Scientists at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and their collaborators are exploring emerging trends in cancer immunotherapy, with back-to-back review articles published in Nature Cancer and Trends in Cancer that look at how nanotechnology could reprogram the immune system and help overcome tumors’ defenses. Both papers highlight how nanoengineering strategies are emerging as powerful tools to address limitations of current immunotherapies, particularly in ...

In addition to strengthening the muscles, lungs, and heart, regular physical exercise also strengthens the immune system. This finding came from a study of older adults with a history of endurance training, which involves prolonged physical activity such as long-distance running, cycling, swimming, rowing, and walking. An international team of researchers analyzed the defense cells of these individuals and found that “natural killer” cells, which patrol the body against viruses and diseased cells, were more adaptable, less inflammatory, and metabolically more efficient. The research, which was supported by FAPESP ...

Calm red brocket deer can learn to "Come" and other commands - but the flightiest, most restless individuals struggle Article URL: http://plos.io/46CkgPw Article title: Assessing the impact of the reactivity of red brocket deer (Mazama americana) on training efficiency Author countries: Brazil Funding: This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior -Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.The founders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. ...

China, the world's largest tea producer, is predicted to experience increases in land suitable for tea-growing under climate change, with the overall range shifting northwards, per AI modeling study Article URL: http://plos.io/4murlYk Article title: Prediction of changes in suitable habitats for tea plants in China’s four major tea-producing regions based on machine learning models Author countries: China Funding: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42061004), the Yunnan Agricultural Infrastructure ...

Simulation results highlight how team composition shapes stress, health, performance, and cohesion in long-duration space missions, according to a study published October 8, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Iser Pena and Hao Chen of the Stevens Institute of Technology, U.S. In particular, team diversity in personality traits may contribute to greater resilience under extended isolation and operational load. Missions to Mars are expected to last up to three years, putting astronauts at risk of cumulative stress resulting ...

During warmer periods of the Middle Pleistocene, ancient humans in Italy were in the habit of butchering elephants for meat and raw materials, according to a study published October 8, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Beniamino Mecozzi of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy and colleagues. Ancient humans used animal carcasses for meat and other resources, but direct evidence of butchery is sparse and can be difficult to identify in the archaeological record. In this study, Mecozzi and colleagues describe the remains ...

Analysis of preserved feces and intestinal tissue has revealed specific types of bacteria that were present in the microbiome of a young adult man who lived in Mexico about 1,000 years ago, prior to Spanish colonization. Santiago Rosas-Plaza of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on October 8, 2025. The human gut microbiome consists of microorganisms, including bacteria, that naturally live in people’s intestines. ...

Bears and pandas in captivity develop significantly different gut microbiomes compared to their wild counterparts, and giant pandas in particular have less diverse microbiomes than their wild counterparts Article URL: http://plos.io/4pL5D5p Article title: Captivity-driven microbiota reshaping: A cross-species analysis of divergent patterns in the gut microbiota of giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), red pandas (Ailurus fulgens), and Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus) Author countries: China Funding: This work was ...

Prenatal and postnatal support apps might not work: parents experienced little to no benefit on rates of postnatal depression, anxiety, infant bonding, breastfeeding, parenting satisfaction, or sense of social support, per systematic review.   Article URL: https://plos.io/489vrBI Article Title: Effects of perinatal mobile apps for couples on psychosocial and parenting outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis Author Countries: Peru Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.   END ...

Combing through 20 years of images from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft, scientists have tracked 1039 tornado-like whirlwinds to reveal how dust is lifted into the air and swept around Mars’s surface. Published on Wednesday 8 October in Science Advances, their findings – including that the strongest winds on Mars blow much faster than we thought – give us a much clearer picture of the Red Planet’s weather and climate. And with these ‘dust devils’ collected into a single public catalogue, this research is just the beginning. Besides pure science, it will be useful for ...

Despite the very thin Martian atmosphere, there are also winds on Mars that are central to the climate and the distribution of dust. The wind movements and the whirling up of dust also create so-called dust devils, rotating columns of dust and air that move across the surface. In images of Mars, the wind itself is invisible, but dust devils are clearly visible. Due to their movement, they are valuable indicators for researchers to determine the otherwise invisible winds. A new study led by Dr. Valentin Bickel from the Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern shows that the dust devils and the winds that surround ...

(CAMBRIDGE, MASS.) October 08, 2025 – A new study led by Break Through Cancer’s Accelerating Glioblastoma (GBM) Therapies Through Serial Biopsies TeamLab has revealed that an engineered virus therapy, CAN-3110, triggered powerful immune responses deep inside glioblastoma tumors that were invisible to standard imaging like MRI, according to early analyses of two patients with recurrent GBM. Published today in Science Translational Medicine, the research highlights the TeamLab’s innovative approach of combining serial brain biopsies (tiny pieces of brain tissue removed while a patient ...

A multi-institutional study from the Accelerating GBM Therapies Through Serial Biopsies TeamLab, led by investigators from the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, found that serially testing tumor samples can help detect when a cancer treatment is activating the immune system in recurrent glioblastoma (GBM), even when traditional imaging measures cannot. Their results are published in Science Translational Medicine.   GBM is the most aggressive type of brain cancer, known for growing and spreading quickly. It is challenging to treat and almost always comes back. But it can be hard to understand ...

Advanced colon cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in young American men and the second highest worldwide. In the majority of these patients, as the cancer advances it metastasizes to the liver. Despite progress in surgical therapies aimed at eradicating the cancer, many of these patients will have tumor recurrence in the liver. Now, researchers from UC San Francisco (UCSF), have discovered that a novel combination of immunotherapies can reprogram the immune environment of colon cancer tumors that spread to the liver. In preclinical models, this therapy often eliminated tumors entirely, offering a potential new path for ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The trade of totoaba has all the intrigue of a crime thriller. Dollars and drugs change hands as a criminal cartel vies against the government. Communities and endangered species are caught in the crosshairs of a lucrative illicit trade. It may then come as a surprise that the totoaba is a fish. The totoaba is a large, yet unassuming, species of fish native to the Gulf of California. But its mundane appearance belies incredible value on the black market. “Totoaba swimbladder can sell for up to $80,000 USD per kilogram ...

When the Norwegian company that manufactures the Safeback SBX device which is already on the market, approached Eurac Research to have it independently tested, it was clear that the international research team led by physician and researcher Giacomo Strapazzon would publish the results of the study in any case, regardless of the outcome. For the researchers, the experiment posed a significant challenge, as many participants were completely buried in snow, raising concerns that over two-thirds might require urgent excavation. The volunteer group – composed entirely of enthusiastic ski mountaineers, roughly half of them women – ranged from ...

Acute or short-lived pain, despite its bad reputation, is usually a lifesaver. It acts as a transient negative sensory experience that helps us avoid danger. Touch a hot stove, stub a toe, or bonk your head on a low branch, and the nervous system cues up an “Ow!” Over time, the sting fades, the wound heals, but the lesson sticks. Chronic pain is different; the alarm keeps blaring long after the fire is out, and then the pain itself becomes the problem. Nearly 50 million people in the United ...

  According to a study by researchers at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), time-restricted feeding can have a positive impact on athletes in terms of both their health and performance. The effects of time-restricted eating – where food intake is permitted within a restricted window ranging from 3-4 to 10-12 hours – have been widely studied in the general population, where they have been shown to increase life expectancy, but there is little evidence on its positive effects on high-performance athletes. The study – "Effect of time-restricted feeding ...

New Curtin University research has found the impact of bushfires and prescribed burns on global bee populations is highly varied, with some species benefiting from fire while others face severe risks.   The study, led by Adjunct Research Fellow Dr Kit Prendergast from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, examined 148 studies from around the world to understand how fire impacts bees.   The review considered the severity, frequency and duration of fires, along with the different characteristics of bees, such as where they ...

Forming sustainable research partnerships with Indigenous peoples requires trust and mutual benefit, say microbiome researchers in an opinion paper publishing October 8 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Microbiology. The paper presents a framework for building this type of relationship based on insights from the team’s 15-year-long collaboration with the Matsés, a group of people who live in the Amazon rainforest on the border of Peru and Brazil. To build trust, the researchers worked in collaboration with the Matsés through all stages of the research project, from developing research methods to disseminating results.  “Establishing genuine partnerships with ...

Engineered polymers hold promise for use in next generation technologies such as light-harvesting devices and implantable electronics that interact with the nervous system – but creating polymers with the right combination of chemical, physical and electronic properties poses a significant challenge. New research offers insights into how polymers can be engineered to fine-tune their electronic properties in order to meet the demands of such specific applications. “Silicon-based electronics have been around for decades, and we have a thorough understanding of the electronic properties of materials used in those technologies,” says Aram Amassian, co-corresponding author of ...

New research has revealed that about 90 percent of marine aquarium fish sold by online retailers in the United States are sourced directly from wild populations, mostly in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean. With the US accounting for around two-thirds of all global aquarium fish imports, researchers warn that this reliance on wild capture threatens the sustainability of coral reef ecosystems and puts endangered and threatened species at greater risk of extinction. The research, led by postdoctoral research associate Dr Bing Lin from the University of Sydney’s Thriving Oceans Research Hub in the School of Geosciences, analysed data from four major US-based online aquarium ...

About The Study: Current minimum case volume standards for complex surgical procedures, based on older volume outcome studies, do not align with contemporary practice. These findings demonstrate that volume-outcome curves have changed, with fewer cases needed to meet benchmark 30-day mortality over time. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nabil Wasif, MD, MPH, email wasif.nabil@mayo.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2025.17274) Editor’s Note: Please ...

A new study led by researchers at the Department of Population Medicine - Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston Medical Center, and Boston University School of Public Health finds that how Medicaid programs are designed can make a big difference in the care pregnant and postpartum people receive. The study, “Medicaid Accountable Care Model Designs and Maternal Health Measures”, was published October 8 in JAMA Network Open. Maternal health care in the U.S. is in crisis. There is an urgent need to identify models of care that may improve maternal health outcomes, especially ...

About The Study: In this study, individuals with psychosis reported a large increase in current cannabis use following legalization and commercialization of cannabis in their state, and by larger amounts than previously reported estimates of the general population. Given how cannabis can negatively affect illness course and health service utilization in individuals with psychosis, these results should be considered by regulators designing policies around taxation, potency, advertising, and health warnings.  Corresponding Author: To contact ...