Science & academia

Man clutching his chest from acute pain

New heart attack detector gives results in minutes, not hours

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Someone presenting to the emergency room with a suspected heart attack will undergo a number of standard blood tests to determine heart muscle damage. The problem is that it can take one or two hours to receive the results. Now, Johns Hopkins University researchers have led the design of a tiny chip that diagnoses heart attack by detecting these important biomarkers in minutes rather than hours, even if they are present at very low concentrations. The researchers foresee an at-home heart attack detector in the future.

Ovarian and Cervical Cancer Awareness. a Teal Ribbon

New cervical cancer treatment regime ‘cuts risk of dying from disease by 40%’

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Doctors are hailing a “remarkable” new treatment regime for cervical cancer developed by researchers at University College London that reduces the risk of dying by 40%, in the biggest advance against the disease in 25 years. The new treatment plan was tested in patients recruited over 10 years from the UK, Mexico, India, Italy, and Brazil. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women globally, with about 660,000 new cases and 350,000 deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization.

Pollution from industrial facility

Study finds mercury pollution from human activities is declining

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In a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers analyzed measurements from all available monitoring stations in the Northern Hemisphere and found that atmospheric concentrations of mercury declined by about 10% between 2005 and 2020. They used two separate modeling methods to determine what is driving that trend. Both techniques pointed to a decline in mercury emissions from human activity as the most likely cause.

Scientists in the U.K. developing world’s first vaccine to prevent ovarian cancer

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Researchers at the University of Oxford are working on the world’s first ovarian cancer vaccine, aiming to prevent the disease that kills nearly 26,000 women in the European Union every year. The vaccine, called OvarianVax, would train the immune system to recognize and fight back against the earliest stages of ovarian cancer, one of the most common forms of cancer among women which often isn’t detected until a later stage when it’s harder to treat. Cancer Research U.K. will fund the OvarianVax research with up to £600,000 for the effort.

Good news for scientific research

University of Toronto researchers develop method to accelerate forensic analysis in sexual assault cases

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The entire process currently can take days, weeks, or longer. To speed things up, the researchers focused on the first step: separating two individuals’ DNA from a single sample. At present, this is usually done manually by trained and experienced experts. The new method uses a process called ’differential digestion” using digital microfluidics that helped simplify the overall process and reduce the number of manual steps needed to isolate the assailant’s DNA from 13 to five.

Depiction of embryonic stem cells in amniotic fluid

In world first, stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes

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In the first trial of its kind, Deng Hongkui, a cell biologist at Peking University in Beijing, and his colleagues extracted cells from three people with type 1 diabetes and reverted them into a pluripotent state, from which they could be molded into any cell type in the body. Now, a 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells. She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were extracted from her own body.

Model lungs

World-first lung cancer vaccine trials launched across seven countries

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Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8 million deaths every year. Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – then prevents them from ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease. The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the U.K., U.S., Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Turkey.

Honeycomb

Manuka honey reduces breast cancer cell growth by 84% in preliminary studies

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Manuka honey is produced from the nectar collected by honey bees when they pollinate the mānuka, a species of tea tree indigenous to New Zealand and southeast Australia. Now, preliminary studies by researchers at UCLA have found that this nutraceutical might aid in breast cancer prevention and treatment. The honey-treated mice showed significantly suppressed tumor growth compared to controls. Overall, it inhibited the growth and progression of an established human breast cancer tumor by 84% without affecting healthy cells.

MIT naloxone sensor implant

MIT scientists reverse opioid overdoses with ‘Narcan sensor’ implanted under skin

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In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The most effective way to save someone who has overdosed is to administer a drug called naloxone, but help can’t always reach the person in time. Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a new device to address this problem. The device, about the size of a stick of gum, can be implanted under the skin. When it determines that an overdose has occurred, it rapidly pumps out a dose of naloxone.

Seastar

Lab-grown starfish released into wild for the first time ever, saving species from extinction

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Due to sea star wasting disease, lower oxygen levels in seawater, and rising temperatures, starfish populations are at risk around the globe. Across the last decade, the sunflower star population plummeted by over 90%. Fortunately, in 2019, marine biologist Jason Hodin stepped up to save the sea stars from extinction. At the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs, Hodin has carefully grown and raised several generations of sunflower starfish in a controlled environment, breeding them from a select sample of starfish he rescued from the harbor five years prior.

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