An analysis of reviews of translational biomedical research reveals that just 5% of therapies tested in animals reach regulatory approval for human use. The study, an umbrella review, published June 13th in the open access journal PLOS Biology, summarizes other systematic reviews and provides high level evidence that while the rate of translation to human studies is 50%, there is steep drop off before final approval. The authors argue that improved robustness and generalizability of experimental approaches could help increase the chances of translation and final approval. Animal studies are used in basic research ...

Plant-derived compounds best known for their antimalarial properties relieve polycystic ovary syndrome, a major public health problem that affects millions of women worldwide. These compounds, called artemisinins, achieve their affect by suppressing ovarian androgen production in multiple rodent models as well as in a small cohort of human patients, according to a new study. The findings not only underscore the versatility of artemisinins but reveal a promising new approach for preventing and treating the disorder. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most common ...

In a Perspective, Courtney Sexton and Audrey Ruple discuss how companion animals, especially dogs, are distinctly positioned to be sentinels of human health due to the environments they and humans closely share, but, say the authors, systems for improving data capture around dogs’ environments are critically needed. Humans share their environments closely with companion animals, leading to similar health risks such as respiratory illnesses, cancers, and cognitive dysfunction. Dogs, having cohabitated with humans for about 30,000 years, are particularly well-suited ...

A new platform enables simultaneous capture of protein expression, cellular morphology, neural projection, and synapse distribution in large-scale human brain tissues at multiple scales, researchers report. The system ensures the preservation of cellular architecture while enabling detailed imaging and analysis of large human brain tissue samples at unprecedented resolution and speed. The authors demonstrated its utility by processing whole human brain hemispheres to reveal pathological features of Alzheimer’s disease tissue. “We envision that this scalable technology platform will ...

Observing anything and everything within the human brain, no matter how large or small while it is fully intact, has been an out-of-reach dream of neuroscience for decades, but in a new study in Science, an MIT-based team describes a technology pipeline that enabled them to finely process, richly label and sharply image full hemispheres of the brains of two donors—one with Alzheimer’s and one without—at high resolution and speed. “We performed holistic imaging of human brain tissues at multiple resolutions ...

Some species of tardigrades are highly and unusually resilient to various extreme conditions fatal to most other forms of life. The genetic basis for these exceptional abilities remains elusive. For the first time, researchers from the University of Tokyo successfully edited genes using the CRISPR technique in a highly resilient tardigrade species previously impossible to study with genome-editing tools. The successful delivery of CRISPR to an asexual tardigrade species directly produces gene-edited offspring. The design and ...

Most people today would lean towards environmentally friendly life choices, but not at the expense of being clean. When it comes to our washing habits, the fear of being perceived as dirty often wins out over the desire to act in an environmentally friendly way. And the more inclined we are to feel disgusted, the more we wash our clothes. This is shown by a unique study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, that examines the driving forces behind our laundering behaviours and provides new tools for how people's environmental impact can be reduced. Today, we wash our clothes more than ever ...

The important role of the Southern Ocean in global biological processes and the carbon cycle has been confirmed anew by a study published in Science this week that, for the first time based on field evidence, reveals the underappreciated role of inorganic Zinc particles in these cycles. The Southern Ocean plays the greatest role in global phytoplankton productivity, which is responsible for absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide. In these processes, Zinc, present in trace quantities in seawater, is an essential micronutrient critical to many biochemical processes in marine organisms and particularly for polar phytoplankton ...

A link between the neurotransmitter dopamine and the mentalising abilities of healthy people has been identified for the first time in a new study.  Mentalising describes the act of attributing and understanding mental states (such as thoughts, feelings or intentions) in other people and in oneself. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have been able to show that changing people’s brain dopamine levels affects their mentalising abilities. Their results are published today in PLOS Biology.  Dopamine ...

Bacteriophages, viruses that attack and destroy bacteria, are everywhere in the natural world where they play a vital role in regulating microbe populations in ways that are not yet well understood. New research led by the University of Utah and University College London (UCL) has found that plant bacterial pathogens are able to repurpose elements of their own bacteriophages, or phages, to wipe out competing microbes. These surprise findings suggest such phage-derived elements could someday be harnessed as an alternative to antibiotics, according to Talia Karasov, an assistant professor in the U’s School of ...

Smithsonian Conservation Research Brief:  Carbon dioxide-fueled accelerated plant growth dilutes nutrients, impacting herbivore populations.  A new study from researchers at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) warns that as human activities increase carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere, they may decrease the nutrient contents of plants. Declines in nutrient content, known as Nutrient Dilution, may already be harming plant-eating animals and could cause further population declines farther up the ecological chain. The paper, published today in the journal Trends ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is pleased to announce that 2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Avi Wigderson will give his Turing Lecture at the 2024 ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC) on Thursday, June 27 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Wigderson received the A.M. Turing Award for foundational contributions to the theory of computation, including reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation, and for his decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science. In "Alan Turing: A TCS Role Model," Wigderson ...

Opioids are a broad group of effective pain-relieving medicines that can become highly addictive in some individuals. According to government sources, nearly 40 million people are addicted to illicit drugs worldwide. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared the opioid crisis a national public health emergency. To combat the opioid epidemic, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine will develop an AI model that will more accurately predict opioid addiction in high-risk patients.  The project is funded through a three-year contract with Wellcome Leap as part of a $50 million groundbreaking initiative, called ...

Opioid overdoses for pregnant patients are at an all-time high in the United States, even as overall numbers are improving. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is highly correlated with substance use disorders, yet treatment protocols to help expecting parents manage opioid use disorders and ADHD together are essentially nonexistent. New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may help change that. A study published in Nature Mental Health indicates that patients with opioid use disorders and ADHD who remain on their ADHD medications during their pregnancies are far more likely to adhere to treatment for opioid use, and far less likely to ...

The small footprint and dim light of white dwarfs, remnants of stars that have burned through their fuel, may make excellent backdrops for studying planets with enough water to harbor life. The trick is spotting the shadow of a planet against a former star that has withered to a fraction of its size and finding that it’s a planet that has kept its water oceans for billions of years even after riding out the star’s explosive and violent final throes. A new study of the dynamics of white dwarf systems suggests that, in theory, some watery planets may indeed thread the celestial needles necessary to await ...

The ecosystem that surrounds a tumor, also known as the tumor microenvironment, includes immune cells, tissues, blood vessels and other cells that interact with each other and with the tumor. Over time, the tumor shapes this ecosystem to its own benefit, monopolizing all of the nutrients and shielding it from immune attack. In working to understand the ecosystem’s role in cancer risk, development and treatment, researchers at The Jackson Laboratory have not only identified how two immune cells work together to fight cancer but also revealed the cascade of molecules that help coordinate this attack. The work, ...

Québec City, June 13, 2024–Increased use of blood transfusions after major traumatic brain injury could help people hospitalized in intensive care units regain greater functional independence and a better quality of life.   Six months after a major traumatic brain injury (TBI), patients who benefited from this approach regained more functional independence and had a better quality of life than those subjected to a more restrictive approach, even though the combined incidence of death and major ...

In a session on diagnosing and managing complex diseases at the 2024 EULAR congress in Vienna, two abstracts tackled this issue.   First, Filippo Vesentini presented on the risk of flare with glucocorticoid compared to low-dose maintenance – based on a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data from people with SLE. Flare-free remission and predictors of such were evaluated respectively in remitted patients on and off glucocorticoids.   During follow-up, 484 patients achieved remission at least once during ...

An HPR abstract sessions at the 2024 EULAR congress looked specifically at harnessing the benefits of exercise in rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMD) – and the challenges to their practical implementation.   Mohamed Saadi presented a systematic review examining barriers and facilitators affecting adherence to EULAR’s physical activity recommendations. Across 68 selected articles, 29 different themes were identified – 9 of which were social, 16 environmental, and 4 systemic. The five most frequently found themes were having supportive family and friends, a supportive health professional, followed by costs, and access or proximity to adapted and ...

Even though early therapeutic interventions have proven successful in inducing drug-free remission in other inflammatory rheumatic diseases, such studies remain difficult to conduct in axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), which manifests itself by insidious onset inflammatory back pain. As a result it is often diagnosed late,5 and a consensus definition of early disease was only recently published.6   At the 2024 EULAR congress, Łukasik and colleagues shared data from their prospective study evaluating the efficacy of a ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that causes joint inflammation and destruction.1 There is currently no cure – and although there are many treatments, their effectiveness varies from person to person, suggesting an undefined pathogenic diversity.1 Deep characterisation of myeloid cell subsets by single cell RNA sequencing across healthy and inflamed tissues in RA has led to the identification of new pathogenic cell states and subsets – with data coming from five large-scale studies.1-5 But subset overlap across studies and compartments – such as in blood versus synovial tissue – has not yet ...

The Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center (Kids First DRC) announces the release of an upgraded Kids First Data Resource Portal, designed to streamline big data search and data analysis. Accessible at portal.kidsfirstdrc.org, the new portal represents a significant advancement in data accessibility, user experience, and collaborative potential with researchers, families, and patients. Elevated User Experience Introducing several key enhancements, the new Kids First DRC Portal prioritizes user-centric ...

In a world where external and internal stimuli can throw our entire body system off balance, how does our brain prevent itself from becoming overly stimulated? The answer lies in our brain’s ability to maintain the balance of neural excitation (E) and inhibition (I), known as the E/I ratio. By regulating the E/I ratio, the brain prevents over-stimulation and under-stimulation. The E/I ratio of children decreases with healthy development. Children with a lower E/I ratio were observed to have better performance than their peers in cognitive tests such as memory and intelligence, according to studies by researchers from the Centre for Sleep and Cognition ...

Climate change has many widespread and complicated effects on the well-being of people and the planet, and a new study in iScience on June 13 has now added a surprising one to the list. After analyzing the language used in seven million parliamentary speeches around the world, it shows that high temperatures lead to a significant and immediate reduction in politicians’ language complexity. The results suggest that rising heat may come with impacts on our cognitive abilities with real and immediate consequences, the researchers say. The study also showcases ...

Men tend to eat meat more frequently than women and the extent of the differences in meat consumption frequency between both genders tend to be greater within countries with higher levels of gender equality and social and economic development, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that this could be due individuals within these countries having greater opportunities to express food preferences. Christopher Hopwood and colleagues investigated differences in meat consumption between men and women across countries with differing levels of social ...