flagship project, coordinated by Dr. Arne Wickenbrock in Mainz, have demonstrated the potential of quantum technology for future medical applications.

To this end, researchers in the group led by Dr. Dmitry Budker—a member of the PRISMA++ Cluster of Excellence and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz—used nitrogen vacancies (NV) in diamonds, as reported in an article in the journal Science Advances.

Muhib Omar, a doctoral student in Budker’s research group and the coordinating author of the article, developed the new quantum sensor during his doctoral research.

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