Recapitulating egg and sperm development in the dish New stem cell differentiation method is first to induce meiosis, a critical step in egg and sperm cell development, with potential for drug development and future fertility treatments By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) —  More than one-sixth of adults around the world experience infertility in their lifetime. There is a high unmet need not only for increased access to affordable, high-quality fertility care for those in need but, importantly, also for new biomedical solutions that can address the root causes of infertility. Some of the earliest causes ...

In the high-elevation desert region of the Trans-Himalayas, most people farm for a living. In the 1980s, they largely transitioned from subsistence-based to market-oriented production of commercial crops, such as green peas (Pisum sativum L.), they could sell to other states in India.  For their own communities and monasteries, however, some farmers still cultivate foods with a 3,000-year legacy in the area, including barley (Hordeum vulgare) and a local variety of black peas that lacks a scientific name. Favored for nutrition and sustained energy, these black peas are an integral part of traditional recipes, such as soups ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that affects millions worldwide and can have a devastating impact on patients’ lives. Yet, about one in three patients respond poorly to existing treatments. Researchers at Kyoto University have shed new light on this challenge by discovering that peripheral helper T cells (Tph cells), a key type of immune cell involved in RA, exist in two forms: stem-like Tph cells and effector Tph cells. The stem-like Tph cells reside in immune “hubs” called ...

August 15, 2025 — The Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) has issued its first comprehensive, evidence-based guidelines on the care of adults with functioning pituitary adenomas (FPA), a prevalent and complex condition. Tailored for neurosurgeons, endocrinologists, and other specialists, the guidelines mark a pivotal step in standardizing care, optimizing patient outcomes, and promoting multidisciplinary coordination. The new CNS Guideline about FPA treatment stems from the review of approximately 20,000 published abstracts and is presented as four papers (43 pages plus Supplemental data) in an online supplement to Neurosurgery, the official publication ...

New research from the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney has uncovered a new biological pathway that may help explain why people with type 2 diabetes are more prone to developing dangerous blood clots, potentially paving the way for future treatments that reduce their cardiovascular risk. The study, led by Associate Professor Freda Passam from the Central Clinical School and Associate Professor Mark Larance from the School of Medical Sciences, was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. ...

Tumor electrophysiological abnormalities, characterized by membrane potential dysregulation, ion channel network remodeling, and microenvironmental signaling interactions, are critical drivers of malignancy. A central feature is the depolarization of the transmembrane resting potential (Vm), a hallmark of tumor cells that promotes proliferation, maintains cancer stem cell (CSCs) undifferentiated states, and facilitates metastatic remodeling. These abnormalities extend beyond the plasma membrane: CSCs exhibit mitochondrial membrane potential hyperpolarization with a pronounced pH gradient between the matrix ...

The pharmaceutical industry stands at a transformative crossroads as artificial intelligence reshapes the landscape of drug development. In a Correspondence published in the KeAi journal Current Molecular Pharmacology, a group of researchers from China illuminate how large language models (LLMs) - the sophisticated AI systems powering advanced chatbots - are delivering unprecedented breakthroughs across the entire drug discovery pipeline. These intelligent systems are moving beyond mere assistance to fundamentally redefine the ...

A new study warns that contamination from laboratory reagents could be misleading scientists worldwide in their hunt for emerging infectious diseases. Researchers found that silica membranes—commonly used in nucleic acid extraction kits—can harbor parvoviruses and other viral contaminants, creating false virus–host associations in metagenomic sequencing (mNGS) data. These misleading links can affect clinical diagnostics, zoonotic surveillance, and public health responses. In mNGS analyses of patient samples from multiple regions in China, the team detected dozens ...

Medical databases are undergoing rapid expansion, with the number of observed values and variable types continuously increasing, resulting in increasingly rich data content. This growth leads to a significant expansion in the size of individual data files, encompassing both an increase in the number of rows (length) and the number of columns (width). For instance, the chartevents file in the MIMIC 3.0 database boasts hundreds of millions of records, and the numeric file in the Amsterdam Critical Care Database version 1.0.2 is similarly large. In contrast, ...

A new study maps the planetary boundary of “functional biosphere integrity” in spatial detail and over centuries. It finds that 60 percent of global land areas are now already outside the locally defined safe zone, and 38 percent are even in the high-risk zone. The study was led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) together with BOKU University in Vienna and published in the renowned journal One Earth. Functional biosphere integrity refers to the plant world’s ability to co-regulate ...

America’s youth mental health crisis has escalated to the point that thousands of children primarily suffering from suicide-related behaviors and depression are stuck in hospital emergency rooms for three days or more, according to new research from Oregon Health & Science University. The study, published today in the journal JAMA Health Forum, examined Medicaid claims data from 2022. Among 255,000 hospital emergency department visits for mental health conditions involving Medicaid-enrolled kids, more than 1 in 10 visits resulted in children being “boarded” — ...

About The Study: The results of this cross-sectional analysis showed significant variation in the prices and affordability of 549 essential medicines across 72 markets in 2022. Strategies to promote equitable drug prices and improve drug affordability are urgently needed. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Olivier J. Wouters, PhD, email olivier_wouters@brown.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2025.2043) Editor’s ...

Kyoto, Japan -- As space programs evolve and we continue to mistreat our own planet, human dreams of space tourism and planetary colonization seem increasingly common. However, features of spaceflight such as gravitational changes and circadian rhythm disruption -- not to mention radiation -- take a toll on the body, including muscle wasting and decreased bone density. These may even affect our ability to produce healthy offspring. Studying the impact of spaceflight on germ cells -- egg and sperm precursor cells -- is particularly important because they ...

FastUKB is an innovative tool specifically developed to streamline and enhance research workflows utilizing the UK Biobank, effectively addressing key limitations of existing platforms such as the UK Biobank Research Analysis Platform (RAP). One of its most notable features is its breakthrough bulk data extraction functionality, which transforms traditionally complex coding tasks into intuitive click operations. This is made possible through a user-friendly interface equipped with dropdown menus and a hierarchical variable tree structure, allowing researchers to effortlessly navigate and select the data they need. Unlike RAP, which restricts ...

New York, NY (August 15, 2025) Mount Sinai is celebrating its 13th year as the official hospital and medical services provider of the US Open Tennis Championships, which begins with Fan Week from Monday, August 18, through Saturday, August 23, and continues with the Main Draw Sunday, August 24, through Sunday, September 7. It is also Mount Sinai’s 11th year in this role for the U.S. teams for the Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup events. Mount Sinai, one of the largest academic medical systems in New York, will continue to provide the highest level of health care in orthopedics, sports medicine, emergency medicine, musculoskeletal radiology, and more to ...

A multi-institutional team led by Weill Cornell Medicine has received a five-year, $14.9 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to find ways to remove latent HIV from the cells of individuals with HIV. The team aims to use a personalized medicine approach to transform the management of HIV into effective cures. Over 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. People with ...

Topological insulators (TIs) have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of materials by introducing robust boundary states arising from bulk topological invariants. Extending this paradigm, higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs), characterized by boundary states of dimension at least two lower than the bulk, have attracted significant attention. However, conventional HOTI realizations mainly rely on discrete, lattice-engineered tight-binding models, which constrain their experimental accessibility ...

A research team led by Dr. Juyeon Jung at the Bio-Nano Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), has developed a nanobody-based technology that can precisely identify and attack only lung cancer cells, opening new possibilities for cancer therapy. This breakthrough addresses the limitations of conventional chemotherapy by reducing harmful side effects while maximizing cancer cell-killing efficiency. In particular, it shows remarkable therapeutic potential for lung adenocarcinoma, a subtype of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Lung cancer is one of the world’s deadliest diseases, claiming millions of lives each year. Among its types, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Using artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have come up with a new way to design nanoparticles that can more efficiently deliver RNA vaccines and other types of RNA therapies. After training a machine-learning model to analyze thousands of existing delivery particles, the researchers used it to predict new materials that would work even better. The model also enabled the researchers to identify particles that would work well in different types of cells, and to discover ways to incorporate new types of ...

It has long been understood that experiencing two senses simultaneously, like seeing and hearing, can lead to improved responses relative to those seen when only one sensory input is experienced by itself. For example, a potential prey that gets visual and auditory clues that it is about to be attacked by a snake in the grass has a better chance of survival. Precisely how multiple senses are integrated or work together in the brain has been an area of fascination for neuroscientists for decades. New research ...

In the face of growing global pressures, a new report from Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), including University of Adelaide researchers, highlights the opportunity to strengthen and future-proof Antarctic governance by responding to emerging conservation threats with coordinated, proactive measures. With input from 131 experts in more than 40 countries, with backgrounds across science, policy and conservation, the report identified 10 emerging threats that could challenge Antarctic conservation efforts in the coming decade. Among the threats identified is the likelihood of more extreme precipitation events, ...

Physicists from the University of Copenhagen have begun using the gigantic magnetic fields of galaxy clusters to observe distant black holes in their search for an elusive particle that has stumped scientists for decades. It is a story of extremes that are hard to fathom. The heaviest structures in the universe, clusters of galaxies, are a quadrillion times more massive than the Sun. And axions, mysterious theoretical particles, are much, much lighter than even the lightest atom. The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle ...

Researchers at Columbia Engineering have built a cancer therapy that makes bacteria and viruses work as a team. In a study published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the Synthetic Biological Systems Lab shows how their system hides a virus inside a tumor-seeking bacterium, smuggles it past the immune system, and unleashes it inside cancerous tumors.  The new platform combines the bacteria’s tendency to find and attack tumors with the virus’s natural preference for infecting and killing cancerous cells. Tal Danino, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, ...

Pop-up screening for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk held at community pharmacies and large-scale sporting events can identify people with uncontrolled cardiovascular risk factors, according to a study published in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, and simultaneously presented at the 73rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. ASCVD is the leading cause of death worldwide but is often preventable in many cases. Regular preventative screenings can identify modifiable risk factors like ...

What’s Happening From 16th August to 19th September 2025, the Norwegian research vessel R/V Kronprins Haakon will be sailing into the Arctic Ocean for an expedition organised and funded through the prestigious European Research Council Synergy Grant “i2B – Into The Blue”. The i2B Arctic Ocean Expedition team consisting of 25 scientists will collect new geological archives that will shed light on Arctic climate during past ‘warmer-than-present-day’ conditions (interglacial periods). These archives are crucial to understand the ...