Brain inflammation treatment could be ally in fight against dementia

Samira Aghlara-Fotovat
Photo Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Scientists from Rice University and Houston Methodist have developed a new way to reduce inflammation in the brain, a discovery that could help fight diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The team created “AstroCapsules,” small hydrogel capsules that enclose human astrocytes ⎯ star-shaped brain cells that support healthy nervous system function. Inside the capsules, the cells were engineered to release interleukin-1 receptor antagonist, an anti-inflammatory protein. Tests in human brain organoids and mouse models showed the treatment lowered neuroinflammation and resisted immune rejection.

Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh, whose lab studies how to design biomaterials that work with the immune system, is co-corresponding author on the paper published in Biomaterials.

“Encapsulating cells in a way that shields them from immune attack has been a central challenge in the field,” said Veiseh, professor of bioengineering at Rice, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar and director of the Rice Biotech Launch Pad. “In our lab, we have been working on biomaterials for many years, and this project was an opportunity to draw from that experience to address the uniquely complex immune environment of the brain. Our hope is that this work will help move cell therapies closer to becoming real treatment options for patients with neurodegenerative disease.”

Lung-on-a-Chip Defends Itself

Ankur Singh and Rachel Ringquist point to the microscopic lung-on-a-chip that has a built-in immune system.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology

On a clear polymer chip, soft and pliable like a gummy bear, a microscopic lung comes alive — expanding, circulating, and, for the first time, protecting itself like a living organ. 

For Ankur Singh, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Immunoengineering, watching immune cells rush through the chip took his breath away. Singh co-directed the study with longtime collaborator Krishnendu “Krish” Roy, former Regents Professor and director of the NSF Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies at Tech and now the Bruce and Bridgitt Evans dean of engineering and University Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University. Rachel Ringquist, Roy’s graduate student, and now a postdoctoral fellow with Singh, led the work as part of her doctoral dissertation. 

“That was the ‘wow’ moment,” Singh said. “It was the first time we felt we had something close to a real human lung.”

Lung-on-a-chip platforms provide researchers a window into organ behavior. They are about the size of a postage stamp, etched with tiny channels and lined with living human cells. Roy and Singh’s innovation was adding a working immune system — the missing piece that turns a chip into a true model of how the lung fights disease.

Now, researchers can watch how lungs respond to threats, how inflammation spreads, and how healing begins.

Captivity makes salmon less symmetrical

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Cardiff University

The stress of captivity is likely to be causing reared salmon to be less symmetrical in appearance, according to a new study.

Research by the University of Eastern Finland, Natural Resources Institute Finland, and Cardiff University has found that salmon reared in captivity are more asymmetrical in appearance compared to wild salmon, suggesting that captive fish are more stressed, and their appearance might have impacts on salmon in the wild.

Currently, hatcheries are used in some countries to help boost wild populations with captive reared salmon. Global sales of aquatic species reared in captivity for food are also worth over $300 billion annually, with the Atlantic salmon being the most valuable of these species.

Climate change is supercharging Europe’s biggest hail

Climate experts from Newcastle University, the Met Office and the University of Bristol used European-wide km-scale simulations to model future changes to hail with global warming. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the findings show that, under a high-emissions scenario (RCP8.5), severe hail is likely to become less common, except potentially for very large hail.

Severe hail has a diameter of 2 cm, while a diameter of 5 cm or more is considered very large. Bigger hailstones cause more damage than smaller ones, and even a small increase in their size could outweigh any benefits from having fewer hailstorms overall.  

The researchers attribute this decrease to more than one factor. Hail forms higher in the atmosphere as it warms, where storm updrafts could be weaker, and this gives hail more time to melt before reaching the ground. Another factor is the weakening large scale circulation, affecting the vertical profile of winds and leading to environments not beneficial for thunderstorm organization.

Importantly, the authors found that future warm seasons feature a warmer thunderstorm type similar to hail-producing storms found in the tropics, where the largest hailstones can still reach the surface. The findings suggest that, in the future, these storms will become most frequent over southern Europe, leading to regional increases in severe hail frequency.

Supercharging vinegar’s wound healing power

Image Credit: Courtesy of Flinders University

A new study suggests adding microscopic particles to vinegar can make them more effective against dangerous bacterial infections, with hopes the combination could help combat antibiotic resistance.

The research, led by researchers at QIMR Berghofer, Flinders University and the University of Bergen in Norway, has resulted in the ability to boost the natural bacterial killing qualities of vinegar by adding antimicrobial nanoparticles made from carbon and cobalt.

Wounds that do not heal are often caused by bacterial infections and are particularly dangerous for the elderly and people with diabetes, cancer and other conditions.

Acetic acid (more commonly known as vinegar) has been used for centuries as a disinfectant, but it is only effective against a small number of bacteria, and it does not kill the most dangerous types.

The findings have been published in the international journal ACS Nano.

Unique pan-cancer immunotherapy destroys tumors without attacking healthy tissue

“It’s the holy grail – one treatment to kill virtually all cancers,” says Michael Demetriou.
Photo Credit: Steve Zylius / UC Irvine

A new, highly potent class of immunotherapeutics with unique Velcro-like binding properties can kill diverse cancer types without harming normal tissue, University of California, Irvine cancer researchers have demonstrated.

A team led by Michael Demetriou, MD, PhD, reported that by targeting cancer-associated complex carbohydrate chains called glycans with binding proteins, they could penetrate the protective shields of tumor cells and trigger their death without toxicity to surrounding tissue.

Their biologically engineered immunotherapies – glycan-dependent T cell recruiter (GlyTR, pronounced ‘glitter’) compounds, GlyTR1 and GlyTR 2 – proved safe and effective in models for a spectrum of cancers, including those of the breast, colon, lung, ovaries, pancreas and prostate, the researchers reported today in the journal Cell.

Layered Cobalt Catalyst Reimagines Pigment as a Pathway for Carbon Dioxide Recycling

Comparison of the structure and performance of the multilayer CoPc/KB core-shell hybrid in this work with previous single-layer molecular Pc-based catalysts for CO2-to-CO electroreduction.
Image Credit: ©Hiroshi Yabu et. al.

Researchers at the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, have introduced a new approach for electrochemical carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction. By designing multilayer cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc)/carbon core-shell structures, the team has demonstrated a catalyst architecture that makes CO₂ conversion into carbon monoxide (CO) both stable and efficient.

The study combined large-scale data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) to screen 220 molecular candidates. Cobalt phthalocyanine - widely known as a blue pigment - emerged as the most effective option for selective CO production. This discovery became the basis for constructing electrodes optimized for CO₂ utilization.

"We wanted to move beyond conventional thinking that isolated molecules perform best," said Hiroshi Yabu, a professor at the (WPI-AIMR) who led the research. "Instead, our results show that stacking these molecules in ordered layers produces a much stronger catalytic effect."

Does isolated REM sleep behavior disorder predict Parkinson’s disease or dementia?

Image Credit: Gerd Altmann

An international research team led by Université de Montréal medical professor Shady Rahayel has made a major breakthrough in predicting neurodegenerative diseases. 

Thanks to two complementary UdeM studies, scientists are now able to determine, years in advance, which individuals with a particular sleep disorder will develop Parkinson’s disease or dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). 

The studies focus on isolated REM sleep behavior disorder (iRBD)—a condition in which people yell, thrash, or act out their dreams, sometimes violently enough to injure a bed partner. 

“It’s not just restless sleep—it’s a neurological warning sign,” said Rahayel, a neuropsychologist and researcher at the Centre for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine at Sacré-Cœur Hospital in Montreal. 

Roughly 90 per cent of people with this sleep disorder will go on to eventually develop Parkinson’s disease or DLB. Until now, however, it was impossible to know which disease would occur—or when. 

Global ‘Noahʻs Ark’ to safeguard coral reefs, led by UH scientists

Acropora muricata, Heron Island, Australia.
Photo Credit: Claire Lager, Smithsonian

In a landmark effort to combat the devastating effects of climate change, a new global alliance with key leadership from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has been established to create a “Noahʻs Ark” for coral reefs. The initiative, detailed in a publication in BioScience, focuses on building a worldwide network of coral biorepositories to safeguard the genetic diversity of these vital ecosystems.

The research, led by Mary Hagedorn of the UH Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology and Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, highlights the critical need for a proactive conservation strategy. With global carbon emissions continuing to rise, the alliance aims to provide a critical safeguard against extinction by preserving coral genetic material in biosecure facilities.

Atomic Neighborhoods in Semiconductors Provide New Avenue for Designing Microelectronics

An illustration of the semiconductor material investigated for this study, which is composed of germanium with small amounts of silicon and tin. The germanium atoms are depicted as gray spheres, the silicon as red and tin as blue.
Image Credit: Minor et al/Berkeley Lab

A team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and George Washington University have confirmed that atoms in semiconductors will arrange themselves in distinctive localized patterns that change the material’s electronic behavior. The research, published today in Science, may provide a foundation for designing specialized semiconductors for quantum-computing and optoelectronic devices for defense technologies.

On the atomic scale, semiconductors are crystals made of different elements arranged in repeating lattice structures. Many semiconductors are made primarily of one element with a few others added to the mix in small quantities. There aren’t enough of these trace additives to cause a repeating pattern throughout the material, but how these atoms are arranged next to their immediate neighbors has long been a mystery. Do the rare ingredients just settle randomly among the predominant atoms during material synthesis, or do the atoms have preferred arrangements, a phenomenon seen in other materials called short-range order (SRO)? Until now, no microscopy or characterization technique could zoom in close enough, and with enough clarity, to examine tiny regions of the crystal structure and directly interpret the SRO.