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Blog – Page 26

Lung cancer is the major cause of cancer death worldwide. Cancer immunotherapy has been introduced as a promising and effective treatment that can improve the immune system’s ability to eliminate cancer cells and help establish immunological memory. Nanoparticles can contribute to the rapidly evolving field of immunotherapy by simultaneously delivering a variety of immunological agents to the target site and tumor microenvironment. Nano drug delivery systems can precisely target biological pathways and be implemented to reprogram or regulate immune responses. Numerous investigations have been conducted to employ different types of nanoparticles for immunotherapy of lung cancer. Nano-based immunotherapy adds a strong tool to the diverse collection of cancer therapies. This review briefly summarizes the remarkable potential opportunities for nanoparticles in lung cancer immunotherapy and its challenges.

Humankind’s quest to defeat cancer continues by developing targeted treatments. Among the frequently used cancer treatments with significant improvements are chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and combinations of them. However, these strategies have various limitations; for instance, although surgery offers the best outcome for cancers detected at early stages, this approach often falls short for cancers detected at late stages which have already spread throughout the body. Furthermore, chemotherapy has low specificity, drug-induced side effects, and drug resistance, and has shown higher cancer relapse rates similar to radiation therapy (Velpurisiva et al., 2017; Doroudian et al., 2020; Niloy et al., 2021; Anconina et al., 2022; Hosseinkazemi et al., 2022). As a result, researchers were encouraged to make use of the human body’s own defense system as a tool to fight cancer.

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Chinese firm Xpeng announced its plans to mass-produce flying cars and humanoid robots by next year.

He Xiaopeng, XPeng Motors’ chairman and CEO, stated that if the project remains on track, XPeng could be the first company to mass-produce flying cars globally, reports a Chinese online daily.

The company’s Iron humanoid robot is now in use at the EV maker’s Guangzhou factory, and it plans to start mass-production. By 2026, humanoid robots with entry-level Level 3 capabilities in the country are expected to enter moderate-scale commercial production, Xiapeng added.

Chinese EV maker XPeng aims to mass-produce flying cars and humanoid robots, with Level 3 robots set for commercial production by 2026.

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Immunotherapy boosts a person’s own immune system to identify and fight cancer cells that normally evade its defenses.

However, like traditional cancer treatments, immunotherapy may cause or exacerbate cognitive decline, especially in older adults. Because this treatment is much newer than chemotherapy or radiation, these potential side effects have not yet been widely studied.

Gee Su Yang, assistant professor at the UConn School of Nursing, has received a $60,000 CRISP (Clinical Research Innovation Seed Program) Award from the Office of the Vice President for Research to conduct a pilot study of how immunotherapy impacts cognitive function in older cancer patients.

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Empa researchers are working on artificial muscles that can keep up with the real thing. They have now developed a method of producing the soft and elastic, yet powerful structures using 3D printing. One day, these could be used in medicine or robotics – and anywhere else where things need to move at the touch of a button.

A team of researchers from Empa’s Laboratory for Functional Polymers is working on actuators made of soft materials. Now, for the first time, they have developed a method for producing such complex components using a 3D printer. The so-called dielectric elastic actuators (DEA) consist of two different silicone-based materials: a conductive electrode material and a non-conductive dielectric. These materials interlock in layers. “It’s a bit like interlacing your fingers,” explains Empa researcher Patrick Danner. If an electrical voltage is applied to the electrodes, the actuator contracts like a muscle. When the voltage is switched off, it relaxes to its original position.

3D printing such a structure is not trivial, Danner knows. Despite their very different electrical properties, the two soft materials should behave very similarly during the printing process. They should not mix but must still hold together in the finished actuator. The printed “muscles” must be as soft as possible so that an electrical stimulus can cause the required deformation. Added to this are the requirements that all 3D printable materials must fulfill: They must liquefy under pressure so that they can be extruded out of the printer nozzle. Immediately thereafter, however, they should be viscous enough to retain the printed shape. “These properties are often in direct contradiction,” says Danner. “If you optimize one of them, three others change … usually for the worse.”

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Green hydrogen, produced through renewable energy sources, is considered a crucial element in the transition towards a cleaner energy future. However, current production methods are costly and energy-intensive, limiting their widespread adoption.

This new reactor uses photocatalytic sheets to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using a process powered entirely by sunlight. This innovative process has the potential to drastically reduce production costs and make green hydrogen a more economically viable fuel source.

While the technology is still in its early stages, the researchers have successfully operated the prototype reactor for three years under natural sunlight, demonstrating its potential for real-world applications. Despite the promising results, the researchers acknowledge that further improvements are needed. Enhancing the efficiency of the photocatalytic process and ensuring the safe handling of potentially explosive byproducts are crucial steps towards commercialization.

The team remains optimistic that with continued research and development, this technology can revolutionize green hydrogen production and pave the way for a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. This breakthrough is particularly important for Japan, a country actively pursuing a “hydrogen society” and leading the way in hydrogen fuel technology. It could also accelerate the transition towards a hydrogen-based economy and contribute to global efforts in combating climate change.

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Did you know that up to 20% of people with lung cancer have never smoked?

Sherlock-Lung is a comprehensive study that uses genomic approaches to trace the causes of lung cancer among people who have never smoked.

Sherlock Lung is a genomic epidemiologic study of lung cancer in never smokers conducted by researchers in DCEG.

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Histone proteins provide essential structural support for DNA in chromosomes, acting as spools around which DNA strands wrap. These proteins have been well studied, but most current tools to study gene expression rely on RNA sequencing. Histone RNA is unique in that its structure prevents the RNA molecules from being detected by current methods.

Thus, the expression of histone genes may be significantly underestimated in tumor samples. The researchers hypothesized that the increased proliferation of cancer cells leads to a very elevated expression, or hypertranscription, of histones to meet the added demands of cell replication and division.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers used CUTAC profiling to examine and map RNAPII, which transcribes DNA into precursors of messenger RNA. They studied 36 FFPE samples from patients with meningioma – a common and benign brain tumor – and used a novel computational approach to integrate this data with nearly 1,300 publicly available clinical data samples and corresponding clinical outcomes.

In tumor samples, the RNAPII enzyme signals found on histone genes were reliably able to distinguish between cancer and normal samples.

RNAPII signals on histone genes also correlated with clinical grades in meningiomas, accurately predicting rapid recurrence as well as the tendency of whole-arm chromosome losses. Using this technology on breast tumor FFPE samples from 13 patients with invasive breast cancer also predicted cancer aggressiveness.

Using a new technology and computational method, researchers have uncovered a biomarker capable of accurately predicting outcomes in meningioma brain tumors and breast cancers.

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