Gene therapy offers the possibility of addressing cancer at its molecular roots by targeting disease-causing genes rather than relying solely on surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy. Among RNA-based strategies, microRNA (miRNA) sponges and short-hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) have emerged as promising tools to silence oncogenes and restore tumor-suppressor pathways. However, clinical application remains constrained by delivery inefficiency, instability, and off-target toxicity. Viral and non-viral vectors each present strengths and limitations: while viral vectors provide high transfection efficiency, they often cause immune responses and mutagenesis risks; non-viral ...

In November 2016, India’s government abruptly invalidated its two highest-value banknotes, wiping out about 86 percent of the nation’s cash supply overnight. Known as the Great Indian Demonetization, the move was intended to curb corruption and encourage the adoption of digital payments. The sudden shift sparked chaos. Long lines formed outside banks as people scrambled to exchange their money before it became worthless. Small business owners and street vendors, many of whom relied almost ...

An estimated 7.2 million Americans over age 65 currently live with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). That number is expected to nearly double to 13.8 million by 2060. These increases reflect more than demographic shifts; they point to a growing public health crisis that requires a new, proactive approach. While chronological age is the strongest known risk factor for cognitive decline, losing cognitive function is not an inevitable part of aging. As AD and other forms of cognitive decline continue to rise at an alarming rate, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, highlight a powerful ...

NEW YORK – September 16, 2025 – The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences are proud to announce the three Laureates and six Finalists of the 2025 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists, the Blavatnik Awards’ flagship prize that honors outstanding postdoctoral scientists from academic research institutions across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.    Honoring early-career excellence in the categories of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, ...

Scientists created the most accurate three-dimensional map of star-formation regions in our Milky Way galaxy, based on data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope. This map will teach us more about these obscure cloudy areas, and the hot young stars that shape them.   It is notoriously difficult to map and study regions in space where stars form because they are usually hidden from view by thick clouds of gas and dust, whose distances cannot be directly measured. Gaia can’t see these clouds directly, but it can measure stellar positions and the ...

It is estimated that one-third of the 50 million people worldwide with epilepsy are resistant to anti-seizure medications. These patients, having drug-resistant epilepsy, have limited treatment options beyond surgery to control their seizures. Even surgical interventions become difficult in many of these patients due to challenges in pinpointing the anatomical source of their seizures, such as the seizures originating from multiple regions of the brain. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), a treatment that involves an implanted device that delivers an electrical current directly to areas of the brain, has emerged as a promising alternative, offering partial seizure control for patients who are ...

Receptor proteins, expressed on the cell surface or within the cell, bind to different signaling molecules, known as ligands, initiating cellular responses. Taste receptors, expressed in oral tissues, interact with tastants, the molecules responsible for the sensation of taste. Bitter taste receptors (T2Rs) are responsible for the sensation of bitter taste. However, apart from oral tissue, these receptors are also expressed in the neuropod cells of the gastrointestinal tract, which are responsible for transmitting signals from the gut to the brain. Thus, T2Rs might play a crucial role in maintaining the gut-brain axis. 25 types of human T2Rs have been identified to date. However, due ...

Depression is one of the most common mental health challenges, but its early signs are often overlooked. It is often linked to reduced facial expressivity. However, whether mild depression or subthreshold depression (StD) (a mild state of depressive symptoms that does not meet the criteria for diagnosis but is a risk factor for developing depression) is associated with changes in facial expressions remains unknown. In light of this, Associate Professor Eriko Sugimori and doctoral student Mayu Yamaguchi ...

Xinting Yu, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Texas at San Antonio, is one of two recipients of the 2025 Harold C. Urey Prize. The national award from the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences recognizes early-career scientists shaping the future of space research. Yu was honored for her research in planetary and exoplanetary science — the study of planets in our solar system and beyond. Her work focuses on how planetary surfaces and atmospheres interact and evolve. By combining ...

Scientists have developed a smarter way to activate the immune system against cancer, potentially making treatments safer and more precise. The research focuses on a powerful pathway inside our cells known as STING. When triggered, STING acts like an internal alarm system, sending out signals that summon the body’s immune system to attack. Drugs that activate this pathway have shown promise in cancer therapy, but until now, they faced a major problem: if switched on in healthy tissues, they can cause harmful and sometimes dangerous side effects. To solve this problem, researchers from the University of Cambridge designed a two-part ‘prodrug’ ...

When someone has a stroke — a leading worldwide cause of death and disability — time is of the essence. Almost nine out of 10 cases are ischemic strokes, caused by restricted blood flow in the brain, and the current gold-standard treatment that breaks up blood clots must be delivered within four and a half hours of symptoms appearing.  Researchers are on the hunt for ways to extend that ticking clock and enable better stroke recovery. One promising prospect is an experimental stem cell therapy to help repair damaged brain tissue, co-developed by scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the University of ...

UNDER EMBARGO Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 05:00 a.m. ET, CLEVELAND: A large Cleveland Clinic study has found that people with obesity and type 2 diabetes who undergo weight-loss surgery live longer and face fewer serious health problems compared with those treated with GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines alone.   Patients who had weight-loss surgery (also known as bariatric or metabolic surgery) lost more weight, achieved better blood sugar control, and relied less on diabetes and heart medications over 10 years. The research is published ...

About The Study: The International Society for Vascular Behavioural and Cognitive Disorders (VasCog)-2- World Stroke Organization (WSO) criteria update the VasCog criteria for the diagnosis of vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID), providing operationalization and additional guidance on potential neuroimaging and fluid biomarkers. VasCog-2-WSO should provide an international standard for VCID diagnosis, facilitating diagnostic consistency among clinicians and researchers. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email ...

An international team led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), including scientists from the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, the University of Warwick, and the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, has launched an ambitious program to map exoplanets located around the Neptunian Desert. The goal: to better understand the formation and evolution of planetary systems. This collaboration, known as ATREIDES, has delivered its first results with the observation of the TOI-421 planetary system. Analysis of this system reveals a surprisingly inclined orbital architecture, offering new insights ...

The lentils now grown in the Canary Islands have a history that stretches back almost 2,000 years on the site. This is shown in the very first genetic study of archaeological lentils, carried out by researchers at Linköping University and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain. Since these lentils have been adapted for cultivation in hot and dry climates for a very long time, they may become valuable for plant breeding in the light of ongoing climate change. Over a thousand years ago, the indigenous people of the island of Gran Canaria used long-term storage to preserve their harvest. They dug out grain silos ...

CAMBRIDGE, England, UNITED KINGDOM, 9 September 2025 -- In a Genomic Press Interview published today in Brain Medicine, Dr. Alex Tsompanidis highlights an exciting new idea that positions the placenta at the center of human neurodevelopment and evolution, challenging conventional wisdom about the origins of autism and human cognition. The interview, part of Genomic Press's Innovators & Ideas series, captures a pivotal moment in neuroscience as researchers worldwide recognize pregnancy biology as fundamental to understanding brain diversity across all human populations. Revolutionary Framework Reshapes Global Understanding Dr. Tsompanidis, honored as one of Spectrum magazine's ...

If you think a galaxy is big, compare it to the size of the Universe: it’s just a tiny dot which, together with a huge number of other tiny dots, forms clusters that aggregate into superclusters, which in turn weave into filaments threaded with voids—an immense 3D skeleton of our Universe. If that gives you vertigo and you’re wondering how one can understand or even “see” something so vast, the answer is: it isn’t easy. Scientists combine the physics of the Universe with data from astronomical instruments and build theoretical models, such as EFTofLSS (Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure). ...

Philadelphia, September 16, 2025 – Novel research shows that in approximately one third of countries and territories worldwide, population aging was the largest contributor to the growing burden of musculoskeletal disorders from 1990 to 2021. The new study in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, published by Elsevier, is poised to inform targeted public health strategies and healthcare resource allocation to alleviate the global burden and economic impact of these disorders. Musculoskeletal disorders—conditions ...

As cancer evolves, the demand for intelligent therapeutics that integrate energy conversion, metabolic interference, and immune activation intensifies. Now, researchers from Harbin Engineering University and Harbin Normal University, led by Professor Piaoping Yang, Professor Lili Feng, and Professor Wei Guo, have delivered a comprehensive study on biodegradable Cu2MnS3-x-PEG/glucose oxidase (MCPG) nanosheets that realize triple-modal cell death. This work offers a blueprint for next-generation nanotherapies that break the “resistance ceiling” of single-mechanism treatments. Why MCPG Matters Energy Conversion: MCPG harvests 1064 nm NIR-II photons, ...

In August 2017, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) launched the Major Research Plan “Dynamic Modifications and Chemical Interventions of Biomacromolecules” (implementation period 2017–2025). Through interdisciplinary research that integrates chemistry, life sciences, medicine, mathematics, materials science, and information science, its aim is to develop specific labeling methods and detection techniques for dynamic chemical modifications of biomacromolecules, elucidate the recognition mechanisms and biological functions of dynamic ...

NEW YORK AND NAPLES, FL – September 15, 2025 – The Cardiovascular Research Foundation® (CRF®) and Jon DeHaan Foundation today announced the launch of the TCT AI Lab, a groundbreaking new program debuting at TCT® 2025, October 25–28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The TCT AI Lab is a first-of-its-kind destination dedicated to integrating artificial intelligence into clinical practice. Over three intensive days, clinicians will progress from the fundamentals of AI to hands-on clinical applications – guided by leading innovators ...

Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby campus is once again home to Canada’s most powerful academic supercomputer, following the installation of a new system, named Fir. The new Fir system replaces the Cedar supercomputer, housed at the Cedar Supercomputing Centre (the Centre) at SFU. Fir is ranked number 78 in the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, the only Canadian system in the top 100 worldwide. “The new Fir supercomputer represents a much needed, major upgrade to the national Canadian computing infrastructure,” says ...

Modern ‘sustainable’ innovations in architecture are failing to slow climate change,  but revisiting ancient knowledge and techniques found in traditional architecture could offer better solutions. This is the argument of architectural historians Professor Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder in their new book Form Follows Fuel: 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age. The authors argue that energy availability has been the biggest influence in architecture throughout human history. Their extensive ...

Copenhagen, Denmark: A major study of laser correction for short-sightedness shows that the procedure is as safe and effective in older teenagers as it is in adults, according to research presented today (Tuesday) at the 43rd Congress of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS). [1]   Short-sightedness, or myopia, affects around a third of children and teenagers and research suggests that it is becoming more common.   A laser treatment, called photorefractive keratectomy (PRK), is widely used to treat myopia in adults but questions remain over its use in teenagers.   The new study was presented by Dr Avinoam Shye, from the Department of Ophthalmology ...

New research being presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Vienna, Austria (15-19 September) shows that some individuals who are taking Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro find that foods taste sweeter or saltier than before. About one in five of those participating in the real-word study, published in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, perceived sweetness more intensely and a similar number were more sensitive to salt – and these changes were linked to a reduction in appetite. “Incretin-based therapies such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are widely used for weight management ...