Scientists have discovered that fasting for just 24 hours increases a beneficial gut bacterium that helps the intestines regenerate after radiation damage. The preclinical findings could pave the way for new treatments that protect healthy tissue during cancer therapy, potentially without requiring patients to fast.
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Microbiome therapy shows promise for preventing deadly bloodstream infections in early trial
Researchers at City of Hope and collaborators have pioneered a new approach to preventing dangerous bloodstream infections in patients receiving donor stem cell transplants for blood cancers. The first-of-its-kind therapy delivers 16 carefully selected beneficial bacteria designed to restore the microbiome and fight harmful pathogens.
In the multicenter phase 1 clinical trial, scientists from City of Hope, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Seres Therapeutics found that the new therapy, called SER-155, was well tolerated with no treatment-related side effects. Patients who received the therapy also had fewer bloodstream infections and lower levels of harmful bacteria linked to infection.
The Seres Therapeutics–sponsored study, published in Nature Medicine, provides early evidence that live biotherapeutics—medicines made from beneficial bacteria—can be safely delivered to highly vulnerable patients and may help prevent serious infections, said senior author Marcel van den Brink, M.D., Ph.D., City of Hope chief physician executive and the Morgan and Helen Chu Presidential Chair of City of Hope National Medical Center.
Childhood cancer cells shape-shift to spread without genetic mutations
Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UK) have proposed an explanation for why some childhood tumors spread aggressively around the body despite having relatively few genetic faults.
For years, experts believed cancers become more dangerous by accumulating genetic mutations that allow them to invade new tissues and evade treatment.
But a new paper published today shows how childhood cancers may not always need extra mutations to spread.
Modified zinc finger protein reduces brain plaques in Alzheimer’s mice
A KAIST-led research team has found that a protein involved in gene regulation can suppress the harmful aggregation of amyloid-beta, a peptide associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The approach also reduced the toxicity of protein aggregates that had already formed. In experiments using a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, the treatment reduced protein accumulation in the brain and improved recognition memory, suggesting a possible route toward new therapeutics.
KAIST (President Choongsik Bae) announced on November 5 that the research team led by Professor Mi Hee Lim from the Department of Chemistry identified a new approach to controlling the aggregation and toxicity of amyloid-beta. The study was conducted in collaboration with Professor Seung Jae Lee’s team in the Department of Chemistry at Jeonbuk National University, Dr. Chul-Ho Lee and Dr. Kyoung-Shim Kim of the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), Dr. Young-Ho Lee of the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI), and Dr. Jiyong Park of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS).
One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is the abnormal aggregation and accumulation of amyloid-beta in the brain. Toxic aggregates formed during this process can damage nerve cells. The team sought to suppress this harmful aggregation and reduce the toxicity of existing aggregates.
Do AI agents have minds? A philosopher explains
Agentic AI systems are not conscious – not even maybe.
Caltech robot makes history by building a structure in space
For the first time, a robot has successfully assembled part of a structure in space without astronauts, demonstrating a technology that could dramatically change how large spacecraft and scientific instruments are built.
The robotic system was developed by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It is part of DARPA’s Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program, an initiative exploring ways to manufacture and assemble enormous structures directly in space.
Rather than relying on astronauts to connect individual pieces, the robot uses an automated arm to retrieve structural tubes and connecting joints from nearby storage dispensers. It then joins the components into repeating sections, called bays, that form a larger supporting framework known as a truss.
The fastest levitated spinning magnet ever made might help physicists search for dark matter
Tiny levitated magnets are able to avoid contact friction, making them useful for detecting extremely weak forces and magnetic fields and acting as ultralow-noise quantum sensors and precision measurement tools. Combining levitation with extreme cold further reduces unwanted motion that can make faint signals hard to detect.
Spinning magnets have even better magnetic sensitivity, but levitated micromagnet experiments have so far mainly studied back-and-forth motion, rather than continuous spinning. And experiments with spinning magnets have thus far stayed in the macroscopic realm, with magnets around half a millimeter in diameter.
But now, researchers report the first experiments with a levitated spinning micromagnet, and this tiny magnet is much faster than the macroscopic version. The new study, published in Science Advances, describes how this microscopic rotor achieved record-breaking rotational speed and how it’s already helping in the search for dark matter particles.
Fabric molds could bring material-saving concrete beams within reach
Topology optimization is a computer design method that can help engineers design beams using reduced amounts of concrete and steel. But those intricate shapes produced from the tool are often too complex or expensive to pour into conventional rigid molds. The few that have been built have mostly relied on specialized equipment, such as concrete 3D printers or machine-carved molds, equipment that is out of reach in regions where new construction is expected to grow.
Now, MIT engineers have shown that highly efficient beams can be cast in something more accessible: sewn fabric. In a paper published in the Journal of Building Engineering, the team designed and built a 3-meter (about 10-foot) test beam using fabric molds created through an automated pattern-making process. Compared with a conventional beam designed to carry the same weight, the optimized beam used about one-third as much concrete and half as much steel reinforcement. When tested, its measured response was within about 2% of what the team’s computer model predicted.
Fabric formwork, in which concrete is poured into a mold made of textile, has been explored for years to create beams that vary in depth, rather than the rectangular shapes common in construction. But because fabric deforms under the weight of wet concrete, that flexibility has made the final shape hard to predict.
A single AI model simulates the behavior of many substances, from sliding sand to folding proteins
Today, a scientist who wants to simulate a physical process must pick the right tool for that one job, such as a solver built for flowing water or another designed to model the way a protein folds. Each one is hand-coded around the specific equations that dictate how that process behaves.
Researchers at MIT, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and elsewhere have now replaced that patchwork with a single deep-learning system, called WorldParticle, that could help engineers model different physical phenomena, from sliding sand to folding proteins, with one unified artificial intelligence architecture.
Scientists and engineers could use this system to model processes that typically require separate simulators, such as a fluid sloshing against a deformable solid. This could offer a faster, more accurate way to simulate how sloshing oil might impact an elastic valve in a storage tank, for instance. It could also help engineers study where and how granular materials, like sand or soil, could move when a soft robot touches them.
α-Ketoglutarate Promotes Hepatic Steatosis by Enhancing Cidec Stability via Lactylation–Ubiquitination Crosstalk
(AKG), a key tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediate, is widely consumed as a dietary supplement by healthy individuals for its perceived anti-aging and performance-enhancing benefits. While its antidiabetic and anti-obesity effects have been reported under pathological conditions, the safety profile and mechanisms of long-term AKG intake in healthy animals remain largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that long-term AKG intake via food or drinking water markedly elevates hepatic triglyceride levels and induces steatosis in healthy mice by suppressing adipose triglyceride lipase (Atgl) activity. The lipid-droplet-associated protein, cell death-inducing DNA fragmentation factor 45-like effector C (Cidec), is an inhibitor of Atgl. We find that AKG stabilizes Cidec by attenuating tripartite-motif protein 21-mediated ubiquitination.