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Universal Vaccine Blocks Viruses, Bacteria, And Allergies With a Nasal Spray

Imagine getting a nasal spray in the fall months that protects you from all respiratory viruses, including COVID-19, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and the common cold, as well as bacterial pneumonia and early spring allergens.

As vital as vaccines are, they can be frustratingly selective about their targets.

Scientists from institutions across the US have now developed a strikingly “universal” vaccine, which has protected mice against a range of viruses, bacteria, and even allergies.

The new GLA-3M-052-LS+OVA vaccine can be delivered as a nasal spray. Three doses protected mice from infection from SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses for three months, and reduced the viral load in their lungs 700-fold, compared to unvaccinated mice.

Painful Side Effect of Statins Explained After Decades of Mystery

It’s the most common reason patients quit statins, and it’s a very real problem that needs a solution.

Around 10 percent of people who take statins to lower cholesterol experience mysterious muscle pains, causing many to discontinue these potentially life-saving medicines.

Now, researchers from Columbia University and the University of Rochester in the US have revealed that statin-associated muscle symptoms (SAMS), such as aches and fatigue, result from an influx of calcium into muscle cells, which leads to tissue damage and potentially life-threatening complications.

Statins work by blocking an enzyme that’s required for the biosynthesis of cholesterol in the liver. As a result, levels of ’bad’ LDL cholesterol are reduced in the blood, helping to prevent one of America’s top killers: cardiovascular diseases like atherosclerosis, the buildup of fatty deposits in blood vessels.

Sensitive CAR T cells redefine targetable CD70 expression in solid tumors

Solid tumor antigen heterogeneity is a major challenge for cancer immunotherapies, including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. Unlike CD19 for B cell malignancies, no target with pan-cellular expression in solid tumors and absence in normal vital cells has been identified. CD70 is a promising candidate, physiologically confined to immune cell subsets and aberrantly expressed in many cancers. We show that heterogeneous CD70 expression in tumors is epigenetically regulated, ranging from high to very low in individual cells, appearing negative by conventional detection methods. Using a highly sensitive CD70 receptor, HLA-independent T cell (HIT) receptor coexpressing CD80 and 4-1BBL for costimulation, we efficiently eliminated CD70-heterogeneous tumors that evade prototypic CAR T cells. These findings provide a potential strategy to treat a broad range of solid tumors.

Efficient amyloid-β degradation in Alzheimer’s disease using SPYTACs

Now online! SPYTAC is a synthetic peptide-programmed targeted protein degradation platform harnessing LRP1 to drive lysosomal degradation of extracellular amyloid-β in the brain and periphery. In 5×FAD mice, SPYTAC treatment efficiently degrades amyloid-β, preserves neurons, and improves cognition with reduced neuroinflammation and microhemorrhage when compared with antibody therapy.

This isn’t just about living longer

Scientists are discovering that targeting senescent cells the “aged” cells surrounding tumors may weaken cancer itself.

Cancer often forces nearby cells into accelerated aging. Those senescent cells then release growth factors that help the tumor survive and expand.

A new therapy called Senovax aims to eliminate those surrounding cells, effectively collapsing the tumor’s support system.

Preclinical data from Immortebio shows tumor reduction in mouse models of:

Lung cancer.

Read more

Möbius-inspired surface controls light in two directions

Light is an unusually rich carrier of information. Its direction of travel, wavelength, and polarization can all be used to encode signals or images. Yet controlling these properties independently remains difficult, especially when light can enter a device from either side.

In most optical materials—and even in many metasurfaces—the laws of reciprocity and time-reversal symmetry tightly link how a device behaves for forward and backward illumination. As a result, truly different responses in the two directions are hard to achieve in a compact optical element.

The challenge grows sharper when polarization is included. Many metasurfaces work only with simple polarization states, such as horizontal and vertical or left-and right-circular polarization.

Thermogenetics: How proteins are controllable by heat

Protein activity can be precisely regulated via subtle changes in temperature using heat-sensitive switches. Underlying this capability is a novel modular design strategy developed by researchers at the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology of Heidelberg University. The strategy allows the integration of sensory domains in various proteins regardless of function or spatial structure.

This new approach in the field of thermogenetics is broadly applicable and opens up new possibilities for precise, non-invasive control of different cellular processes. It was developed by a research team led by Prof. Dr. Dominik Niopek and Dr. Jan Mathony and is published in Nature Chemical Biology

Proteins are the molecular machines of the cell. They regulate nearly all vital processes and their responses are highly dynamic. To better understand these processes and their chronological sequence, scientists need tools that can be used to change individual parameters precisely and in a controlled manner. The most suitable proteins are those that can be turned on and off like technical devices. Especially attractive in this context are heat-sensitive protein switches that tightly regulate the temperature spatiotemporally and are able to deeply penetrate tissue or complex biological samples as a signal.

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