A simple nutrient from everyday vegetables could help supercharge the body’s fight against cancer. A common eye-health nutrient, zeaxanthin, may also help the body fight cancer more effectively. Scientists discovered it strengthens Tcells and enhances the impact of immunotherapy treatments. Found in everyday vegetables and supplements, it’s safe, accessible, and shows strong potential as a cancer therapy booster. Human trials are the next step.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have uncovered a surprising new role for zeaxanthin, a plant-based compound best known for supporting eye health...

Supermassive black holes are among the most enigmatic objects in the universe. They typically weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun and sit at the centers of most large galaxies. At the heart of the Milky Way lies Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s supermassive blackhole, with a mass of about four million suns. But these black holes do not emit light, so astronomers can only detect them indirectly through their effects on nearby stars and gas. Artist’s depiction of a supermassive black hole tearing apart a star, with roughly half of the stellar debris flung back into space while the remainder forms a glowing accretion disk around the black hole. Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab

In a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Eric Coughlin, assista...

In a paradigm-breaking study, researchers have discovered a novel way the immune system, specifically Tcells, attack their target cells, reshaping long-held assumptions in immunology and demonstrating direct implications for the field of cancer immunology and bone marrow transplantation. The team consists of Dr. Pavan Reddy, director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and his team, in collaboration with Drs. Arul Chinnaiyan, S P Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology, and Marcin Cieslik, assistant professor of pathology, both from University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. The study is published in Nature Immunology.

Rewriting the rules of T cell biology
The immune system relies on molecules called major histocompatibility complexes (M...

Statistics show clear differences in the population’s immune system according to sex: men are more susceptible to infections and cancers, while women have stronger immune responses, which translate, for example, into better responses to vaccines. Even so, with a more reactive immune system, the probability of the body attacking itself also increases, causing 80% of autoimmune disease development to occur in women.

In this context, understanding the aging of the immune system is key since, with age, the composition of immune cells changes and their protective functions deteriorate, causing a greater susceptibility to...