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Inherited gene variants may shape CAR-T therapy benefits and toxic side effects

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, which reprograms an individual’s immune cells to seek out and destroy certain cancer cells, has revolutionized treatment for blood cancers such as lymphoma. But in some patients, the treatment can cause serious side effects. New research led by investigators at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has shown that patients’ inherited genetic makeup can influence whether they benefit from CAR-T cell therapy or experience toxicity from the treatment. The results are published in Science Immunology.

“These findings have important implications for understanding how CAR-T cells behave in patients since each CAR-T cell product is unique to the person from whom it is manufactured, unlike all prior forms of therapy, which are identical across patients,” said lead author Mark B. Leick, M.D., an oncologist at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute.

For the study, Leick and his colleagues sequenced the entire genomes of more than 200 patients with aggressive lymphoma from two major clinical trials of CAR-T cell therapy. In one of the trials, patients with T cells with variants that silenced the STXBP2 gene tended to experience toxicity related to CAR-T cell therapy. Also, donor T cells engineered to lack STXBP2 and/or express these STXBP2-silencing variants triggered inflammation.

Low-Frequency Ultrasound Attacks Oral Cancer Cells

When Ajay Tijore was a postdoctoral researcher in mechanobiologist Michael Sheetz’s lab at the National University of Singapore, he and his team studied how mechanical strain affected cancer cells. A few years ago, the researchers found that low-frequency ultrasound waves triggered mechanical stress that killed several invasive cancer cell types.1 “That was kind of a big revelation… Eureka moment,” said Tijore.

When he started his own lab at the Indian Institute of Science in 2021, Tijore hoped to contribute to Indian society. With India accounting for one-third of the oral cancer cases worldwide, Tijore sought to investigate whether low-frequency ultrasound could also target oral cancer cells.2

Now, Tijore and his team found that patient-derived oral cancer cells are susceptible to low-frequency ultrasound due to their distinct biomechanical properties compared to healthy cells.3 The team’s findings, published in Materials Today Bio, highlight the potential of the non-invasive approach in oral cancer therapy.

Extragalactic positron-annihilation hotspots might mean Milky Way produces far more positrons than thought

Positrons—the antimatter counterpart of electrons—are created in high-energy cosmic processes. When normal matter meets its antimatter counterpart, they annihilate, or vanish, and produce a distinctive 511 keV gamma-ray signal. Scientists use this signal to detect where these annihilations occur.

Now, 20 years’ worth of this kind of data has revealed that positron annihilations might be happening in unexpected places and at far greater rates than previously thought. The new study, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, describes how astronomers are interpreting a new positron annihilation map and whether the results represent true annihilations or just imaging artifacts.

Orbes unveils Exo-ORB and agreement with Symphony Space

SAN FRANCISCO – Southern California startup Orbes announced an agreement July 27 to send Exo-ORB, a free-flying satellite, to gather imagery of an uncrewed Symphony Space station.

Exo-ORB, which is roughly the size of a 12-unit cubesat, will launch alongside Prelude, Symphony Space’s demonstration mission, in late 2027 or early 2028. Once in orbit, Exo-ORB will move 10 to 20 meters from Symphony Space’s station to capture and downlink imagery, Orbes CEO Anna Shaposhnik told SpaceNews.

To prevent collisions, Exo-ORB will be equipped with cold gas thrusters, iodine thrusters and reaction wheels. “We have the [guidance, navigation and control] GNC in place to keep it safe,” Shaposhnik said.

Magnetic fingerprint of a cosmic explosion detected for the first time

Astronomers have made a series of landmark observations of one of the universe’s most violent events. Using the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) radio telescope, which is operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), the team detected polarized light from a gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow for the first time at radio wavelengths.

It also marks the first time scientists have detected Faraday rotation in a GRB, a phenomenon in which magnetic fields cause the polarization of light to twist as it travels through space, revealing how the magnetic environment of these explosions interacts with the light they produce. The findings, led by researchers at the University of Arizona and the University of Utah, offer a new window into the extreme physics driving these titanic explosions.

The paper has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available on the arXiv preprint server.

Daydreaming algorithm helps AI remember what matters

During the day, our brain acquires new memories; at night, during sleep, it consolidates the important ones and eliminates the useless ones. A similar principle has been applied to Hopfield networks, one of the classic models of artificial intelligence inspired by the workings of the brain. In 2025, Federico Ricci-Tersenghi and colleagues developed Daydreaming, an algorithm that combines the learning of new memories with the elimination of spurious ones, drastically improving the network’s capacity.

One limitation remained, however. These networks lose effectiveness when they work with real-world data, which are rarely perfectly balanced—for example, very bright or very dark images, in which white or black pixels overwhelmingly dominate. In a new study published in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (JSTAT), Ricci-Tersenghi and Japanese colleagues present a new version of the algorithm capable of effectively handling realistic, strongly biased data.

A “classical” neuralnetwork The networks proposed by John Hopfield in 1982—work that would earn him the Nobel Prize in 2024—consist of artificial neurons connected to one another and are among the simplest models of associative memory. “Whenever we see any tree, our brain recalls the concept of a tree. This ability to associate many different representations with the same concept is what we call associative memory,” explains Ricci-Tersenghi, professor of theoretical physics at Sapienza University of Rome and one of the authors of the new study.

CarbonationEmpowered Offshore Deep Cement Mixing Enables Undredged Land

A new study in Communications Engineering reports a construction strategy that could change how offshore reclaimed land is stabilized—using carbonation to strengthen deep cement mixing from microscopic reactions to full in-situ performance.

Conventional deep cement mixing relies on mechanically blending cement and soil, but its long-term durability in waterlogged, newly dredged environments remains a challenge. The researchers propose mixing: a process that uses carbon dioxide to drive mineral formation within the cemented soil matrix, improving both strength and stability.

At the micro-scale, carbonation converts reactive components in the cement into carbonate minerals. This reaction can refine the pore structure, reduce permeability, and bind loose particles more effectively than ordinary curing alone. In practical terms, the cement-soil composite becomes less vulnerable to water ingress and chemical attack.

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