MIRA, an autonomous AI agent tested in a sandboxed electronic health record, diagnosed 574 real emergency department cases with 88.9% accuracy and outperformed physicians in a matched 311-case comparison. The system ordered tests, generated medication plans, and made admission decisions in simulation, but the authors stress that prospective validation, governance, and physician oversight are still essential.
Luo et al. characterize a comprehensive molecular portrait of neurotransmitter receptor genes across 33 cancer types using multidimensional omics data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and other independent cohorts. They identify clinically relevant neuroregulatory subtypes with distinct molecular features, advancing the emerging field of cancer neuroscience.
The first human clinical trial of a universal Sarbeco coronavirus vaccine, developed by the University of Cambridge and spin-out DIOSynVax (DVX) Ltd, has shown that the vaccine is safe and has no significant side effects.
The trial, involving 39 healthy volunteers, tested a vaccine designed to provide protection against multiple Sarbeco coronaviruses—the large group of viruses that occur in nature including SARS-CoV-2, which caused the COVID pandemic.
The vaccine triggered immune responses in the volunteers not only to SARS-CoV-2 and SARS, but to related bat viruses that could potentially jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics.
Aptamers are short DNA or RNA strands that can recognize and bind to a specific target molecule with high precision. Similar to antibodies, they can be used to detect these molecules or modulate their activity. Unlike antibodies, they are much more stable, can be produced synthetically and can be chemically modified to achieve the desired properties. As a result, they can offer capabilities that cannot be achieved with antibodies.
As demand grows for accurate and rapid diagnostic tools, aptamers are often better suited to these applications than antibodies. However, developing aptamers is both experimentally demanding and time-consuming. A team of scientists from IOCB Prague, led by Dr. Marek Ondruš and Prof. Michal Hocek, has now developed a technology that significantly shortens the development process. Their research is published in the journal Nature Communications.
A massive new meta-analysis reveals that individual cognitive abilities, like reading and math, rely on inherited DNA just as much as overall intelligence, suggesting people possess heavily customized genetic cognitive profiles independent of general smarts.
