Two studies published in the latest issue of the journal Cell by University of Pittsburgh researchers uncover how immunotherapies targeting the immune checkpoints PD1 and LAG3 work together to activate immune responses. The findings shed light on why combination therapies targeting both checkpoints can improve outcomes for melanoma patients compared to monotherapies targeting only PD1. Using data from a human clinical trial and animal models, the researchers investigated responses of tumor-killing CD8+ T cells. During extended battles with cancer, immune checkpoints accumulate on the surface of T cells, acting like brakes on ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A good night’s sleep is essential for children’s health and development, but childhood sleep patterns may also be linked to future substance use. A new study, led by a team of Penn State researchers, found that adolescents were more likely to have consumed alcohol or tried marijuana by age 15 if they went to bed later and slept fewer hours during childhood and adolescence. The team published their findings in Annals of Epidemiology. “The study suggests that there might be some critical ages when sleep can be a target for intervention,” said Anne-Marie Chang, associate professor of ...

TUCSON, Ariz. August 13, 2024– Critical Path Institute’s (C-Path) Translational Therapeutics Accelerator (TRxA) announced today that Kenneth Keiler, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded a research grant for his innovative project titled “Inhibitors of the Gram-negative Cell Envelope Stress Response as Anti-Infectives and Antibiotics.” This funding will support Dr. Keiler’s original approach to addressing the critical issue ...

A new study published in eLIFE by researchers from the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome (Crnic Institute) at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus reports the initial results of a first-in-kind clinical trial testing the safety and efficacy of a JAK inhibitor to decrease the burden of autoimmune conditions in people with Down syndrome. The clinical trial, which is funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, is part of a portfolio of new clinical trials supported by the National Institutes of Health INCLUDE Project. Drawing upon their 2016 discovery that the interferon ...

A new study provides important insights into the pharmacokinetics and safety of intravenous remdesivir in treating the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in pregnant women. Remdesivir is an antiviral medication and is used to treat certain patients with COVID-19 who are either hospitalized or have mild-to-moderate symptoms in the outpatient setting and are at high risk of severe disease. The study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, is the first pharmacokinetic study to be published on a COVID-19 therapy in pregnant women. Pharmacokinetic studies ...

By Josh Stowe Toxic pollution is the single largest cause of death and poor health, killing up to 9 million people each year — about 100 times more than war and terrorism combined. Business produces the bulk of this deadly pollution, but can also play a critical role in addressing it and mitigating its effects, according to new research by University of Notre Dame expert Richard (Drew) Marcantonio. Marcantonio, whose study was recently published in Business Horizons, is assistant professor of environment, peace and global affairs in Notre Dame’s Keough ...

SAN ANTONIO — August 13, 2024 —Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a Southwest Research Institute-led team has confirmed hydroxyl molecules on the surface of the metallic asteroid Psyche. The presence of hydrated minerals suggests a complex history for Psyche, important context for the NASA spacecraft en route to this interesting asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. At about 140 miles in diameter, Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt. Previous observations indicate that Psyche is a dense, largely metallic object that could be a leftover core from a planet that experienced ...

A Rice University-led multi-institutional research collaboration has won an award of up to $18 million over five years from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop and validate a new system for improving tumor removal accuracy for two types of cancer: breast, and head and neck cancer. Called AccessPath, the novel, affordable, slide-free cancer pathology system will help surgeons know whether they have completely removed tumors during surgery by enabling rapid, automatic tumor margin classification of resected tumors. AccessPath is one of several projects funded through the ARPA-H Precision Surgical Interventions program announced today ...

By Courtney Price, Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Researchers at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) have discovered that phenylbutazone, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) commonly prescribed in horses, can affect the ability of a mare’s egg cells — called “oocytes” — to become viable embryos, which is a crucial step in assisted reproduction in horses. This discovery, recently published in the journal Theriogenology, is significant because of the time and money that horse owners ...

Light technology is at the heart of many cutting-edge innovations, from high-speed internet to advanced medical imaging. However, transmitting light through challenging environments, such as turbulent atmospheres or deformed optical systems, has always posed a significant hurdle. These complexities can distort and disrupt the light field, making it difficult to achieve clear and reliable results. Scientists have long sought ways to overcome these limitations, and a new breakthrough may hold the key to advance practical applications. As reported in Advanced Photonics, researchers at Soochow ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — University of Missouri scientists are battling against an emerging enemy of human health: nanoplastics. Much smaller in size than the diameter of an average human hair, nanoplastics are invisible to the naked eye.  Linked to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in people, nanoplastics continue to build up, largely unnoticed, in the world’s bodies of water. The challenge remains to develop a cost-effective solution to get rid of nanoplastics while leaving clean water behind.  That’s where Mizzou comes in. Recently, researchers at the university created a new liquid-based solution that eliminates more than 98% of these microscopic ...

August 13, 2024 — The introduction of publicly shared electric scooters (“e-scooters”) in Denver, Colorado has resulted in a steady increase in injuries and hospital admissions, according to research led by Alexander Lauder, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Denver Health Medical Center. The findings are presented in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research® (CORR®), a publication of The Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons®. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "International ...

About thirteen million babies each year are born prematurely, with preterm birth linked to increases in risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), problems with social development, and lower grades. A problem with past analyses of prematurity, however, is that they do not capture the variety seen in children born pre-term, including some with outcomes better than the average results for full- term children. Pre-term means birth before 37 weeks of gestation, with full term being 40 weeks. The tendency to lump preterm babies into one group hinders efforts to tailor care for any one child, researchers say. Now a new study, published online August 13 ...

America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, is supporting research to revolutionize the additive manufacturing (AM) industry by significantly reducing operational qualification time and cost. The $2 million project, titled ACCELERATE, is led by Dr. Mohsen Taheri-Andani, an assistant professor in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. To secure the funding, Dr. Taheri-Andani partnered with Dr. Yash Parikh, a process engineering consultant at EOS who graduated with a doctorate in mechanical ...

"These findings align with our previous results in dopaminergic neurons in highlighting a central role for lipid accumulation in the senescence of DA neurons." BUFFALO, NY- August 13, 2024 – A new research perspective was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science), Volume 16, Issue 14 on July 19, 2024, entitled, “Lipid accumulation drives cellular senescence in dopaminergic neurons.” As highlighted in the Abstract of this perspective, Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an age-related movement disorder caused ...

A research team at The Hastings Center has been approved for $1.5 million in funding by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study organizational trustworthiness as it relates to community-engaged research. Led by Virginia A. Brown, PhD, a research scholar at The Hastings Center, the study will be the first to investigate the role of organizational trustworthiness in shaping research engagement processes and outcomes. Measures to assess organizational trustworthiness as it relates to research ...

Philadelphia, August 13, 2024 – Research into reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock has increased exponentially as the dairy and agriculture sectors work together toward shared sustainability and efficiency goals. While this progress has been made in all areas of dairy science research, from genetics to animal health and welfare, dairy nutrition has emerged as a particularly impactful area for emission reduction. In a new invited review in the Journal of Dairy Science, a preeminent voice in sustainability and dairy nutrition synthesizes ...

By modifying a plant intracellular immune receptor (NLR), researchers have developed a potential new strategy for resistance to rice blast disease, one of the most important diseases threatening global food security. The collaborative team from the UK and Japan have recently published their research in PNAS. This could have implications for future approaches to crop protection and ultimately global food supply stability.  The research was led from the Department of Biochemistry and Metabolism at the John Innes Centre, with partners at The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of East Anglia, and the Division of Genomics and Breeding, Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, Japan. For a ...

With a new polymer that only attracts certain substances from solutions when electrically activated, researchers have taken a major step towards sustainable chemical separation. A team based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has reported the first demonstration of selective electrochemical separation driven by halogen bonding in the journal JACS Au. This was achieved by engineering a polymer that modulates the charge density on a halogen atom when electricity is applied. The polymer then attracts only certain targets – such as halides, oxyanions, and even organic molecules – from organic solutions, ...

NEW YORK, August 13, 2024 — A recently published study in Ecological Applications details how trees in New York City and Boston are more negatively impacted by heat waves and drought than trees of the same species in nearby rural forests. The finding, made by researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC), highlights the challenges urban trees face in the context of climate change and underscores the importance of tailored urban forestry management as ...

JUPITER, Fla. — Children born with a damaged gene needed for healthy brain development, SYNGAP1, experience seizures, sensory processing disorders, difficulty speaking, intellectual disability, and autism-like behaviors. It’s a condition without any treatments, one that’s hard both on parents and children, said Gavin Rumbaugh, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology. Rumbaugh and a team of scientists from the institute have been awarded a five-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health worth $7.7 million to work toward a treatment. Their goal is to ...

Depression is common among people with likely incurable cancer – understandably so. But studies have shown that it can be treated, and if the goal is for individuals to be able to engage as much as possible with family, friends, hobbies or whatever gives them joy and purpose in whatever amount of time they have, then treating depression becomes imperative.   That’s not so easy, though, as patients may face a shortage of mental health workers, difficulties with transportation and continuing stigma around mental health issues.   Evan Graboyes, M.D., a head and neck surgical oncologist and director of Survivorship ...

New research from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) found patients with non-small cell lung cancer brain metastases may benefit from up-front stereotactic radiosurgery; identified a connection between antibiotic use and autoimmune diseases; and uncovered a previously unknown structural role for messenger RNAs in the cytoplasm of cells. Patients with non-small cell lung cancer brain metastases may benefit from upfront stereotactic radiosurgery For patients with non-small cell lung cancer that has spread to the brain, targeted therapies called ...

A study involving 22 Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients has shown that use of the dopaminergic drug levodopa improves sleep quality. When the patients took the drug, the number of times they woke up during the night fell 25% and the amount of time they remained awake fell 30% on average.  The investigation was conducted with FAPESP’s support by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil, and the University of Grenoble Alpes (UGA) in France. An article reporting the results is published in ...

Tailoring light with Nanomaterials Metamaterials, engineered at the nanoscale, exhibit unique properties not found in naturally occurring materials. These properties arise from their nanoscale building blocks, which, until now, have been challenging to observe directly due to their size being smaller than the wavelength of light. The team's research overcomes this limitation by employing a new microscopy technique that can simultaneously reveal both the nano and macro structures of these materials. A New Window into the Nano World The key finding of this research is a methodological breakthrough that enables the visualization of structures previously too small to be seen ...