Hakho Lee, PhD, Director of the Biomedical Engineering Program at the Center for Systems Biology at Mass General Brigham, is the co-senior author of a paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, “Automated disc device for multiplexed extracellular vesicle isolation and labelling from liquid biopsies in cancer diagnostics.” Hyunkyung Woo, PhD, a research fellow also at the Center for Systems Biology, is a co-lead author.   Q: What challenges or unmet needs make this study important? Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are tiny particles shed by cells that carry important molecular “clues” about the cell’s identity ...

Trees play a central role in life on Earth. They store CO₂, provide habitats for animals, fungi, and insects, stabilize soils, regulate water cycles, and supply resources that humans rely on – from timber and food to recreation and shade on a hot day. But the world’s forests are entering a new era, characterized by homogenization, biodiversity loss, and weakened ecosystems. This is shown by a comprehensive international study recently published in the leading journal Nature Plants. The researchers analyzed more ...

Statement Highlights: A new scientific statement from the American Heart Association and endorsed by the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists details risk factors for pregnancy-related stroke and offers suggestions for stroke prevention, rapid diagnosis, timely treatment and recovery during pregnancy and postpartum. Stroke prevention strategies during pregnancy and postpartum include risk factor modification through healthy lifestyle behaviors, managing high blood pressure and anti-clotting medications, if needed. Supporting emotional ...

The objective of “The Prevalence of Dementia in Europe 2025” report is to provide updated figures for the number of people living with dementia both for Europe as a whole, as well as the countries within.  It builds upon the work undertaken in the “Dementia in Europe Yearbook 2019”, in which Alzheimer Europe previously calculated the prevalence of dementia in Europe.  It applies prevalence estimates across 5-year age bands to UN World Population Prospects data 2024, for the years 2025 and 2050.  For 2025, there ...

Research in the International Journal of Consumer Studies reveals that TikTok functions as a powerful tool for shaping consumers' food preferences and behaviors through the use of algorithmic mechanisms, social influence, and users' emotional engagement.  The study, which was based on an online survey conducted in 2025 among 406 active TikTok users, found that the platform affects dietary preferences through various channels of influence. "Nowadays, young people are aligning most of their dietary habits with the content they might see in social media,” said corresponding ...

Because treatment of the whole prostate can lead to long-term side effects in patients with prostate cancer, interest in minimally invasive, focal treatment options has been growing for certain patients. A clinical trial published in BJU International generated promising results for a type of focal therapy, which directly targets the cancer and spares the remainder of the unaffected prostate gland. The ProFocal Laser Therapy for Prostate Tissue Ablation (PFLT-PC) trial is the first pivotal trial of ProFocal®, a novel, cooled laser focal therapy device for prostate cancer treatment. In the 100-participant trial, 84% of patients had no clinically significant prostate cancer on their ...

New research in Brain & Behavior found a link between screen time and adolescents’ sleep quality and beliefs about healthy lifestyles. In the study of 700 teens attending 2 high schools in the Black Sea region of Turkey, questionnaire responses revealed that participants who spent more time exposed to screens tended to have lower sleep quality. These adolescents were also less likely to have beliefs supporting the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Screen exposure appeared to play a mediating role in the relationship between sleep quality ...

Research in the Journal of Applied Ecology has identified threats to endangered plants in an urban area, generating information that can be used to guide effective conservation strategies across major cities. For the study, investigators in Germany analyzed data on 1,231 populations of 201 endangered plant species within Berlin’s Flora Protection Program. Threats were categorized and their relative importance was quantified at both population and species levels, and across habitat types. Biological threats—especially ...

Men reached 5% cardiovascular disease risk about seven years earlier than women Coronary heart disease drove most of the gap Risk started diverging around age 35 Earlier risk in men suggests factors beyond smoking, hypertension and diabetes alone CHICAGO --- Men begin developing coronary heart disease — which can lead to heart attacks — years earlier than women, with differences emerging as early as the mid-30s, according to a large, long-term study led by Northwestern Medicine. The findings, based on more than three decades of patient follow-up, suggest that heart disease prevention and screening ...

A new paper in Biology Methods and Protocols, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that a new computational method may help researchers identify effective precision treatments for cancer more quickly and efficiently. Precision oncology is the promising, recently developed, approach to cancer treatment in which providers shape therapies to the unique molecular profile of a patient’s tumor. Current cancer therapy depends increasingly on matching the right drug to the right patient. Large-scale studies evaluate thousands of drugs on hundreds of cancer cell lines to find genetic biological markers to predict a drug’s effectiveness. In practice, however, this data is incredibly ...

Study of 3,100 patients is first to compare long COVID brain symptoms across continents Brain fog affected 86% of non-hospitalized U.S. patients, compared with 15% in India Symptom patterns clustered by income level, not geography Disparities likely reflect culture and healthcare access, not a different virus CHICAGO --- Patients with long COVID-19 in the U.S. report far higher rates of brain fog, depression and cognitive symptoms than patients in countries such as India and Nigeria, according to a large international study led ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Jan 28, 2026)—Although perimenopause is experienced by all women regardless of race or nationality, it is not always experienced similarly. Studies comparing perimenopause symptoms across diverse cultures and geographic settings are lacking. A new study based on data from Flo, an international mobile health application, demonstrated inconsistency between perimenopause knowledge and actual symptoms experienced across diverse global populations. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause ...

Bottom Line: A four-biomarker blood panel of aminopeptidase N (ANPEP), polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (PIGR), CA19-9, and thrombospondin-2 (THBS2) enhanced the detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) compared to measuring CA19-9 levels alone. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). Author: Kenneth S. Zaret, PhD, professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Background: ...

Delivery of therapeutic genes is essential for gene therapy. Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are a prime vector for carrying gene cargoes because of their superior gene segmentation flexibility and robust gene reconstitution efficiency. However, their limited packaging capacity is a major challenge for large gene transduction. In a study published in Cell on Jan. 27, Prof. LU Zhonghua's team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and collaborators from Peking University First ...

Niigata, Japan – A group led by the Department of Neurosurgery at the Brain Research Institute, Niigata University, has successfully diagnosed ten primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) patients who had difficult-to-access lesions in or around the brainstem, or were too frail to receive surgical biopsies. Hotspot MYD88 L265P mutations were detected from circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collected from lumbar taps in all patients. A team led by Dr. Manabu Natsumeda successfully treated the patients after diagnosis by ...

Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research shows. Moths’ attraction to artificial light, such as streetlights, is common knowledge and has been much studied. But, as many people will have observed, moths may also remain still if they land near a light, apparently “trapped”. To understand this behaviour, University of Exeter researchers caught more than 800 moths from 23 species and exposed them to LED lights (of various colours and brightness) or to natural night conditions. Moths were collected with light traps and butterfly nets on the Penryn ...

A neural circuit hidden in an understudied region of the brain plays a critical role in turning temporary pain into pain that can last months or years, according to new University of Colorado Boulder research. The animal study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that silencing this pathway, known as the caudal granular insular cortex (CGIC), can prevent or halt chronic pain. “Our paper used a variety of state-of-the art methods to define the specific brain circuit crucial for deciding ...

As the world upgrades to the latest gadgets, our old smartphones, refrigerators, and televisions are fueling the fastest-growing waste stream on the planet: E-waste. While recycling is often seen as a purely "green" endeavor, a groundbreaking study published in Carbon Research reveals that the process of dismantling these electronics carries its own significant carbon price tag. Led by Dr. Mo Zhang from Nankai University, the research team provides the first comprehensive look at the carbon footprint of China’s E-waste dismantling industry. By meticulously tracking ...

  Federal priorities related to environmental protection, climate change, energy development, wildfire risk reduction, and the federal workforce have shifted rapidly over the past year, with potentially far-reaching consequences for ecosystems and public health. These changes represent a marked departure in U.S. policy direction and create an urgent need for research that can track how new policies are implemented and how their impacts unfold in real time. To help meet that need, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment has awarded special Environmental Venture ...

Venkatesan Sundaresan, a Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded a Gates Foundation grant to develop self-cloning crops for Indian farmers. The five-year, $4.9 million project is a collaboration with researchers Myeong-Je Cho at UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), Viswanathan Chinnusamy at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-IARI), New Delhi and Ravi Maruthachalam at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER-Thiruvananthapuram).  The ...

Atlantic nurse sharks show faster growth patterns in Biscayne Bay than nearby Bimini, Bahamas A new study based on long-term monitoring data demonstrates significant differences in growth between nurse sharks off the coast of Miami and those living just across the Gulf Stream. A new study from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science shows that juvenile Atlantic nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) grow more rapidly as juveniles and reach smaller maximum sizes than nurse sharks in Bimini, Bahamas—locations so close that these populations have historically ...

University of Queensland hearing tests conducted across kilometres of ocean off the Australian coast show humpback whales react to higher frequency sounds than expected. Associate Professor Rebecca Dunlop from UQ’s School of the Environment said the discovery has implications for the mitigation of noise-related human activity along whale migration routes. “Until our studies, estimates of humpback hearing sensitivity were inferred based on the anatomy of their ears,” Dr Dunlop said. “In a series of experiments off the Sunshine Coast, we exposed whales to upsweep sounds at a range of frequencies. “We looked for changes such ...

A new landmark study supports the safety of the common painkillers paracetamol and ibuprofen in the first year of life, and finds no link to eczema or bronchiolitis, a common respiratory illness. Previous research suggested a potential link between paracetamol use in the first year of life and later eczema, asthma and other diseases. “Our study found that paracetamol and ibuprofen are incredibly safe to use in young children,” says lead researcher Professor Stuart Dalziel, Cure Kids Chair of Child Health Research at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, and Paediatrician at Starship Children’s Hospital. Dalziel says paracetamol ...

Leading US tobacco brands are flouting platform and federal marketing policies designed to restrict young people’s access to their content on the popular social media platform Instagram, indicates research published online in the journal Tobacco Control.   Violations include lax or missing age verification, disclosure on brand-influencer relationships, and health warnings, the findings show.   In 2024, around 2.25 million middle and high school students reported having used a tobacco or nicotine product in the past 30 days. That’s nearly 550,000 fewer than in 2023, but still leaves millions of teen nicotine users, underscoring the ongoing need for policy and prevention ...

Sleeping without pillows may help lower high internal eye pressure, build-up of which causes optic nerve damage and glaucoma—the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide–in people with the condition, suggests preliminary research, published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.   Stacked pillows alter neck position, which may compress the jugular vein, thereby preventing the natural drainage of aqueous humor, explain the researchers. This fluid nourishes eye tissues without a blood supply like the cornea and lens and helps maintain eye shape and pressure.   Internal eye pressure, formally ...