Category Health/Medical

New study assesses Titan’s resources and their potential uses

Artist’s rendering of Titan’s interior, with the Cassini spacecraft in orbit and Saturn in the distance. Credit: NASA

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is a unique environment in our solar system. It is the only moon (or body beyond Earth) to have a dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and its methane cycle is very similar to Earth’s hydrological cycle, in which solid and liquid methane evaporate to form clouds and return to the surface as precipitation. In addition, its prebiotic surface environment and rich organic chemistry make it a prime destination for astrobiology missions, such as NASA’s Dragonfly mission (set to launch no earlier than July 2028).

And as Robert Zubrin said in his book, “Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization,” Saturn’s moons could become the “Persian Gu...

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Faulty protein cleanup gene tied to severe early-onset neurological disorders

Evidence builds for the role malfunctioning protein removal systems play in neurodegenerative diseases
Left: Nerve fibers from healthy brain tissue are shown in magenta with support cells called glia in green. Right: Neurons deprived of PI31 are swollen and damaged. Glia are activated and enlarged as they try to remove faulty connections between cells. Credit: Steller lab

Though protein clumps associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s were discovered more than a century ago, researchers remain largely unable to prevent them from forming or eliminate them from the brain. And though a variety of therapies have taken aim at tau tangles, beta-amyloid plaques and Lewy bodies, among other notorious aggregates, none have been very effective at stopping disease progression.

Rockefeller’s Hermann Steller and his team in the Strang Laboratory of Apoptosis and Cancer Biology have long been fo...

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AI-designed universal vaccine clears first human trial, targets future coronavirus threats with needle-free delivery

Illustration of a colorful virus particle breaking apart, representing an AI-designed universal vaccine targeting rapidly mutating virus variants.
(Image Credit: Corona Borealis Studio/Shutterstock)

The first human clinical trial of a universal Sarbeco coronavirus vaccine, developed by the University of Cambridge and spin-out DIOSynVax (DVX) Ltd, has shown that the vaccine is safe and has no significant side effects.

The trial, involving 39 healthy volunteers, tested a vaccine designed to provide protection against multiple Sarbeco coronaviruses—the large group of viruses that occur in nature including SARS-CoV-2, which caused the COVID pandemic.

The vaccine triggered immune responses in the volunteers not only to SARS-CoV-2 and SARS, but to related bat viruses that could potentially jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics.

This trial proves the safety of an entirely new way of designing vaccines...

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Novel synthetic biomolecule degrades disease-related proteins

Novel synthetic biomolecule degrades disease-related proteins
Design of IgG-BMC@MPNs for cytosolic entry and proteasome targeting. Credit: Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-72967-8

Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a novel synthetic biomolecular condensate that can degrade intracellular disease-causing proteins, providing a framework for new therapeutic approaches for a wide range of diseases, as detailed in a recent study published in Nature Communications.

Shana Kelley, Ph.D., the Neena B. Schwartz Professor of Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering, and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and the president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, was senior author of the study.

Targeted protein degradation is an emerging therapeutic strategy that harnesses cells’ own degradation machinery to clear disease-cau...

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