Lifeboat Foundation

MIT researchers have developed an environmentally friendly alternative to the harmful microbeads used in some health and beauty products.

These new polymers break down into harmless sugars and amino acids and could also encapsulate nutrients for food fortification, showing promise in both cosmetic and nutritional applications.

Biodegradable Solutions by MIT.

Finding a reasonable hypothesis can pose a challenge when there are thousands of possibilities. This is why Dr. Joseph Sang-II Kwon is trying to make hypotheses in a generalizable and systematic manner.

Kwon, an associate professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, published his work on blending traditional physics-based scientific models with experimental data to accurately predict hypotheses in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering.

Kwon’s research extends beyond the realm of traditional chemical engineering. By connecting physical laws with machine learning, his work could impact renewable energy, smart manufacturing, and health care, outlined in his recent paper, “Adding big data into the equation.”

A study in mice has found that maternal gut microbiome composition during pregnancy has long-term effects on offspring stem cell growth and development. The researchers, headed by Parag Kundu, PhD, at the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai-Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that treating pregnant mice with the common gut microbe Akkermansia muciniphila resulted in offspring that had more active stem cells in both the brain and intestinal tract. As a result the offspring were less anxious and recovered quicker from colitis, and these differences were still evident at 10 months of age.

The team showed that Akkermansia muciniphila impacted stem cell growth by altering the abundance of other gut microorganisms and increasing the microbial production of metabolites that cross the placenta and induce stem cell growth and proliferation. Exposing offspring to the bacterium after birth did not result in the same stem cell activation.

“This is a major advancement in developing microbiota-based intervention strategies to improve child health,” said Kundu, who is senior author of the team’s published paper in Cell Stem Cell, titled “Maternal gut microbiota influence stem cell function in offspring.” In their report the team stated, “These results suggest a fundamental role of the maternal microbiome in programming offsprings’ stem cells and represent a promising target for interventions.”

Exponential Medicine is a unique and intensive four-day experience that gathers world-class faculty, innovators and organizations from across the biomedical and technology spectrum to explore and leverage the convergence of fast moving technologies in the reinvention and future of health and medicine.

http://exponentialmedicine.com

Vaccines have advanced the field of health and medicine throughout the last century. They are commonly given before a disease can occur to expose individuals to invading pathogens. Vaccines given as a preventative treatment helps the immune system build an immune response against disease that the person may encounter in the future. When an individual gets a shot at the doctor’s office they are injecting an attenuated version of the disease. The body will then recognize this pathogen as foreign and build an immune response against it. This is why many times a person feels sick after a few days from a vaccination – the body is activating the immune system to eliminate the disease.

Many types of vaccines exist and are developed to optimize delivery of attenuated pathogen. Arguably, the most well-known type of vaccine uses messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). These vaccines work by delivering mRNA of a virus, which allows human cells to produce viral protein. The immune system responds strongly to the viral proteins and targets them with different immune cells, while also generating antibodies against it. Once the body has built this response, the immune system can more easily target the same virus in the future. This recognition of specific infections is referred to as immunological memory. Currently, the only mRNA vaccines Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved are for COVID-19. However, the efficient use of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 have scientists wondering if this format can be used in other disease settings, including cancer.

A recent article in Nature Communications, by Dr. Damya Laoui and others introduce a novel therapeutic approach in which mRNA is integrated into nanoparticles to overcome tumor progression. Laoui is a group leader at Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) in Brussels, Belgium. Her work focuses on immune cell activation through specific immune cells known as macrophages and dendritic cells. Laoui also works on developing novel personalized immunotherapies for patients with hard-to-treat cancers.

Researchers think certain common viruses may trigger some autoimmune conditions—alone or in concert with other factors. A recent Office of Autoimmune Disease Research (OADR)-Office of Research on Women’s Health Science Talks series focused on understanding the triggers of autoimmunity and advancing research.

Almost 80 percent of people living with an autoimmune disease are women. It’s estimated there are 80–120 autoimmune diseases. These chronic and often debilitating diseases have no known cures. Some combination of genetics, immune regulation and the environment work together to form an “endotype” for each autoimmune disease patient, explained Dr. Judith James of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.

Her presentation focused on lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), which disproportionately affects women. Nine women are diagnosed with SLE for every male. In SLE, the immune system attacks healthy tissue, causing inflammation and occasionally permanent damage.

Saar Yoskovitz is Co-Founder & CEO at Augury, a pioneer in AI-driven Machine Health and Process Health solutions for industrial sectors.

American manufacturers are at a crossroads, needing to decide between evolution and obsolescence. The tools that historically drove profitability and efficiency are no longer having an impact. Labor is hard to find and harder to keep. The National Association of Manufacturing projects that 2.1 million manufacturing roles will go unfilled by 2030. This hard truth is compounded by findings in Augury’s State of Production Health report, which reveals that 91% of manufacturers say that the mass exodus of industry veterans will worsen the knowledge gap.

An alarming rate of brain drain is looming over the industrial sector. As tenured employees reach retirement age and fewer professionals line up to take their place, more manufacturers are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to bridge the gap.

Cells in the immune system don’t always fight; they often rest and wait for threats, like viruses or bacteria. When such threats emerge, the cells activate to defend the body. This delicate balance between rest and activation is crucial to our health—immune cells must be poised for activation to protect against threats, but if they’re overly active, autoimmune diseases can result.

But what controls this important balance?

In a new study published in Nature, scientists from Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco (UCSF) focused on T cells—which serve a vital role in the immune system—and pinpointed how a network of different proteins controls rest and activation.

Human fingerprints are detailed, unique, difficult to alter, and durable over the life of an individual, making them suitable as long-term markers of human identity. Could the same concept be used to help identify cancer? A new study by researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona reveals different types of cancer have unique molecular “fingerprints” that are detectable in the early stages of the disease and can be picked up with near-perfect accuracy by small, portable scanners in a few hours. The discovery lays the groundwork for creating new, noninvasive diagnostic tests that detect different types of cancer faster and earlier than currently possible.

The findings are published in the journal Molecular Cell in an article entitled “Epitranscriptomic rRNA fingerprinting reveals tissue-of-origin and tumor-specific signatures.”

“Our ribosomes are not all the same. They are specialized in different tissues and carry unique signatures that reflect what’s happening inside our bodies,” explained ICREA research professor Eva Novoa, PhD, lead author of the study and researcher at the CRG. “These subtle differences can tell us a lot about health and disease.”