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BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) — Before Fred Kalfon began exercising at the Grey Team veterans center a couple months ago, the 81-year-old rarely left his Florida home.

Parkinson’s disease, an inner ear disorder and other neurological problems, all likely caused by the Vietnam vet’s exposure to the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, made it difficult for him to move. His post-traumatic stress disorder, centering on the execution of a woman who helped his platoon, was at its worst.

Switching to a diet full of fresh veggies and low in processed foods could do wonders for your brain’s biological age, new research shows.

According to the international team of researchers who ran the study, eating a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables, seafood, and whole grains appears to slow the signs of accelerated brain aging typically seen in obesity with as little as 1 percent loss in body weight.

Brain scans taken after 18 months showed the participants’ brain age appearing almost 9 months younger than expected, compared to estimates of their brain’s chronological age.

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Researchers at the University at Albany’s RNA Institute have demonstrated a new approach to DNA nanostructure assembly that does not require magnesium. The method improves the biostability of the structures, making them more useful and reliable in a range of applications. The work appears in the journal Small this month.

When we think of DNA, the first association that comes to mind is likely genetics—the double helix structure within cells that houses an organism’s blueprint for growth and reproduction. A rapidly evolving area of DNA research is that of DNA nanostructures—synthetic molecules made up of the same building blocks as the DNA found in living cells, which are being engineered to solve critical challenges in applications ranging from medical diagnostics and drug delivery to materials science and data storage.

“In this work, we assembled DNA nanostructures without using magnesium, which is typically used in this process but comes with challenges that ultimately reduce the utility of the nanostructures that are produced,” said Arun Richard Chandrasekaran, corresponding author of the study and senior research scientist at the RNA Institute.

Previous morpho-molecular studies of evolutionary relationships within the economically important genus of honey bees (Apis), including the Western Honey Bee (A. mellifera L.), have suggested Out of Africa or Asia origins and subsequent spread to Europe. I test these hypotheses by a meta-analysis of complete mitochondrial DNA coding regions (11.0 kbp) from 22 nominal subspecies represented by 78 individual sequences in A. mellifera. Parsimony, distance, and likelihood analyses identify six nested clades: Things Fall Apart with Out of Africa or Asia hypotheses. Molecular clock-calibrated phylogeographic analysis shows instead a basal origin of A. m. mellifera in Europe ~ 780 Kya, and expansion to Southeast Europe and Asia Minor ~ 720 Kya. Eurasian bees spread southward via a Levantine/Nilotic/Arabian corridor into Africa ~ 540 Kya.

The limited ability of microrobots to assist drugs in entering cells hinders their therapeutic efficacy. To address this, a research team, reporting in Cyborg and Bionic Systems, has introduced the cancer-targeting molecule folic acid (FA) to microrobots to promote drug uptake by cancer cells via receptor-ligand-mediated endocytosis. This results in a drug delivery system that can locate lesion areas with magnetic fields and deliver loaded drugs into the cytoplasm through endocytosis.

Untethered microrobots have shown remarkable achievements in various fields such as minimally invasive surgery, drug delivery, environmental remediation, and tissue engineering. Magnetic field actuation is a widely used method due to its good biosafety, deeper tissue penetration, and high temporal and spatial control.

However, practical problems arise when microrobots delivering drugs may only be able to deliver the drugs to the area around the cells but cannot assist the drugs to enter the cells. This limitation could potentially reduce the effectiveness of the treatment since the drugs may not reach the intended targets within the cells.

Northwestern Medicine investigators have developed a novel nanoparticle treatment for glioblastoma, according to a study published in Nature Communications.

Glioblastoma, the most common type of primary brain cancer, is one of the most complex, deadly and treatment-resistant cancers, according to the National Brain Tumor Society. The five-year survival rate for glioblastoma patients hovers near 7% and has remained unchanged for decades.

Previous Northwestern Medicine research has shown that glioblastoma tumors accumulate large numbers of immunosuppressive tumor-associated myeloid cells (TAMCs), which impairs the immune system’s ability to fight the tumor and reduces the effectiveness of radiation and chemotherapy.

The fact that our immune systems capture and destroy nanoparticles and the drugs they carry has been a problem in the field of nanomedicine for some time. But, in the fight against cancer, researchers are now attempting to exploit this problem to their advantage.

Researchers around the world are seeking to identify techniques that use nanoparticles in the treatment of disease. Such particles are about 100 nanometers—one thousandth of a millimeter—in diameter, and within them researchers are inserting large numbers of even smaller drug molecules.

Optimism for this approach in the treatment of various forms of cancer has been particularly great.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects roughly 2.5 million people worldwide and is a neurological disease affecting the brain and spinal cord. More specifically, MS is when the immune system attacks the body’s protective layer around nerve fibers known as myelin sheaths. The breakdown of myelin sheath leads to a disconnect between your brain and body. The immune cells responsible for myelin sheath deterioration include CD4+ T cells, or effector cells, which are part of the body’s first line of defense. In MS, the effector cells do not recognize that the myelin sheath is a normal part of the body. Therefore, the effector cells become the dominant cell type, trying to kill and get rid of the myelin sheath. The immune response will generate inflammation which destroys the myelin sheath leading to a disruption of signals along the nerves from the brain to the body.

A group of researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine recently published a therapy that controls the symptoms of MS. The goal of the therapy was to stop effector cells from attacking the myelin sheath and to promote the production of T regulatory cells-or T regs-which have been demonstrated to reduce autoimmune effects.

Dr. Giorgio Raimondi, PhD, MSc, Jordan Green, and others used three therapeutic agents to control MS symptoms. Researchers used microparticles, which are small, bioengineered spheres to deliver the agents. The first agent is a combination of two proteins which include Interleukin-2 (IL2) and an antibody that promotes T reg production. IL2 stimulates T cell expansion, while the antibody blocks specific parts of IL2 to specifically expand T regs compared to effector cells. The second agent includes a molecule that presents a protein specific to myelin so that the immune response will generate T regs specifically designed to protect the myelin sheath. Finally, the third agent is rapamycin, which is an immunosuppressant drug designed to reduce effector T cells.