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E= mc^2

Einstein’s famous equation has grown into one of the great symbols of the 20th century. It is the one equation in science that people recognize, if any is. It has a kind of iconic status and dual connotations: the brilliance and insight of Einstein and the darkness of atomic bombs. Images.

The basic idea behind the formula E=mc2 is easy to state. Mass and energy are really just the same thing. At first that seems impossible.

• Mass is a measure of the quantity of stuff and manifests as a resistance to acceleration. A body with little mass, like a pebble, is easy to set in motion.

Antibody-guided nanoparticles target blood cancer cells in bone marrow

New research co-led by Indiana University School of Medicine scientists presents a significant step toward more precise and effective cancer treatments by using a breakthrough method to deliver therapies directly to cancer cells. The study was recently published in ACS Nano.

“One of the biggest challenges in cancer treatment is that many drugs not only attack cancer cells but also harm healthy cells throughout the body,” said Ngoc Tung Tran, Ph.D., the study’s co-lead author and an assistant professor of pediatrics and of microbiology and immunology at the IU School of Medicine. “This can lead to serious side effects and limit how well the treatment works. Our goal is to develop a smarter way to deliver cancer therapy directly to cancer cells while avoiding normal tissues.”

In the study, researchers focused on multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that mainly grows in plasma cells found in the bone marrow. Using mouse models, they carried therapeutic molecules into cells by using a delivery system of tiny, fat-based particles called lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs.

Our brains may be automatically filtering out negative words

We tend to assume that emotionally charged words are more likely to grab our attention. An insult shouted across a crowded room or a disturbing phrase overheard on television can seem impossible to ignore. But a new study published in Psychological Science suggests the opposite may happen before words reach conscious awareness.

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that when people were focused on a visual task, they were less likely to consciously notice negative spoken words than neutral ones. The findings offer new insight into how the brain determines which information enters conscious awareness and which remains outside it.

“This study is a nice example of how our conscious intuitions regarding what we notice are not always what our unconscious is doing,” said lead author Gal R. Chen, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

UIC scientists source anti-cancer treatment in bacteria

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed an anti-cancer therapy inspired by bacteria found in cancer tumors.

When tested in combination with radiation in animal models of prostate cancer, it was highly effective — the approach effectively shut down tumor growth. The therapy is made from a fragment of a bacterial protein, a peptide called aurB. In cancer tumors in the animal models, aurB prevented energy production in the tumor cells’ mitochondria, essentially cutting off the tumor’s fuel, the researchers report in the journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy.

“The mitochondria are very important for a cell to survive; they are the energy factories,” said Tohru Yamada, senior author on the study, associate professor in the departments of surgery and biomedical engineering at UIC and a member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center. “Many cancer cells exhibit altered mitochondrial number and activity, because a cancer cell has to grow aggressively and rapidly. Therefore, the mitochondria would be an ideal target for cancer therapy.”

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Infectious Disease Surveillance, Diagnosis, and Prognosis

Advances in high-throughput technologies, digital phenotyping, and increased accessibility of publicly available datasets offer opportunities for big data to be applied in infectious disease surveillance, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome prediction. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have emerged as promising tools to analyze complex clinical and molecular data. However, it remains unclear which AI or ML models are most suitable for infectious disease management, as most existing studies use non-scoping literature reviews to recommend AI and ML models for data analysis. This scoping literature review thus examines the ML models and applications that are most relevant for infectious disease management, with a proposed actionable workflow for implementing ML models in clinical practice.

Scientists discover a two-stage aging process that may cause cancer and arthritis

Inherited genetic mutations may also stay silent for decades before increasing the risk of diseases such as cancer or fibrosis later in life.

Evolutionary Biology and Aging Research

The researchers say their model builds on long-standing evolutionary theories of aging. One influential idea is that natural selection becomes weaker later in life, allowing harmful biological processes to emerge with age because they have less impact on reproduction and survival earlier in life.

New antibody may boost KRAS-targeted lung cancer treatment after resistance emerges

An experimental antibody treatment that binds to a protein known as PCDH7 shrank tumors in preclinical models of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including those resistant to a targeted therapy, a study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers showed. The findings, published in Science Advances, could eventually lead to a new class of drugs to treat NSCLC and potentially other cancers.

“Overcoming resistance to molecularly targeted therapies is a critical unmet need for lung cancer patients. We are excited that these antibodies may open another therapeutic avenue for lung cancer, especially for patients whose cancers have become resistant to KRAS inhibitors,” said Kathryn O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular biology and a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern. O’Donnell co-led the study with first author Nicole Novaresi, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the O’Donnell Lab, and collaborators at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

NSCLC accounts for about 85% of lung cancer cases in the U.S. and is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. The O’Donnell Lab focuses on identifying and characterizing proteins on the surface of NSCLC and other cancer cells because of their potential as therapeutic targets. In 2017, O’Donnell and her colleagues identified PCDH7 as a driver of NSCLC, especially in tumors with mutations in a gene called KRAS. Found in about 25% of NSCLC cases, these mutations cause uncontrolled cell proliferation that propels tumor growth.

Novel gene therapy platform restores muscle function in Duchenne muscular dystrophy model

A new treatment platform developed by researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center was able to deliver messenger RNA (mRNA) of the full-length DMD gene into preclinical models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, successfully restoring the production of an important muscle protein, dystrophin, and dramatically improving muscle strength, endurance and function in vivo.

The study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, was co-led by Betty Kim, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurosurgery and core member of the James P. Allison Institute, and Wen Jiang, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of CNS Radiation Oncology.

The approach uses engineered extracellular vesicles (EVs)—natural nanoscale delivery particles—that offer distinct benefits over current viral-based gene therapies, including reduced side effects and the ability to transfer the entire DMD gene. The researchers engineered the EVs with special tags that directly target skeletal muscles after injection into the bloodstream.

LIS1 Is Critical for Axon Integrity in Adult Mice

Mutations in human LIS1 cause lissencephaly, a severe developmental brain malformation. Although most studies focus on development, LIS1 is also expressed in adult mouse tissues. We previously induced LIS1 knock-out (iKO) in adult mice using a Cre-Lox approach with an actin promoter driving CreERT2 expression. This proved to be rapidly lethal, with evidence pointing toward nervous system dysfunction. CreERT2 activity was observed in astrocytes, brainstem and spinal motor neurons, and axons and Schwann cells in the sciatic and phrenic nerves, suggesting dysfunctional cardiorespiratory and motor circuits. However, it is unclear how LIS1 knock-out in these different cell types contributes to the lethal phenotype.

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