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Single Injection Transforms the Immune System Into a Cancer-Killing Machine

Despite risks, results from both trials highlight the promise of one-and-done CAR T therapy for deadly blood cancers. But it’s still early days. Scientists need to carefully follow patients over years to understand how long upgraded T cells remain in the body and their effect on cancers.

And not all viral carriers are made the same. Lentiviruses, used in both studies, can tunnel into the human genome, causing DNA typos that potentially trigger secondary cancers. The durability of the therapy, its longevity, and immune side effects also need to be studied.

Kelonia is adding more patients to their trial, amid an increasingly competitive landscape. AstraZeneca has acquired EsoBiotec to bring its technology to market. AbbVie, a drug company in Illinois, is testing the delivery of gene-editing tools to T cells via fatty nanoparticles in clinical trials. And Kelonia is planning a second clinical trial with an initial 20 patients and 20 more in an expansion phase, none of whom responded to at least three previous treatments.

New reactor produces clean energy and carbon nanotubes from natural gas

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have developed a new reactor that converts natural gas (a common energy source primarily composed of methane) into two highly valuable resources: clean hydrogen fuel and carbon nanotubes, which are ultralight and much stronger than steel.

Hydrogen is a promising green fuel because it burns completely, producing only water vapor and zero carbon dioxide. However, the way we make hydrogen today typically involves using high-pressure steam to break apart gas molecules, which releases significant amounts of CO2 as a byproduct.

To avoid this, the Cambridge team wanted to perfect a technique called methane pyrolysis, which converts methane into hydrogen and solid carbon without producing carbon dioxide. However, until now, no one has been able to perform this process efficiently enough for large-scale use because traditional reactors waste too much gas.

Aging’s Effect on Working Memory—Modality Comparison

Research exploring the impact of development and aging on working memory (WM) has primarily concentrated on visual and verbal domains, with limited attention paid to the tactile modality. The current study sought to evaluate WM encompassing storage and manipulation across these three modalities, spanning from childhood to old age. The study included 134 participants, divided into four age groups: 7–8, 11–12, 25–35, and 60–69. Each participant completed the Visuospatial Span, Digit Span, and Tactual Span, with forward and backward recall. The findings demonstrated a consistent trend in both forward and backward stages. Performance improved until young adulthood, progressively diminishing with advancing age. In the forward stage, the Tactual Span performance was worse than that of the Digit and Visuospatial Span for all participants.

Evidence for improved DNA repair in the long-lived bowhead whale

At more than 200 years, the maximum lifespan of the bowhead whale exceeds that of all other mammals. The bowhead is also the second-largest animal on Earth1, reaching over 80,000 kg. Despite its very large number of cells and long lifespan, the bowhead is not highly cancer-prone, an incongruity termed Peto’s paradox2.

Here, to understand the mechanisms that underlie the cancer resistance of the bowhead whale, we examined the number of oncogenic hits required for malignant transformation of whale primary fibroblasts. Unexpectedly, bowhead whale fibroblasts required fewer oncogenic hits to undergo malignant transformation than human fibroblasts. However, bowhead whale cells exhibited enhanced DNA double-strand break repair capacity and fidelity, and lower mutation rates than cells of other mammals. We found the cold-inducible RNA-binding protein CIRBP to be highly expressed in bowhead fibroblasts and tissues.

Bowhead whale CIRBP enhanced both non-homologous end joining and homologous recombination repair in human cells, reduced micronuclei formation, promoted DNA end protection, and stimulated end joining in vitro. CIRBP overexpression in Drosophila extended lifespan and improved resistance to irradiation. These findings provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that, rather than relying on additional tumour suppressor genes to prevent oncogenesis3,4,5, the bowhead whale maintains genome integrity through enhanced DNA repair. This strategy, which does not eliminate damaged cells but faithfully repairs them, may be contributing to the exceptional longevity and low cancer incidence in the bowhead whale.

Analysis of the longest-lived mammal, the bowhead whale, reveals an improved ability to repair DNA breaks, mediated by high levels of cold-inducible RNA-binding protein.

P53 DNA Binding Cooperativity Is Essential for Apoptosis and Tumor Suppression In Vivo

(Cell Reports 3, 1512–1525; May 30, 2013)

In the originally published paper, the CC3 panel for the +/+ sample in Figure 6E was inadvertently duplicated from the TUNEL panel of the +/RR sample during figure assembly. The authors have retrieved the correct CC3 image for the +/+ sample and assembled a corrected version of Figure 6E, which is provided below. The authors apologize for the error.

Engineering the first reusable launchpads on the moon

Engineers need good data to build lasting things. Even the designers of the Great Pyramids knew the limestone they used to build these massive structures would be steady when stacked on top of one another, even if they didn’t have tables of the compressive strength of those stones.

But when attempting to build structures on other worlds, such as the moon, engineers don’t yet know much about the local materials. Still, due to the costs of getting large amounts of materials off of Earth, they will need to learn to use those materials even for critical applications like a landing pad to support the landing / ascent of massive rockets used in re-supply operations.

A new paper published in Acta Astronautica from Shirley Dyke and her team at Purdue University describes how to build a lunar landing pad with just a minimal amount of prior knowledge of the material properties of the regolith used to build it.

Visual awareness study unlocks interplay between attention and consciousness

A new study led by Dr. Jiang Yi from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed the first clear evidence that visual awareness acts as a “conductor” that refines the speed, precision, and neural coordination of attentional rhythmic sampling.

Published in Nature Communications on Nov. 17, this study resolves a long-standing mystery about the interplay between attention and consciousness, opening new avenues for understanding cognitive function and deficits.

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