Category Health/Medical

Growing and Treating Virtual Tumors using AI-designed Nanoparticles

Pioneering software can grow and treat virtual tumors using AI designed nanoparticles
Diagram showing EVONANO simulation platform for optimisation of treatment parameters. Credit: EVONANO

The EVONANO platform allows scientists to grow virtual tumors and use artificial intelligence to automatically optimize the design of nanoparticles to treat them.

The ability to grow and treat virtual tumors is an important step towards developing new therapies for cancer. Importantly, scientists can use virtual tumors to optimize design of nanoparticle-based drugs before they are tested in the laboratory or patients.

The paper, “Evolutionary computational platform for the automatic discovery of nanocarriers for cancer treatment,” is published today in the Nature journal Computational Materials. The paper is the result of the European project EVONANO which involves Dr...

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Right Program could turn Immune Cells into Cancer Killers

A tumor-specific T cell engages with a tumor cell. Bystander T cells do not engage with the tumor. Credit: PNAS Dec. 10, 2002, Copyright (2002) National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.

Cancer-fighting immune cells in patients with lung cancer whose tumors do not respond to immunotherapies appear to be running on a different “program” that makes them less effective than immune cells in patients whose cancers respond to these immune treatments, suggests a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

The findings, published in the August 5 issue of Nature, could lead to new ways to overcome tumor resistance to these treatments.

“Cancer immunotherapies have tremendous promise, but this promise only comes to fr...

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Staying Young, from the Cells On Up

A rendering of the enzyme complex named HTC
CREDIT: CHUM

Scientists discover a new enzymatic complex that can stop cells from aging, opening the way to possible new cancer therapies. Researchers at Université de Montréal and McGill University have discovered a new multi-enzyme complex that reprograms metabolism and overcomes “cellular senescence,” when aging cells stop dividing.

In their study published today in Molecular Cell, the researchers show that an enzyme complex named HTC (hydride transfer complex) can inhibit cells from aging.

“HTC protects cells from hypoxia, a lack of oxygen that normally leads to their death,” said senior author Gerardo Ferbeyre, an UdeM biochemistry professor and principal scientist at the CRCHUM, the university’s affiliated teaching hospital resea...

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Now we’re Cooking with Lasers

Chicken being cooked by a blue laser. Light is being directed by two software-controlled mirror galvanometers.

Imagine having your own digital personal chef; ready to cook up whatever you want; able to tailor the shape, texture, and flavor just for you; and it’s all at the push of a button. Columbia engineers have been working on doing just that, using lasers for cooking and 3D printing technology for assembling foods.

Under the guidance of Mechanical Engineering Professor Hod Lipson, the “Digital Food” team of his Creative Machines Lab has been building a fully autonomous digital personal chef. Lipson’s group has been developing 3D-printed foods since 2007...

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