Amsterdam, October 9, 2025 – An important new study in the Journal of Hepatology, published by Elsevier, reports the world’s first auxiliary liver xenotransplant from a genetically engineered pig to a living human recipient. The patient survived for 171 days, offering proof-of-concept that genetically modified porcine livers can support key metabolic and synthetic functions in humans, while also underscoring the complications that currently limit long-term outcomes. According to the World Health Organization, thousands of patients die every year while waiting for organ transplants due to the limited supply ...

Between Jan 2024 and Aug 2025, peaks in the prevalence of acute malnutrition match periods of severe aid restrictions.   More than 54,600 children in Gaza are estimated to be acutely malnourished, including over 12,800 severely so, with few therapeutic options available to them. With measurements up to the middle of August 2025, the study comprehensively tracks wasting among children during the war, estimates population prevalence, and highlights unprecedented increases in child malnutrition following periods of blockades and severe ...

Current prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing “may not effectively target testing to those most likely to benefit, raising concerns about overtesting” warn researchers  from the University of Oxford in a study of over 10 million men across England published by The BMJ today. Despite UK recommendations to limit PSA testing to patients with symptoms or after discussion with a GP, the results show that many patients are tested more frequently than recommended and repeat testing is ...

A global analysis led by La Trobe University has highlighted the hidden harms to women and children caused by men's alcohol use and calls for urgent gender-responsive and alcohol policy action worldwide and in Australia.  The paper, Harms to Women and Children from Men’s Alcohol Use: An Evidence Review and Directions For Policy, analyses findings including three recent reviews of 78 papers.  Globally, up to one in three women in some countries report living with a heavy-drinking partner and children exposed to men's harmful alcohol use face increased risk of violence, neglect, poor health and reduced life opportunities.   The harms ...

DRI is pleased to announce that the 27th annual Peter B. Wagner Memorial Award for Women in Atmospheric Sciences has been awarded to Ashley Cornish of the University of Georgia. An award ceremony commemorating her achievement was held at the DRI campus in Reno on Oct. 7, 2025.   The Peter B. Wagner Memorial Award for Women in Atmospheric Sciences is an annual competition recognizing the published works of women pursuing a master’s or Ph.D. in the atmospheric sciences or any related program at a university in the United States. The award is presented to women graduate students with outstanding academic publications ...

Researchers at UBC Okanagan have uncovered how plants produce mitraphylline, a rare natural compound that may help fight cancer.  Mitraphylline belongs to a small group of plant molecules called spirooxindole alkaloids.   These compounds have unusual “twisted” ring structures and are known for their strong effects, like fighting tumours and inflammation.   Despite their promise, the molecular steps plants use to make spirooxindoles remained a mystery.  That changed in 2023, when Dr. Thu-Thuy Dang’s research group in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science found the first plant enzyme that can twist a molecule into the spiro shape. ...

Vitamins are ubiquitous in medicine cabinets everywhere, with more than half of all U.S. adults regularly taking vitamins or other dietary supplements to boost their health. But the science of vitamins and how they interact with the body—a field known as “vitamin biology”—is far behind the times. Isha Jain, PhD, an investigator at Gladstone Institutes, is on the path to change that. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has just announced Jain as a 2025 recipient of its prestigious Transformative Research Award, which comes with a $6.6 million grant to fuel her work reviving the field of vitamin biology with modern science. “Vitamin biology ...

A rare microorganism found in an unexpected environment may be evading detection by “playing dead,” according to microbiologists at the University of Houston. Discovered in NASA spacecraft assembly clean rooms, this rare novel bacterium, called Tersicoccus phoenicis (T. phoenicis), could have major implications for planetary protection and clean room sterilization practices, said Madhan Tirumalai, lead author of this study published in August in Microbiology Spectrum, a peer-reviewed scientific journal from ...

On islands, many plants rely on animals such as birds, bats and reptiles to disperse their seeds and help them grow in new places. When native animals go extinct, this naturally reduces seed dispersal. However, a new global study, published October 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has discovered that the impact of introduced, invasive animal species on how plant seeds are dispersed across island ecosystems is even greater than the impact of native animal extinctions. The study analyzed data from 120 islands across 22 archipelagos, examining how extant native, extinct native, and introduced vertebrate frugivores—animals that eat fruit ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic researchers have identified a protein that acts like a traffic controller for DNA, preventing damage during cell division — a discovery that could lead to new cancer therapies, according to a study published in Nature. "DNA is the code of life. It's critical for how a cell functions, but it's also critical for our own being and defines what we are," says Zhenkun Lou, Ph.D., the Swanson/Schmucker Endowed Professor to Support Health ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – October 8, 2025) Stress granules are droplet-like protein hubs that temporarily shield fragile RNA from cellular stresses such as toxins. VCP is a protein essential for breaking up stress granules and has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases. However, VCP has a protein partner, ASPL, whose role has been unclear until now. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital discovered that ASPL regulates stress granule disassembly by facilitating VCP phosphorylation. They also found ASPL facilitates stress granule assembly independent of VCP by stabilizing interactions among core stress granule proteins. The findings, published ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a chronic autoimmune disease affecting more than 2.9 million people worldwide. It occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin sheath, the protective insulation around nerve fibers, causing disruption of nerve signals between the brain and body. Symptoms can include numbness, tingling, vision loss, and paralysis. While current treatments can reduce inflammation, no therapies yet exist to protect neurons or restore the damaged myelin sheath. Researchers have now taken a major step forward in the development of such a therapy, supported ...

Joanna Wardwell-Ozgo figures to work backward when determining the causes of cancer. The Kennesaw State University assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology recently earned a $720,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health that will strengthen undergraduate research in the College of Science and Mathematics while seeking clues about the hormonal control of cancer. “This project involves getting at the beginnings of various diseases with the help of groundbreaking research involving our students, and that elevates KSU’s research profile,” Wardwell-Ozgo said. Wardwell-Ozgo seeks ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2025. Highlights: When taken together, the pain medication tramadol and certain antidepressants may raise seizure risk in older adults, according to a new study. Researchers studied people living in nursing homes taking tramadol and some antidepressants that inhibit the CYP2D6 enzyme called CYP2D6 inhibitors. These antidepressants, such as fluoxetine, paroxetine and bupropion, block the CYP2D6 enzyme needed to metabolize tramadol. People taking tramadol and CYP2D6 inhibitors had up to a 9% higher seizure risk than people taking tramadol and antidepressants ...

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 ...