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Single amino acid swap expands nanoparticle vaccine approach to influenza viruses

Influenza viruses constantly shapeshift to evade recognition by the immune system. This shapeshifting occurs in critical proteins like hemagglutinin (HA), which controls how the virus attaches to human cells before entering them. Influenza viruses can evade immunity in two major ways: through the gradual accumulation of mutations that make HA harder for the immune system to recognize or through reassortment events that can introduce substantially different viral proteins and potentially lead to flu pandemics. To address this challenge, seasonal flu vaccines remain the primary approach because they can be developed to target the flu viruses circulating most predominantly in a given season.

Now, in a Nature Communications study published Aug. 13, 2026, scientists at Scripps Research offer a blueprint for stabilizing the various versions of influenza’s HA protein and using it to build nanoparticle vaccine candidates. Influenza is the latest target made compatible with the nanoparticle technology, specifically called self-assembling protein nanoparticles (SApNPs), which work by organizing many copies of viral proteins into clusters that the immune system can more easily recognize. This framework could eventually be applied to inform the design of next-generation vaccines across diverse flu viruses.

“Influenza HA is naturally poised to change shape by design because it needs to undergo a dramatic structural change during viral entry,” says senior author Jiang Zhu, a professor at Scripps Research. “What I’m trying to do is to find a magic trigger that, no matter what flu strains come along, mutating that trigger will make a stable antigen that can be used in a nanoparticle vaccine.”

JCI: Duke Molecular Physiology Institute, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, USA

2 Cardiovascular Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Massachusetts, USA.

3Cardiometabolic Trials Unit, Division of Endocrinology and Diabetology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.

When EGFRMutant NSCLC Becomes SCLC: Can Immunotherapy Become Relevant Again?

All included patients had histologically confirmed EGFR-mutant lung cancer followed by biopsy-proven SCLC transformation. Fifty-nine patients were identified, making this one of the larger multicenter real-world datasets examining this specific resistance phenotype.

The median age was 57.8 years, and 76.3% of patients carried an EGFR exon 19 deletion.

Most patients had initially presented with metastatic disease, and 57 of 59 had received first-line EGFR-TKI therapy. Median progression-free survival on initial EGFR-targeted therapy was 14 months, while the median interval from metastatic diagnosis to histologic SCLC transformation was 22 months.

Human model of childhood dementia from drug screen and AI

In a new study published in the prestigious Nature Communications journal, medical researchers used patient-derived brain cells grown in the lab, combined with advanced imaging and artificial intelligence, to rapidly test approved drugs and pinpoint those that improve brain cell health.

The research focused on Sanfilippo syndrome, a devastating childhood dementia that causes progressive loss of memory, behavior and physical abilities. There are currently no widely available treatments.

Sanfilippo syndrome is one of more than 100 genetic disorders that together affect 1 in 2900 children in Australia and half of all children with dementia die by the age of ten.

Gramscale bottomup flash graphene synthesis

Simple trash can be turned into the quantum material graphene which could make future cities or even new computers and so much more.

Flash Joule heating of inexpensive carbon sources is used to produce gram-scale quantities of high-quality graphene in under a second, without the need for a furnace, solvents or reactive gases.

In 2021, Berkeley Lab made a roof coating that switches at 67°C. Today, it beats existing coatings in 12 of 15 US climate zones, cutting household electricity use 10%

Installing TARC could help the average U.S. household reduce electricity consumption by up to 10 percent annually. Another advantage of TARC is its balance between cooling and heating performance, according to the research team.

Penrose’s theory of consciousness supported by new quantum evidence

Roger Penrose argued that human thought does things no computer can, so the mind must make use of non-computable quantum mechanics. The idea remains fringe. Most scientists think that in warm, wet environments like the brain, quantum states collapse into classical states far faster than neurons fire, and so cognition must be governed by classical physics. But neuroscientist Mike Wiest argues that new evidence challenges this assumption: stable quantum states are now being observed at far higher temperatures than previously thought possible. And consciousness, he suggests, has structural features that make quantum mechanics a natural place to look for an explanation, so critics should stop accusing Penrose of simply piling one mystery on top of another. The time has come to give this neglected proposal another look. I.

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