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Pan-disease atlas maps molecular fingerprints of health, disease and aging

A new study has mapped the distinct molecular “fingerprints” that 59 diseases leave in an individual’s blood protein, which could enable blood tests to discern troubling signs from those that are more common.

As now published in Science, an international team of researchers mapped how thousands of proteins in human blood shift as a result of aging and serious diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular and .

The Human Disease Blood Atlas also reveals that each individual’s blood profile has a unique molecular fingerprint, which changes through childhood and stabilizes in adulthood. This provides a baseline for comparison that could one day use to flag early deviations.

Forget hair transplants — a laser that reactivates follicles is the latest trend in hair-loss care

Hair transplants have exploded in popularity in recent years — so much so that flights returning from Turkey packed with men sporting freshly transplanted hairlines have become a meme. And the stigma surrounding the once-taboo procedure is lessening.

In August, John Cena said his recent hair transplant “completely changed the course of my life.” While effective, transplants are still surgeries that require thousands of dollars, time off work, and a multi-week recovery process.

However, FoLix, the first FDA-cleared fractional laser of its kind, administered in-office by a provider, offers men and women a surgery-free way to help with their hair loss. Dermatologists say that the new treatment, which began appearing in clinics over the past year, could be a game changer for patients who may not like the daily regimen of pills or the invasiveness of hair transplant surgery.

Dr. Aliza Apple, Ph.D. — VP, Catalyze360 AI/ML and Global Head, Lilly TuneLab, Eli Lilly

Accelerating Promising Biotech Innovation — Dr. Aliza Apple, Ph.D. — Vice President, Catalyze360 AI/ML and Global Head, Lilly TuneLab, Eli Lilly and Company.

Dr. Aliza Apple, Ph.D. is a Vice President of Catalyze360 AI (https://www.lilly.com/science/partners/catalyze-360 and Global Head of Lilly TuneLab (https://tunelab.lilly.com/) at Eli Lilly where she leads the strategy, build and launch of Lilly’s external-facing AI/ML efforts for drug discovery.

Lilly Catalyze360 represents a comprehensive approach to enabling the early-stage biotech ecosystem, agnostic of the therapeutic area, designed to accelerate emerging and promising science, strategically removing barriers to support biotech innovation.

In her previous role at Lilly, Dr. Apple served as the COO and head of Lilly Gateway Labs West Coast, where she supported the local biotech ecosystem through early engagement and providing tailored offerings to meet their needs.

Prior to Lilly, Dr. Apple served as a co-founder at Santa Ana Bio, a venture-backed precision biologics company focused on autoimmune disease, and as an advisor to the founders of Firefly Biologics.

Continue reading “Dr. Aliza Apple, Ph.D. — VP, Catalyze360 AI/ML and Global Head, Lilly TuneLab, Eli Lilly” | >

AI2 Incubator launches $80M fund as it doubles down on real-world AI applications in Seattle and beyond

The Seattle-based startup organization — known for spinning out companies at the intersection of AI and real-world applications — has closed an $80 million third fund to support about 70 new tech ventures over the next four years.

Programmable proteins use logic to improve targeted drug delivery

Targeted drug delivery is a powerful and promising area of medicine. Therapies that pinpoint the exact areas of the body where they’re needed—and nowhere they’re not—can reduce the medicine dosage and avoid potentially harmful off-target effects elsewhere in the body. A targeted immunotherapy, for example, might seek out cancerous tissues and activate immune cells to fight the disease only in those tissues.

The tricky part is making a therapy truly “smart,” where the medicine can move freely through the body and decide which areas to target.

Researchers at the University of Washington have taken a significant step toward that goal by designing proteins with autonomous decision-making capabilities. In a proof-of-principles study published in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers demonstrated that by adding smart tail structures to , they could control the proteins’ localization based on the presence of specific environmental cues.

Antarctic Ocean of the last ice age reveals how a critical process of CO₂ storage may slow again

Off the coast of Antarctica, the sea ice retreated toward the southernmost continent and, like a bottle cap taken off a soda bottle, that reduced pressure slowed down a process of critical carbon dioxide capture, dramatically accelerating the warming of the planet.

But all that happened thousands of years ago, one of the death knells of the last ice age.

And yet, the sea ice of our own age is also retreating, so it’s critical that we understand these oceanic processes that have such a profound effect on the globe.

Data-driven fine-grained region discovery in the mouse brain with transformers

Defining the spatial organization of tissues and organs like the brain from large datasets is a major challenge. Here, authors introduce CellTransformer, an AI tool that defines spatial domains in the mouse brain based on spatial transcriptomics, a technology that measures which genes are active in different parts of tissue.

A radiotheranostic approach designed to combat aggressive cancers

UCLA scientists, together with a team of international collaborators, have identified a promising new treatment strategy that can detect, kill and reprogram aggressive, treatment-resistant tumors like osteosarcomas and glioblastoma.

The findings, published in the journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, describe a novel approach that uses a specially engineered antibody, called DUNP19, to target a protein called LRRC15 that is found on the surface of certain aggressive and the supportive stroma cells surrounding them. By pairing the antibody with radioactive particles, scientists can both visualize tumors for precise imaging and deliver targeted radiation therapy directly to cancerous tissue, while sparing healthy tissues.

When tested in mice, the LRRC15-targeted radionuclide therapy effectively slowed , extended survival, and altered the to make it more receptive to an .

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