MIT Media Lab researchers developed injectable nanoantennas, called HITMAN, that are magnetically activated to generate localized electric fields targeting drug-resistant brain cancer tumors. Preclinical studies showed HITMAN eliminated 52 percent of glioblastoma cells and extended survival by 50 percent with no side effects.

A few years ago, scientists saw something surprising in the brain tissue of people who died with Alzheimer’s disease: white blood cells that multiply in response to foreign threats and are seldom seen inside healthy brains.

Whether these so-called CD8+ killer T cells, which normally target infected cells in the body, were there to harm or help was unclear. An answer began to emerge in 2023, when a team led by neuroscientist David Holtzman showed that in mice bred to overexpress tau—a toxic protein that builds up in the neurons of people with Alzheimer’s and several other neurodegenerative diseases—getting rid of the T cells stemmed tissue loss and preserved the mice’s cognition, even as tau kept building up.

Now, the same group has explored what prompts these cells to wreak havoc in the brain. In a mouse study published last week in Nature Neuroscience, Holtzman and immunology researcher Hao Hu, both at Washington University in St. Louis, report that immune cells in the lymph nodes of the neck instruct the T cells to clone themselves before they enter the brain. Without them, the mice had far fewer cloned T cells inside their brains and experienced less neurodegeneration. The study is “beautiful work,” says neuroscientist Kenneth Kosik of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies tau but was not involved in the research. It also suggests that existing drugs, developed for other conditions, might work in Alzheimer’s by shielding the brain from the destructive cells.

The University of Michigan is getting a $10 million boost to research and expand the use of histotripsy, a medical advance pioneered on the Ann Arbor campus that uses precisely targeted ultrasound waves to destroy cancerous tumors without damaging surrounding tissue.

Already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat liver tumors, U-M leaders say the money will be used to advance the technology and research so histotripsy could become a future treatment option for people with kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, brain tumors, hemorrhagic stroke, blood clots, epilepsy and more.

“Michigan is at its best when our brightest minds connect to tackle the most consequential challenges of our time,” said U-M President Domenico Grasso during a Sept. 10 news conference, announcing the $10 million donation from multiple sources, including the university’s engineering department, private donors and HistoSonics, the U-M startup that commercialized the technology.