Lifeboat Foundation

CD4⁺ T cells have been highlighted in the scientific literature for the important role they play in the immune response to lung infections. However, an article published in the journal Cell Reports shows that an imbalance in the volumes of these defense cells in different parts of the lung in response to infection can do more harm than good.

The study described in the article involved infecting mice with hypervirulent tuberculosis and influenza. The authors concluded that an “ideal amount” of CD4⁺ T cells in the lungs was required for a cure.

This finding opens up perspectives for therapeutic interventions aimed at combating diseases that attack the lungs while not affecting the ability of the adaptive immune system to fight off infection. Even relatively small numbers of CD4⁺ T cells in the lungs proved sufficient to afford protection against tuberculosis, for example.

One of the country’s best-known science museums, San Francisco’s Exploratorium, is located less than three miles north of Gladstone Institutes—proximity that has resulted in creative, high-science collaborations like the permanent exhibit featured in the latest issue of Stem Cell Reports.

Among the museum’s most popular exhibits, “Give Heart Cells A Beat” opens a rare window into the microscopic world of the beating human heart, using technology and materials made possible through Gladstone’s science and expertise. With the exhibit, the team created the first interactive museum experience that allows the public to interact directly with living cardiomyocytes.

Continue reading “Heart-to-heart connection: Collaboration brings a breakthrough science exhibit to life” »

To create the breakthrough model, researchers integrated two cutting-edge #AI techniques for the first time in the fields of #bioinformatics and #Cheminformatics : the well-known “Encoder-Decoder Transformer architecture” and “Reinforcement Learning via Monte Carlo Tree Search” (RL-MCTS).

Generative artificial intelligence platforms, from ChatGPT to Midjourney, grabbed headlines in 2023. But GenAI can do more than create collaged images and help write emails—it can also design new drugs to treat disease.

Today, scientists use advanced technology to design new synthetic drug compounds with the right properties and characteristics, also known as “de novo drug design.” However, current methods can be labor-, time-, and cost-intensive.

Continue reading “Scientists code ChatGPT to design new medicine” »

An international research group has discovered a new state of matter characterized by the existence of a quantum phenomenon called chiral current. These currents are generated on an atomic scale by a cooperative movement of electrons, unlike conventional magnetic materials whose properties originate from the quantum characteristic of an electron known as spin and their ordering in the crystal.

Chirality is a property of extreme importance in science, for example, it is fundamental also to understand DNA. In the quantum phenomenon discovered, the chirality of the currents was detected by studying the interaction between light and matter, in which a suitably polarized photon can emit an electron from the surface of the material with a well-defined spin state.

The discovery, published in Nature, significantly enriches our knowledge of quantum materials in the search for chiral quantum phases and on the phenomena that occur at the surface of materials.

Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common lung cancer and the cause of most cancer-related deaths in the United States. There are several ways lung adenocarcinoma can arise, one of which is a mutation in a protein called EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor). Non-mutated EGFR helps cells grow in response to injury, but mutated EGFR promotes out-of-control growth that can turn into cancer.

Modern immunotherapies don’t work against EGFR-driven lung adenocarcinoma, and while some drugs exist to treat the cancer, patients typically develop a resistance to them within just a few years. This gap in the treatment tool chest inspired Salk Institute researchers to probe for weak spots in the cancer’s growth pathway.

The team discovered that EGFR-driven lung adenocarcinoma hijacks a specialized population of lung-resident immune cells called macrophages, which are designed to dispose of diseased and damaged cells, as well as maintain a delicate balance of protective lipids (fats) around lung alveoli, which are essential for breathing.

A theoretical study finds that the most energy-efficient way to control an active-matter system is to drive it at finite speed—unlike passive-matter systems.

The control of active matter, a class of systems in which each constituent constantly converts energy into directed motion, holds great potential for applications ranging from the targeted delivery of drugs to the creation of smart materials. Using an active-matter system to achieve a particular goal requires that one can efficiently drive it from one state to another. However, active matter’s intrinsic nonequilibrium condition presents a major challenge for theoretical treatments, meaning the most efficient way of driving a system is often difficult to predict. Now Luke Davis at the University of Luxembourg and colleagues have introduced a general framework to determine thermodynamically optimal protocols to drive active systems between different states in a way that minimizes the associated heat dissipation [1].

A network-theory model, tested on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, offers tools for quantifying the amount of information delivered to a listener by a musical piece.

Great pieces of music transport the audience on emotional journeys and tell stories through their melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. But can the information contained in a piece, as well as the piece’s effectiveness at communicating it, be quantified? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a framework, based on network theory, for carrying out these quantitative assessments. Analyzing a large body of work by Johan Sebastian Bach, they show that the framework could be used to categorize different kinds of compositions on the basis of their information content [1]. The analysis also allowed them to pinpoint certain features in music compositions that facilitate the communication of information to listeners. The researchers say that the framework could lead to new tools for the quantitative analysis of music and other forms of art.

To tackle complex systems such as musical pieces, the team turned to network theory—which offers powerful tools to understand the behavior of discrete, interconnected units, such as individuals during a pandemic or nodes in an electrical power grid. Researchers have previously attempted to analyze the connections between musical notes using network-theory tools. Most of these studies, however, ignore an important aspect of communication: the flawed nature of perception. “Humans are imperfect learners,” says Suman Kulkarni, who led the study. The model developed by the team incorporated this aspect through the description of a fuzzy process through which a listener derives an “inferred” network of notes from the “true” network of the original piece.

A protein that has been widely studied owing to its association with neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is also linked to medulloblastoma, a type of central nervous system cancer. Medulloblastoma is one of the most common and aggressive brain tumors in children, arising from undifferentiated cells during early neural development.

A study led by a group of Brazilian scientists has shown in vitro and in vivo that the gene VAPB is linked to cell proliferation in these tumors. An article on the study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The discovery points to a potential marker of severity and, after more research, a future therapeutic target. Medulloblastoma is currently treated with a combination of surgery to remove the tumor and radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy, both of which are aggressive and can cause long-lasting brain damage.

A common practice of prescribing anticoagulants to people who have had unexplained strokes should stop, according to a study led by researchers at Columbia, Weill Cornell Medicine, and the University of Washington and published in JAMA.

Anticoagulants were thought to prevent additional strokes in people whose initial stroke has an unknown cause but who have a heart condition, atrial cardiopathy, that resembles atrial fibrillation, a common cause of stroke.

“We know these drugs work for people with atrial fibrillation, so we thought that they would probably work for people with atrial cardiopathy as well,” says Mitchell Elkind, MD, professor of neurology at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and one of the study’s leaders. “That was the basis for the trial.”