HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Comprehensive spatial map provides insights into pancreatic cancer metastases Read summary | Read in Nature Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, resulting in a five-year survival rate of roughly 12%. Approximately half of patients develop metastases shortly ...

A new analysis of a fatal landslide that occurred on 13 February 2024 at theÇöpler Gold Mine in Türkiye reveals that the site of the landslide had been slowly moving for at least four years prior to the failure. “Additionally, our analyses detected deformation anomalies in other sectors of the mining operation, which could potentially lead to similar catastrophes,” said Pınar Büyükakpınar of the GFZ German Research Centre For Geosciences, who published the study in The Seismic Record with her colleagues. The Çöpler Gold ...

Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists have developed a new approach to countering citrus greening and potato zebra chip diseases, two economically devastating agricultural diseases in the U.S. Their method uses spinach antimicrobial peptides, known as defensins, which naturally defend plants against a broad range of pathogens. In a recent study published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, researchers showed that some spinach defensins can confer similar protection to citrus and potatoes — and possibly other crops. The effects show significant progress toward recovering ...

About The Study: Between February 28, 2025, and April 8, 2025, 694 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants were terminated across 24 of the 26 institutes and centers (including the Office of the Director) that administered active NIH grants. Targeted grant terminations have affected more than $1.8 billion in NIH funding. Terminations were spread across nearly all NIH institutes and centers, although cuts disproportionately impacted the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (30% of all funding). Corresponding ...

Sulfur applied to sugarcane crops in South Florida is flowing into wetlands upgradient of Everglades National Park, triggering a chemical reaction that converts mercury into toxic methylmercury, which accumulates in fish, new research from University of California, Davis finds. In a paper published in Nature Communications, researchers collected water and mosquito fish across wetlands fed by agricultural canals. They documented how sulfur runoff can dramatically increase methylmercury concentrations in fish — sometimes up to 10 million times greater than the waters in which they lived, posing a risk ...

A study published today in the journal Cell marks the first reported instance of generative AI designing synthetic molecules that can successfully control gene expression in healthy mammalian cells. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) created an AI tool which dreams up DNA regulatory sequences not seen before in nature. The model can be told to create synthetic fragments of DNA with custom criteria, for example: ‘switch this gene on in stem cells which will turn into red-blood-cells but not platelets.’  The model then predicts which combination of DNA letters (A, T, C, G) are needed for the gene expression patterns required in specific types of cells. Researchers ...

U.S. veterans with depression had a 14% higher risk of heart failure, a new Vanderbilt University Medical Center-led study found, even after adjusting for traditional risk factors. The study, “Depression and Heart Failure in U.S. Veterans,” was published May 8 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Corresponding author Evan Brittain, MD, MSCI, professor of Medicine, said the study suggests implications for patient care. “Patients and clinicians have another reason to screen for and treat depression in order to prevent potential future heart failure,” he said.  Brittain, who holds the Cardiology Division Directorship, noted the study is the largest ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of 12,480 mother-offspring pairs, researchers found that pre-pregnancy obesity, gestational diabetes, and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, alone or in various combinations, were prospectively associated with higher offspring blood pressure at an early age and with an increased rate of blood pressure change from age 2 to 18 years, with the most profound associations with diastolic blood pressure among female offspring and with systolic blood pressure among Black offspring. These findings suggest that ...

About The Study: In this cohort study, depression among veterans was associated with an increased hazard of incident heart failure after controlling for demographic and cardiovascular risk factors. Higher incident heart failure rates in patients with depression remained consistent in an otherwise low-risk cohort. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Evan L. Brittain, MD, MSc, email evan.brittain@vumc.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.9246) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study, a patient-centered measure of adverse experiences in vulvovaginal care was developed. Participants reported common past experiences with gaslighting (a patient’s concerns are dismissed without proper evaluation) and substantial distress; they frequently considered ceasing care. There is an urgent need for education supporting a biopsychosocial, trauma-informed approach to vulvovaginal pain and continued development of validated instruments to quantify patient experiences. Corresponding Author: To ...

A vitamin supplement that improves metabolism in the eye appears to slow down damage to the optic nerve in glaucoma. Promising results have been published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine. The researchers behind the study have now started a clinical trial on patients. In glaucoma, the optic nerve is gradually damaged, leading to vision loss and, in the worst cases, blindness. High pressure in the eye drives the disease, and eye drops, laser treatment or surgery are therefore used to lower the pressure in the eye and thus slow down the disease. Unfortunately, however, the effect ...

Eggs are less likely to crack when dropped on their side than when dropped vertically, finds research published in Communications Physics. Controlled trials simulating the ‘egg drop challenge’, a common classroom science experiment, found that the shell of an egg can better withstand an impact when dropped side-on. The goal of the ‘egg drop challenge’ is for students to prevent an egg from cracking when dropped from a set height. A common belief is that an egg is stronger and less likely to crack when dropped vertically, with this assumption often ...

Children born to mothers with obesity, gestational diabetes mellitus or a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy have higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure than children born to mothers without these risk factors, according to a new USC study. Among children whose mothers had at least one risk factor, blood pressure also rose more quickly between ages 2 and 18 compared to their peers. The findings, which suggest that blood pressure interventions could start as early as pregnancy, were just published in JAMA Network Open. Across the ...

At a glance: Researchers have created an AI tool called EVE-Vax that can predict and design viral proteins likely to emerge in the future. For SARS-CoV-2, panels of these “designer” proteins triggered similar immune responses as real-life viral proteins that emerged during the pandemic. EVE-Vax could give scientists valuable clues to help them develop vaccines that protect against future versions of rapidly evolving viruses. Effective vaccines dramatically changed the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing illness, reducing disease severity, and saving millions of ...

PHILADELPHIA – In the United States, breast, colorectal, endometrial, pancreatic, and kidney cancers are becoming increasingly common among people under age 50, according to a study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). The findings may have implications for early-onset cancer prevention and screening efforts, the researchers noted. Early-onset cancers, defined in this study as those diagnosed in individuals under age 50, are rising in incidence for reasons that remain unclear, according ...

In the hunt for a remedy, when the baton is passed from dedicated academic scientists to an innovative company to trusted community advocates, outcomes for society can be especially powerful. Today, thanks to that sequence of contributions, the first HIV drug to offer long-lasting protection from infection — eliminating the need for people to take a daily pill — exists. For their role in ensuring that drug, lenacapavir, came to life and to market, the AAAS Mani L. Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award is being awarded to Wesley Sundquist, chair of the University of Utah Department of Biochemistry; Moupali Das, vice president, Clinical Development, HIV Prevention ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have engineered a monoclonal antibody that can protect mice from a lethal dose of influenza A, a new study shows. The new molecule combines the specificity of a mature flu fighter with the broad binding capacity of a more general immune system defender. The protective effect was enhanced by delivering the antibody in a nasal spray that disperses these molecules throughout the respiratory tract, where they stick to the slippery mucus lining to lie in wait for invading viral particles. The ...

What makes people think an AI system is creative? New research shows that it depends on how much they see of the creative act. The findings have implications for how we research and design creative AI systems, and they also raise fundamental questions about how we perceive creativity in other people. ‘AI is playing an increasingly large role in creative practice. Whether that means we should call it creative or not is a different question,’ says Niki Pennanen, the study’s lead author. Pennanen is researching AI systems at Aalto University and has a background in psychology. ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Nicknamed the “king of the kelp forest,” giant sea bass are among scuba divers’ favorite characters to spot off the California Coast. But very few of these charismatic fish remain. A team led by researchers at UC Santa Barbara has conducted the first direct population estimate of this critically endangered species in Southern California. Using photos sourced from the diving community, they found slightly more than 1,200 adult giant sea bass within Southern California waters from 2015 to 2022. The results, published in the Marine Ecology Progress Series represent an increasing trend in their numbers, suggesting ...

Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death for children aged 1 to 4 in Florida, and children with autism face even greater danger – many times more likely to drown than their neurotypical peers. One key factor behind this alarming statistic is wandering, also known as elopement. Nearly 50% of children with autism will wander from a safe environment at some point. These incidents can happen in a split second and often lead to children being drawn to nearby water sources such as pools, ponds or canals – many of which are unprotected. Children ...

In a research paper, scientists from the Tsinghua University proposed a novel enhanced Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D printing technology, capable of printing composite magnetic structures with different material sin a single step. Furthermore, a soft robot with a hard magnetic material-superparamagnetic material composite was designed and printed. The new research paper, published Feb. 26 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, introduces a soft robot based on DLP 3D printing technology, which presents extensive potential for the design and manufacturing of multifunctional soft robots. According to Wang, "various ...

Researchers at Umeå University, Sweden, and Michigan State University, USA, have discovered a type of molecule that can kill chlamydia bacteria but spare bacteria that are important for health. The discovery opens the door for further research towards developing new antibiotics against chlamydia, the world's most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease with 130 million cases a year. "No one should have to live with chlamydia. But the problem is that the treatments we have today do not distinguish between dangerous and friendly bacteria. A growing problem is ...

In recent years, the world has seen a surge in new and deadly infectious diseases, posing a major threat to global health. Outbreaks of COVID-19, H1N1 (swine flu), Ebola, Zika, and monkeypox are a stark reminder of our vulnerability. While some of these viruses are new and relatively unknown, others, like the monkeypox virus (mpox virus or MPXV) have been around since the 1970s but have been endemic to parts of Africa. However, the recent global outbreak of mpox—caused by a newly identified variant that is more infectious than previous strains—has raised concerns across the world, ...

UVA Health scientists are calling for clinical trials testing the potential of HIV drugs called NRTIs to prevent Alzheimer’s disease after discovering that patients taking the drugs are substantially less likely to develop the memory-robbing condition. The researchers, led by UVA’s Jayakrishna Ambati, MD, previously identified a possible mechanism by which the drugs could prevent Alzheimer’s. That promising finding prompted them to analyze two of the nation’s largest health insurance databases ...

The incidence of infection by Mycobacterium abscessus, is increasing in patients with cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other chronic pulmonary diseases, leading to an accelerated lung function decline. Remarkably, 58–78% of patients with M. abscessus infection are also infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the most common pathogen in these conditions. However, how these two bacterial species interact during infection remains poorly understood. Now, a new study led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Universitat ...