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Targeting PI3Kδ suppresses pancreatic cancer by dual disruption of fibrosis and immune evasion

In this study, we identify an unexpected and previously unrecognized role for PI3Kδ in promoting stromal fibrosis in PDAC, expanding its known function beyond immune regulation. Through mechanistic and preclinical studies, we show that PI3Kδ controls the biosynthesis of LPA in cancer cells and stromal fibroblasts, establishing an immunometabolic axis that sustains both fibrosis and immune evasion in PDAC.

Strikingly, PI3Kδ inhibition alone was sufficient to suppress tumor growth, reduce fibrosis, restore antitumor immune responses, and prolong survival across multiple PDAC models. Dual inhibition of PI3Kδ and ATX produced additive effects on stromal remodeling and immune activation, significantly enhancing responsiveness to chemotherapy and PD-1 blockade. These findings position PI3Kδ as a central regulator of the PDAC tumor microenvironment and highlight its therapeutic targeting, alone or in combination, as a promising strategy to treat PDAC.

Cell therapy offers ‘real hope’ for people living with cirrhosis

A pioneering treatment which could slow or reverse liver failure and offer a potential alternative to liver transplants has shown positive results in a medical trial.

70% of end-stage liver disease patients who were treated with macrophage cell therapy in the MATCH trial did not need a liver transplant after four years, compared with just 40% who didn’t receive the treatment.

The cell therapy takes immune cells from the patients’ blood and turns them into mature macrophages – a white blood cell – which is then re-injected back into the patient. The macrophages travel to the liver, where they break down scar tissue, reduce inflammation, and encourage the growth of healthy liver cells.

Hippocampal ripples and replay reveal how brain recombines past knowledge for flexible planning

When facing new situations or problems, humans typically rely on knowledge they acquired in the past. Specifically, neuroscience studies suggest that the brain reorganizes past experiences and previously acquired knowledge, creating mental frameworks that can help humans to solve the problems they are facing. The recombination of past knowledge into new mental structures also allows humans to flexibly plan future actions in changing environments. Past studies suggest that two key brain regions contribute to this process, the hippocampus and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).

The hippocampus is a brain structure that plays a key role in the formation of memories and spatial navigation. The mPFC, on the other hand, is known to support decision-making, planning, reasoning and the integration of information.

Researchers at Beijing Normal University, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, University College London (UCL) and other institutes recently set out to investigate how the hippocampus and mPFC work together to combine past knowledge into new configurations. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that this process is supported by brief bursts of high-frequency neural activity in the hippocampus, called hippocampal ripples, and the replay (i.e., re-activation) of past experiences in the brain.

Physicists create hybrid light-matter particles that interact strongly enough to compute

Eighty years ago, Penn researchers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly launched the age of electronic computing by harnessing electrons to solve complex numerical problems with ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose electronic computer. Today, that same architecture still underlies general computing, but electrons are beginning to show their limits. Because they carry a charge, they lose energy as heat, encounter resistance as they move through materials, and become harder to manage as chips incorporate more transistors and handle larger volumes of data.

With artificial intelligence pushing today’s hardware to process, move, and cool more, Penn physicists led by Bo Zhen in the School of Arts & Sciences are looking to the electron’s massless counterpart, the photon, to shoulder more of the load.

“Because they are charge-neutral and have zero rest mass, photons can carry information quickly over long distances with minimal loss, dominating communications technology,” explains Li He, co-first author of a paper published in Physical Review Letters and a former postdoctoral researcher in the Zhen Lab. “But that neutrality means they barely interact with their environment, making them bad at the sort of signal-switching logic that computers depend on.”

Sustainable chemistry: Iron substitutes noble metals in catalytic reactions

The production of many products used in everyday life and in industry, such as pharmaceuticals, plastics, and coatings, requires chemical catalysts, often expensive noble metals with limited availability. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are now presenting the first air-stable iron compound, which enables the direct use of iron(I) for catalysis and, unlike previous methods, does not require strong reducing agents. A first test yielded active iron catalysts.

The study, “A Simple, Air Stable Single-Ion Source of Iron(I),” is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Catalysts are required to speed up chemical reactions or even make them possible at all. The catalysts generally used in industry are noble metals, such as rhodium, iridium, or palladium. They are highly effective for many applications, but at the same time expensive and rare.

A hidden threshold enables tunable control of liquid crystal helices for energy-efficient technologies

Liquid crystals are an integral part of modern technology, ranging from displays to advanced sensory systems. In a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from the Institute of Experimental Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (IEP SAS) in Košice, in collaboration with international partners, have demonstrated how minute changes in material composition can achieve precise control over behavior in electric and magnetic fields.

The research focused on cholesteric liquid crystals, which naturally form spiral (helical) structures. These structures provide unique optical properties used in displays, smart windows, and virtual reality devices.

The team investigated how the addition of a specific substance, a chiral dopant, affects the “unwinding” process of this helix.

Single-molecule RNA mapping may reveal how shape shifts steer health and disease

Researchers from A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore (A*STAR GIS) have developed a new method to study individual RNA molecules and reveal how their structures influence gene regulation, a fundamental process that affects how cells function in health and disease. Their work was published in Nature Methods.

RNA is best known for carrying genetic instructions from DNA to make proteins. However, RNA does more than act as a messenger. Like a string that can bend, fold and interact with other molecules, RNA can adopt different shapes that affect how it behaves in the cell. These shapes can influence how efficiently proteins are produced, how long RNA molecules last, and how diseases such as viral infections progress.

Until now, studying these structures in detail has been difficult because RNA is highly flexible and dynamic. Most existing methods only provide an average picture across many RNA molecules, making it harder to see how individual RNA molecules may fold differently, even when they come from the same gene.

Exploiting interfacial ionic mobility to make heat-moldable nanoparticle aggregates

If you have ever warped a cheap plastic cup by pouring coffee into it, then you have witnessed thermoplasticity in action. Thermoplasticity is the ability of a material to become pliable under heating. In industry, thermoplasticity is exploited to form materials into complex shapes using heat. However, some materials, such as aggregates of nanoparticles, are not thermoplastic and cannot be easily processed without affecting their particle morphology and properties.

However, researchers at The University of Osaka have been able to use heat to shape nanoparticle aggregates, specifically cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) derived from wood pulp. This exciting advance, showcasing the mechanical and thermal potential of nanoparticles, is published in Science Advances.

Ultra-thin membrane enables high-efficiency hydrogen fuel cells for transport and industry

Engineers have developed a new ultra-thin membrane that allows fuel cells to operate more efficiently at high temperatures by enabling proton transport without water, overcoming a key limitation in clean energy technologies.

The breakthrough, reported in Science Advances, could expand the use of fuel cells in transport, heavy industry, and future clean energy systems.

Fuel cells convert chemical energy directly into electricity, producing water and heat as the main by-products. They are already used in hydrogen-powered vehicles, backup power systems for hospitals and data centers, and space missions where lightweight, reliable energy is essential.

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