Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 7

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Cancer Outcomes Across Tumors Predicted by CCL3 Production by Neutrophils

Neutrophils are known as first responders to threatening infections and feature prominently in the microenvironment of tumors to resist cancer progression. Though neutrophils have been linked to the growth of multiple cancers, such as lung and breast, these cells can assume multiple functional states.

In a new study published in Cancer Cell titled, “ CCL3 is produced by aged neutrophils across cancers and promotes tumor growth,” researchers from Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne have discovered a gene expression program executed by tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) and a corresponding biomarker that uniformly support cancer cell survival and tumor progression across human and murine tumors.

Results demonstrate that TANs characterized by this conserved genetic program are a central variable of the tumor microenvironment (TME) linked to cancer progression. The authors also identify an associated marker, CCL3, as key to supporting cancer growth.

Cancer vaccine shows promise against HPV-related throat tumors in early study

A vaccine designed to fight HPV-driven head and neck cancers has shown promising results in a lab study in human tissues and mice.

If proven effective in humans, the therapeutic shot could complement standard cancer therapies, and its design may help scientists build better vaccines for other diseases.

Abstract: This Research Article adds new information to our understanding of critical illness phenotypes

Narges Alipanah-Lechner & team perform multi-omics analysis of patients with ARDS, revealing 4 molecular signatures associated with death, all characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction.

1Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy, and Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, UCSF, San Francisco, California, USA.

2Division of Clinical and Translational Research, Department of Anesthesia, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

3Cardiovascular Research Institute, UCSF, San Francisco, California, USA.

SNAP-25 disease variants affect synaptic transmission by destabilizing SNARE complexes within a multimeric SNARE ring

Vold et al. studied two SNAP-25 variants with different clinical severity. Variants destabilize the SNARE complex and reduce binding to the Munc18-1:VAMP2:syntaxin-1 acceptor complex, with correlated effects on neurotransmitter release. Effects of co-expression of variant and wild-type SNAP-25 were modeled by assuming the co-existence of both species in a ring of SNARE complexes.

Using synthetic biology and AI to address global antimicrobial resistance threat

James J. Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and faculty co-lead of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, is embarking on a multidisciplinary research project that applies synthetic biology and generative artificial intelligence to the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The research project is sponsored by Jameel Research, part of the Abdul Latif Jameel International network. The initial three-year, $3 million research project in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science focuses on developing and validating programmable antibacterials against key pathogens.

AMR — driven by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics — has accelerated the rise of drug-resistant infections, while the development of new antibacterial tools has slowed. The impact is felt worldwide, especially in low-and middle-income countries, where limited diagnostic infrastructure causes delays or ineffective treatment.

The Exploration Company completes water-impact tests for its Nyx space capsule

MILAN — The French-German aerospace company The Exploration Company completed mock splashdown tests for its Nyx space capsule, a modular, reusable spacecraft designed to transport cargo and eventually crew to low Earth orbit and beyond. The company conducted water-impact tests on a mock capsule from Jan. 13 through 28.

The testing campaign was not a full splashdown test, but a model-validation exercise carried out at the “Umberto Pugliese” towing tank facility in Italy. The company used a 135-kilogram, 1:4-scale mock-up in a 13.5-meter by 6.5-meter tank to characterize Nyx’s water-impact behavior and validate its numerical models. The testing is intended as a step toward future certification activities and subsequent splashdown activities.

“The primary objective was validation of the numerical splashdown model,” a company spokesperson told SpaceNews. “To do that, we varied release heights and velocities in a controlled way to reproduce multiple impact conditions with high repeatability.”

Copenhagen Atomics reaches pump testing milestone

Danish nuclear technology company Copenhagen Atomics has completed two years of continuous operation of a molten salt pump and test loop at its facilities in Copenhagen. The system has been running without issues under high-temperature molten salt conditions, marking one of the longest continuous durability tests of its kind worldwide, it said. ;

A possible first-ever Einstein probe observation of a black hole tearing apart a white dwarf

On July 2, 2025, the China-led Einstein Probe (EP) space telescope detected an exceptionally bright X-ray source whose brightness varied rapidly during a routine sky survey. Its unusual signal immediately set it apart from ordinary cosmic sources, triggering rapid follow-up observations by telescopes worldwide.

Study of the event was coordinated by the EP Science Center of the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), with participation from multiple research institutions in China and abroad. Astrophysicists from the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), who are integral members of the EP scientific team, worked together with the broader collaboration to interpret the event, proposing that it may mark the moment when an intermediate-mass black hole tears apart and consumes a white dwarf star.

If confirmed, this would be the first observational evidence of such an extreme black hole “feeding” process. The findings have been published as a cover article in Science Bulletin.

Digital twin reveals how eye cells lose their organization in leading cause of vision loss

National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have developed a digital replica of crucial eye cells, providing a new tool for studying how the cells organize themselves when they are healthy and affected by diseases. The platform opens a new door for therapeutic discovery for blinding diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss in people over 50. The study is published in the journal npj Artificial Intelligence.

“This work represents the first-ever subcellular resolution digital twin of a differentiated human primary cell, demonstrating how the eye is an ideal proving ground for developing methods that could be used more generally in biomedical research,” Kapil Bharti, Ph.D., scientific director at the NIH’s National Eye Institute (NEI).

The researchers created a highly detailed, 3D data-driven digital twin of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, which perform vital recycling and supportive roles to light-sensing photoreceptors in the retina. In diseases such as AMD, RPE cells die, which eventually leads to the death of photoreceptor cells, causing loss of vision.

/* */