Adaptive optics (AO) has been used in many applications, including astronomy, microscopy, and medical imaging.

An international team led by National University of Singapore researchers has linked secondary lymphedema to excessive cholesterol buildup inside skin and around lymphatic vessels. Excess cholesterol deposition tracked with dermal fat cell enlargement, fat cell dysfunction, cell death, and fibrosis, while cholesterol-clearing interventions reduced swelling and improved lymphatic drainage in mouse models, alongside reduced tissue cholesterol and clinical procedures that improved drainage.

Secondary lymphedema involves impaired lymphatic drainage with progressive swelling, fat expansion, inflammation, and fibrosis, often following cancer treatment, infection, or injury. Lymphatic vessels transport cholesterol from peripheral tissues back into circulation, placing cholesterol clearance inside the functional scope of normal lymphatic drainage. Lymphatic vessels also have roles in immune surveillance, tissue fluid balance, and lipid transport.

In the study, “Targeting excessive cholesterol deposition alleviates secondary lymphoedema,” published in Nature, researchers investigated whether lymphatic insufficiency alters cholesterol handling and adipose tissue architecture.

Immunotherapy given before or after surgery is increasingly used across several cancer areas. In an article published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, researchers at Karolinska Institutet present a comprehensive review of studies across seven tumor areas, showing how the field is moving toward earlier treatment.

For several years, immunotherapy has transformed the treatment of advanced cancer that can no longer be removed surgically. It is now used more frequently in earlier stages of disease as well—before surgery, known as neoadjuvant treatment, or after surgery, known as adjuvant treatment.

In the new article, the researchers summarize findings from studies on several cancer diagnoses, grouped into seven tumor areas: skin cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, gynecological cancer, head and neck cancer, and urological cancer.

A research team led by UAB researcher David Reverter has discovered the molecular mechanism that describes in detail the process regulating cell division in bacteria, based on the binding of the MraZ protein to the dcw gene cluster. The research has been published in Nature Communications.

Cell division is a central process in all living organisms and requires the coordinated action of many proteins and other regulatory elements. In most bacteria, this process is encoded in a gene cluster called the dcw operon, which groups all the genes that produce the proteins necessary to carry out cell division and bacterial wall formation.

These sets of genes are activated by proteins that act as transcription factors: they bind to the promoter region of the gene, the DNA sequence that indicates the point to start transcription, just before the first codon (the basic unit of gene information) that codes for the beginning of the protein sequence. One of these transcription factors is MraZ, the first gene of the dcw operon in all bacteria. When activated, the necessary proteins (encoded within the genes of the operon) are produced so that the bacteria can divide. It is, therefore, the transcription factor that controls the activity of the operon responsible for cell division in most bacteria.

Sci. Transl. Med. 18, eadt1211 (2026). DOI:10.1126/scitranslmed.adt1211

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