Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmSfKQDoQz/

Genetically modifying bacteria using AI-refined DNA leads to production of vaccines with 8-fold higher immunogenicity in a time-frame even 5 times shorter than even the speedy mRNA technology. Microbiologists at the University of Virginia and Duke University now report this proof-of-concept in the journal Vaccines.

This novel approach utilizes inactivated bacteria programmed with synthetic DNA instructions to produce new, highly effective vaccine antigens in about 3 weeks. The DNA design is guided by AI protein-structure modeling. The resultant vaccines are stable at refrigerator temperatures. They are inexpensive to produce costing less than $1/dose.

In contrast, mRNA vaccines require more complex manufacturing and ultra-cold storage. They require about 3 months or more to go from design to a test-ready product.

Additional preclinical testing is needed before human trials, but the researchers predict that this approach could transform how the world responds to future pandemics—by making vaccines faster, cheaper, and more accessible to everyone…..someday soon.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20260128/UVA-Health-scientists-pioneer-a-new-way-to-create-vaccines-far-more-quickly-than-ever-before.aspx

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/14/1/14

#vaccines #bacteria #AI #mRNA

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmR81-DQm_/

Cancer research may be entering a new, animal-free era thanks to a novel organ-on-a-chip platform that mimics how human tumors behave. Nanoscientists at the University of Arizona have developed this tumor micro-environment and utilized it for testing the effects of radiation therapy on lung cancer. They report the result in he journal iScience.

Their technology is termed ASTEROIDS which is short for Apparatus to Simulate Tumor Environment and Reproduce Organs in an Interactive and Dynamic System. This system mimics the human tumor microenvironment including blood-flow forces, cell-to-cell communication, immune interactions, and mechanical stress. It accurately reproduces how tumors respond to treatment and offers a more human-relevant method for testing cancer therapies.

This study focused on lung cancer, but the ASTEROIDS platform can be adapted to any solid tumor. It supports the tenants of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 which encourages reducing animal testing in favor of human-based lab models.

Though used to test radiation therapy in this study, ASTEROIDS will also turbocharge drug development and improve how well lab testing can predict therapy outcomes……someday soon.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-3d-chip-platform-enables-animal.html

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)02497-6?_returnURL=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2589004225024976?showall=true

#cancer #radiation #testing #animals #organonchip

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmRDXNDmVN/

A pill that uses a genetic trick to reset your body’s internal clock forward could eliminate jet lag more effectively than light therapy or melatonin. A team of researchers at several Japanese universities have developed an experimental oral compound and report their discovery in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their discovery, named Mic-628, works by activating a core clock gene known as Period1, or Per1, which establishes the timing of sleep, wakefulness, and metabolism. Unlike existing approaches that rely on precisely timed light exposure, Mic-628 advances the body clock no matter when it is ingested.

Using a mouse model to simulate eastward jet travel, a single dose of Mic-628 successfully shortens jet-lag recovery from seven to just four days. Most significantly, this drug shifts both the brain’s master clock and peripheral clocks in organs like the lungs and maintains body sync.

The researchers note that advancing the body’s clock forward is not only important for eastward air travel but also for night-shift work. Current approaches using melatonin give inconsistent results.

While Mic-628 has not yet entered clinical trials, it could become a new class of “smart circadian drugs” that effectively treat jet lag, shift-work sleep problems, and other disorders caused by body-clock misalignments…..someday soon.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-jet-lag-scientists-oral-compound.html

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2509943123

#jetlag #circadianrhythm #nightshift #melatonin

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUl9DtHidW2/

It is possible that an internal switch in your body can be pushed to stop you from gaining weight. As a bonus, this switch also keeps your cholesterol in control and prevents liver damage. Molecular biologists at Cleveland’s Case Western University have found this switch and report their discovery in the journal Science Signaling.

Working in a mouse model, the researchers identified a novel enzyme named ScoR2 that plays a significant role in fat generation. ScoR2, a denitrosylase, enzymatically removes nitric oxide, NO, a molecule that normally reduces fat and cholesterol production.

The next research step was deactivating this ScoR2 enzyme. Genetic modification halted enzyme production but the team also developed a drug to block its activity and maintain nitric oxide levels. When the enzyme stopped functioning, treated mice stopped gaining weight, experienced cholesterol lowering, and experienced less liver damage.

This ScoR2 blocking experimental medication, if proven safe and effective in humans via randomized, controlled clinical trials, would be a 3-in-1 pill for treatment of obesity, cholesterol-driven cardiovascular disease, and fatty liver disease. Stay tuned!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260206012226.htm

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.adv0660

#obesity #cholesterol #fat #nitricoxide #scor2

Bioengineered Skin Grafts For Burn Victims

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmPV6MDxn4/

The treatment of severe burns requires replacement of destroyed skin with skin grafts. From the Swiss company Cutiss, a spin-off from the University of Zurich, comes better skin graft technology called DenovoSkin.

Starting with a postage stamp-sized sample of a patient’s skin as a cell source, in just 4 weeks Cutiss can grow multiple, personalized bilayer skin grafts 10 times that size that have both epidermal and dermal layers. The result skin for grafting is elastic, grows with the patient, reduces scarring, and, because, it is derived from the patient’s own cells, it will not be rejected. The ability to grow with the patient is critical for pediatric burn patients.

Traditional split-thickness skin grafts tend to scar, and can only be harvested from the burn victim ’s remaining healthy skin. That can be as little as 40% of the total pre-burn skin. Split thickness graft harvesting also leaves a donor site that can be painful and is subject to scarring.

DenovoSkin is now in Phase 3 clinical trials, launched in 2025, across 20 burn centers in eight EU countries as well as in Switzerland. The Cutiss company is also developing next-generation grafts with blood vessel and pigmentation cells. These aim to make the regenerated skin look and function even more like natural tissue.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20260115/Bio-engineered-skin-grafts-offer-new-hope-for-severe-burn-injuries.aspx

https://www.news.uzh.ch/en/articles/news/2026/new-skin-for-burn-victims.html

#burns #skingrafts #children #denovoskin

Understanding How The Ketogenic Diet Suppresses Seizures

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmOnBlD1tp/

The ketogenic diet forces the body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates and produces molecules called ketones including β-hydroxybutyrate. This particular ketone reduces seizures by activating a brain receptor called HCAR2. Neurologists at the UVA Brain Institute, using a preclinical mouse model, now report this finding in the Archives of Neurology.

The activated HCAR2 receptor suppresses the electrical activity of otherwise hyper-excitable neurons. This is particularly true in the hippocampus where many seizures initiate. This receptor also has a suppressing effect on immune cells within the brain that trigger inflammation and resultant neurological disease.

Understanding the mechanism by which the ketogenic diet controls otherwise drug-resistant seizures opens the door for development of therapy that bypasses the need for the ketogenic diet. This is important since many children and adults with troublesome seizures cannot tolerate the ketogenic diet due to gastrointestinal distress. To that end, the researchers find that niacin, Vitamin B3, FDA-approved for cholesterol management, can also activate the HCAR2 receptor.

Because hyperactive neurons are also a characteristic of other neurological disease including Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, HCAR2 receptor activation may have broader therapeutic applications.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20260116/Study-reveals-how-ketogenic-diet-protects-against-epilepsy-seizures.aspx

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ana.78098

#ketogenicdiet #seizures #hcar2 #niacin

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmN4L7F7_c/

Well, its not really total elimination or zero cases but reducing the cases to 4 or fewer for every 100,000 women. Preventing all cervical cancer cases is actually a realistic goal since all cases are driven by the Human Papilloma Virus infections and are preventable by the use of HPV vaccine.

A new national study led by collaborators at the Medical University of South Carolina, the Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Puerto Rico was recently published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Cancer Spectrum.

The data shows that Massachusetts is nearly at the elimination threshold, with a rate of 4.3 cases per 100,000 women. By contrast, states in the Southeast average nearly 10 cases per 100,000, and those in the Southwest more than 11/100,000. Mississippi has the highest rate in the nation at 14.8 cases per 100,000.

Mortality rates from cervical cancer track a similar pattern with higher death rates in the Southeast and Southwest and the lowest rates in the Northeast. The worst news is that many states have seen little to no improvement over the past decade despite overall national improvements.

The researchers emphasize that cervical cancer elimination is achievable if we all pay attention to the key elements of prevention: HPV vaccination, routine screening, and timely treatment.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-massachusetts-closest-cervical-cancer-southeastern.html#google_vignette

https://academic.oup.com/jncics/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jncics/pkag005/8440767?login=false

#cervical #cancer #hpv #vaccination

Better Technology For Liquid Cancer Biopsies

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUl8icojego/

A new “lab on a spinning disc” can detect and speed the analysis of cancer markers that will help to revolutionize both diagnosis and management of malignant disease.

Bioengineers at Boston’s Mass General Hospital have developed a fully automated device named SpinEx that is capable of isolating and analyzing tiny particles in the blood known as extracellular vesicles, or EVs. These vesicles are released by tumor cells and carry molecular signals that reveal whether cancer is present and pinpoint the type and the quantity of that cancer

Current extracellular vesicle analysis methods are slow, manual, and limited to measuring one marker at a time. SpinEx, in contrast, speeds the process by combining the multiple steps of plasma separation, EV enrichment, and protein labeling of a minuscule 150 microliters of blood onto a single spinning disc that completes the process automatically.

Here is how it works. The tiny sample of blood is loaded onto the microfluidic disc that contains preloaded reagents and micro channels. Then the disc spinning begins and rapidly leads to separation of red and white blood cells from the plasma. Next, the tumor cells extracellular vesicles bearing tumor markers are enriched using size-based filtration, affinity and charge interactions, and chromatography resins. After concentration, the extracellular vesicles are captured on microscopic beads and the plasma spun away into waste chambers. These bead-attached vesicles are next labeled using fluorescent antibodies. Each type of vesicle bearing different tumor markers can be labeled with different fluorescent markers for differentiation during the measurement phase. Finally, as the disc spins, LEDs are used to excite fluorescence that is captured by cameras with data fed to quantifying software.

Two samples can be run simultaneously. The resultant unique EV protein “fingerprints” accurately distinguish cancer from non-cancer samples and successfully identify five different cancer types.

After further clinical testing, this SpinEx technology will support earlier cancer detection, improved tumor classification, and ongoing monitoring following therapy all from a simple blood draw.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-lab-disc-device-paves-automated.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-025-01601-7

https://wefluidics.com/sys-nd/1349.html

#cancer #diagnosis #ev #vesicles #oncology

cancer, diagnosis, ev, vesicles, oncology