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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NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Captures a Mars Rock feature in 3D

This 3D view of a rock mound called Faillefeu was created from data collected by NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 13th flight at Mars on September 4, 2021.
This 3D view of a rock mound called Faillefeu was created from data collected by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 13th flight at Mars on September 4, 2021. 
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter provided a 3D view of a rock-covered mound during its 13th flight on Sept. 4. The plan for this reconnaissance mission into the “South Seítah” region of Mars’ Jezero Crater was to capture images of this geologic target—nicknamed “Faillefeu” (after a medieval abbey in the French Alps) by the agency’s Perseverance rover team—and to obtain the color pictures from a lower altitude than ever before: 26 feet (8 meters).

About 33 feet (10 meters) wide, the mound is visible just north of the center of the image, with some large rocks casting shadows...

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Compact Amplifier could Revolutionize Optical Communication

Chalmers’ new amplifier offers high performance, is compact enough to integrate into a chip just millimeters in size, and does not generate excess noise.​​​​​ â€‹â€‹Illustration: Yen Strandqvist​

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, present a unique optical amplifier that is expected to revolutionise both space and fiber communication. The new amplifier offers high performance, is compact enough to integrate into a chip just millimeters in size, and – crucially – does not generate excess noise.

“This could be compared to switching from older, dial-up internet to modern broadband, with high speed and quality,” says Professor Peter Andrekson, Head of the Photonics Laboratory at the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience at Chalmers.

Optical c...

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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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