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Category: health

Scientists measure hidden quantum forces that could power a new generation of pharmaceutical drugs

It’s one thing to design a pharmaceutical drug. It’s another to know if and why it actually works; not on paper or in a computer model, but inside the chaotic world of living systems, where proteins twist into shape, atoms constantly pull and push each other apart, and molecular interactions are the difference between health and disease.

For decades, scientists have known that these interactions are driven by hidden quantum forces. The problem is that, like working blindfolded, they’ve never been able to measure them directly in biological systems.

Now, that era of blindfolded work may be ending.

Preventing the next pandemic using AI-designed vaccines

For most of human history, infectious diseases were the main causes of morbidity and mortality. Advances in sanitation, antibiotics, vaccines, and public health dramatically shifted that balance, particularly in high-income countries, where life expectancy has increased by nearly 40 years over the past century. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic provided a stark reminder that infectious threats can still reshape societies almost overnight. Between 2019 and 2021 alone, life expectancy in the US fell by more than two years, and recent modelling suggests there is roughly a 50 percent chance of another COVID-scale pandemic occurring within the next 25 years.

Historically, the vaccine development model has been largely reactive and variant-driven, but the industry is now actively shifting toward proactive and universal vaccinology to get ahead of evolving pathogens. Recent results from a first-in-human clinical trial led by the University of Cambridge and its spin-out DIOSynVax, published in the Journal of Infection, provide early clinical evidence of this shift, demonstrating the safety of an AI-designed “super-antigen” intended to provide broad viral coverage.

X-ray snapshots reveal how viral shells change shape as they dry out

When viruses travel through the air in tiny droplets, they can quickly start to dry out. Yet many viruses remain infectious after rehydration—something that is still not fully understood. Now, an international team of researchers has directly observed at the European XFEL how the protein shells of viruses can change shape during dehydration, offering new clues to viral resilience and opening new possibilities for virology research. The results, published in Light: Science & Applications, lay the groundwork for potential applications in virology and public health and can, for instance, help develop antiviral strategies.

At the SPB/SFX instrument of the European XFEL, Abhishek Mall from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg (MPSD) and his colleagues explored the structural dynamics of the protein shells—called capsids—that enclose the genetic material of viruses. Specifically, they examined the behavior of capsids of the bacteriophage MS2 under conditions of dehydration. MS2 is an icosahedral, i.e., shaped by 20 triangular surfaces that form a sphere, single-stranded RNA virus that infects the bacterium Escherichia coli and is widely used as a model system in virology.

The capsid’s design is critical for protecting the viral genome and helping the virus interact with host cells. However, viruses are often confronted with environments that challenge their structural integrity, for example through dehydration. Theoretical studies have long suggested that capsids may undergo low-energy “buckling transitions”—sudden changes in shape—to adapt to such stresses, but direct experimental evidence has been lacking.

Autonomous medical AI outperforms doctors in simulated EHR cases

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.

Social Determinants of Health and Neurobiology Across the Schizophrenia Course: A Systematic Review

This systematic review examines structural, functional, neurochemical, and plasticity brain changes associated with social determinants of health in individuals with, or at risk for, schizophrenia-spectrum psychotic conditions.

UNM Researchers Find Alarmingly High Levels of Microplastics in Human Brains — and Concentrations are Growing Over Time

Microplastics – tiny bits of degraded polymers that are ubiquitous in our air, water and soil – have lodged themselves throughout the human body, including the liver, kidney, placenta and testes, over the past half century.

Now, University of New Mexico Health Sciences researchers have found microplastics in human brains, and at much higher concentrations than in other organs. Worse, the plastic accumulation appears to be growing over time, having increased by 50% over just the past eight years.

In a new study published in Nature Medicine, a team led by toxicologist Matthew Campen, PhD, Distinguished and Regents’ Professor in the UNM College of Pharmacy, reported that plastic concentrations in the brain appeared higher than in the liver or kidney, and higher than previous reports for placentas and testes.

Colorectal tumors use mitochondrial complex II to stockpile iron, but eliminating it causes cell death

Scientists know that colorectal cancer cells require large amounts of iron and that as cancer becomes more aggressive, the cells have even higher amounts of iron. Normal cells with high levels of iron would undergo a type of iron-related cell death called ferroptosis. But in cancer cells, the iron continues to accumulate well beyond normal levels without succumbing to expected cell death processes.

Researchers from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center have now discovered a key metabolic pathway that allows colorectal cancer cells to accumulate large quantities of iron. Blocking that pathway reduced iron levels and caused the cancer cells to die.

In this new study, published in Cell Metabolism, researchers started by looking at the known pathways involved in ferroptosis, assuming something in this process was awry. But knocking out these typical ferroptotic enzymes had no impact on tumor growth. So they dug deeper into mitochondrial metabolism.

Clinician–scientists identify brain network linked to deadliest childhood brain cancer

A human brain network associated with survival in children with diffuse midline glioma (DMG), the deadliest childhood brain cancer, has been identified by UCL clinician-scientists, raising the possibility of entirely new treatment approaches. The researchers found that DMG tumors seem to exploit the brain’s existing neural circuitry to drive tumor growth and progression. Tumors that were more strongly connected to this network were associated with significantly shorter patient survival.

The study, published in Nature, builds on pioneering work in the field of cancer neuroscience, which shows that brain tumors, including DMG, dynamically interact with the otherwise healthy brain.

The study was led by Dr. Jai Sidpra and Dr. Valentina Lind, medical students enrolled in the MBPhD Program within the UCL Division of Medicine and senior author Professor Darren Hargrave’s group at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health.

New tool to help build more reliable DNA nanostructures

Scaffolded DNA and RNA origami is a technique that allows scientists to build tiny, highly precise two- and three-dimensional objects. Because these nanostructures can interact naturally with biological systems, they could have important future uses in health care and agritech.

AI repurposes routine chest X-rays to catch silent bone loss before fracture

Osteoporosis is a silent disease where bone loss develops gradually before fractures occur. Current clinical screening recommendations mainly focus on older women and selected high-risk groups, leaving some men, younger adults, and individuals with normal body weight completely outside routine screening pathways.

To close this care gap, researchers from St. Paul’s Hospital and National Taiwan University have demonstrated how AI can leverage routine chest X-rays to detect asymptomatic bone loss, closing critical gaps in screening healthy Asian populations. Their paper is published in the journal npj Digital Medicine.

Strikingly, the study found that more than half of the confirmed abnormal bone-density cases occurred in people with a normal body mass index (BMI). This reveals a severe diagnostic blind spot in conventional, guideline-based screening. By relying strictly on traditional criteria, health care systems routinely overlook healthy-weight individuals, younger adults, and men who are secretly losing bone density but remain completely off the clinical radar.

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