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Category: biotech/medical

Low-intensity brain stimulation may restore neuron health in Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative condition that affects a significant proportion of older people worldwide. Synapses are points of communication between neural cells that are malleable to change based on our experiences. By adding, removing, strengthening, or weakening synaptic contacts, our brain encodes new events or forgets previous ones.

In AD, , the brain’s ability to regulate the strength of synaptic connections between neurons, is significantly disrupted. This worsens over time, reducing cognitive and memory functions and leading to reduced quality of life. To date, there is no effective cure for AD, and only limited treatments for managing the symptoms.

Studies have shown that (rTMS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that uses electromagnetic pulses to target specific brain regions, has therapeutic potential to manage dementia and related diseases. From previous studies, we know that rTMS can promote synaptic plasticity in healthy nervous systems. Moreover, it is already used to treat certain neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions. However, individual responses to rTMS for AD management are variable, and the underlying mechanisms are not clearly understood.

How efficient, multi-pathogen PCR testing could transform diagnostics

“We need diagnostic methods that are more rapid, reliable and capable of detecting multiple pathogens simultaneously,” explains Thai, who is one of the grant recipients of the 2023–24 Seegene Open Innovation Programme. “We also need to ensure that these tools are widely accessible and effectively integrated into clinical and laboratory workflows.”

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which rose to worldwide fame during the COVID-19 pandemic, amplify tiny snippets of genetic material from pathogens in samples to levels that can be easily detected.

Seegene, a molecular diagnostics company based in Seoul, South Korea, has developed ‘syndromic multiplex PCR’ technology capable of detecting up to 14 pathogens in a single test.

The Path to Medical Superintelligence

Microsoft says it has developed an AI system that creates a ‘path to medical superintelligence’ that can deal with ‘diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding’ cases and diagnose disease four times more accurately than a panel of human doctors.

[ https://microsoft.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/MAI-Dx-Orche…0x1498.jpg https://microsoft.ai/new/the-path-to-medical-superintelligence/

[ https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22405](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.

“Benchmarked against real-world case records published each week in the New England Journal of Medicine, we show that the Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) correctly diagnoses up to 85% of NEJM case proceedings, a rate more than four times higher than a group of experienced physicians. MAI-DxO also gets to the correct diagnosis more cost-effectively than physicians.”

AI that thinks like a doctor: a new era in medical diagnosis.

Imagine walking into a doctor’s office with a strange set of symptoms. Rather than jumping to conclusions, the doctor carefully asks questions, orders tests, and adjusts their thinking at every step based on what they learn. This back-and-forth process—called sequential diagnosis—is what real-world medicine is all about. But most AI systems haven’t been tested this way. Until now.

A new benchmark called Sequential Diagnosis is flipping the script.

Continue reading “The Path to Medical Superintelligence” | >

Fast targeted gene transfection and optogenetic modification of single neurons using femtosecond laser irradiation

Year 2013 face_with_colon_three Basically this is the light based nanotransfection version that can eventually be put on a simple smartphone or smartwatch that can be an entire hospital in one touch healing the entire body in one touch or just areas that need healing.

Antkowiak, M., Torres-Mapa, M., Witts, E. et al. Sci Rep 3, 3,281 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep03281

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How key brain cells help replay and store memories during rest and sleep

How does the brain store knowledge so that you actually remember what you have learned the next day or even later? To find out, researchers at the University of Oslo disconnected one type of nerve cell in the brain of mice while the animals rested after having learned something new. This gave new answers to what actually happens when you remember earlier experiences for later use. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

In the first phase of this experiment, were trained to recognize that an image with a particular pattern meant that they would be given a reward in the form of a sweet drink. Two different groups of mice were then put in front of a computer screen where they were able to see several images containing different patterns. In order to demonstrate that they remembered which image led to a reward, the mice had to lick a small “nozzle” that dispensed the drink.

While the mice performed this action, researchers at the University of Oslo monitored the activity in their using a special microscope. “It took some time before the mice understood which pattern triggered a reward. We could see what was happening with their neurons while they mastered the task,” says researcher Kristian K. Lensjø, who works at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences and the Department of Biosciences at the University of Oslo.

Newborns have elevated levels of a biomarker for Alzheimer’s

Newborn babies and patients with Alzheimer’s disease share an unexpected biological trait: elevated levels of a well-known biomarker for Alzheimer’s, as shown in a study led by researchers at the University of Gothenburg and published in Brain Communications.

First author Fernando Gonzalez-Ortiz and senior author Professor Kaj Blennow recently reported that both newborns and Alzheimer’s patients have elevated blood levels of a protein called phosphorylated tau, specifically a form called p-tau217.

This protein has largely been used as a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease, where an increase in p-tau217 blood levels is proposed to be driven by another process, namely the aggregation of b-amyloid protein into amyloid plaques. Newborns (for natural reasons) do not have this type of pathological change, so interestingly, in newborns increased plasma p-tau217 seems to reflect a completely different—and entirely healthy—mechanism.

Parkinson’s drug reduces symptoms in treatment-resistant depression, clinical trial finds

A drug used for Parkinson’s disease has been shown to be effective in reducing the symptoms of difficult to treat depression, according to a study led by the University of Oxford.

In the largest clinical trial to date, pramipexole was found to be substantially more effective than a placebo at reducing the symptoms of (TRD) over the course of nearly a year, when added to ongoing antidepressant medication.

The trial, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, included 150 patients with treatment-resistant depression, with equal numbers receiving 48 weeks of pramipexole or a placebo, alongside ongoing antidepressant medication.

Highly Scalable, Wearable Surface‐Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth of wearable sensor technology, mainly represented by flexible, stretchable, on-skin electronic sensors that provide rich information of the wearer’s health conditions and surroundings. A recent breakthrough in the field is the development of wearable chemical sensors based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) that can detect molecular fingerprints universally, sensitively, and noninvasively. However, while their sensing properties are excellent, these sensors are not scalable for widespread use beyond small-scale human health monitoring due to their cumbersome fabrication process and limited multifunctional sensing capabilities. Here, a highly scalable, wearable SERS sensor is demonstrated based on an easy-to-fabricate, low-cost, ultrathin, flexible, stretchable, adhesive, and biointegratable gold nanomesh. It can be fabricated in any shape and worn on virtually any surface for label-free, large-scale, in situ sensing of diverse analytes from low to high concentrations (10–106 × 10−9 m). To show the practical utility of the wearable SERS sensor, the sensor is tested for the detection of sweat biomarkers, drugs of abuse, and microplastics. This wearable SERS sensor represents a significant step toward the generalizability and practicality of wearable sensing technology.

Researchers discover antitumor potential of CD4 T lymphocytes

In the fight against cancer, immunotherapy—which aims to boost the body’s natural defenses against cancer—is experiencing remarkable growth. Most of these treatments are based on CD8 T lymphocytes, “killer cells” able to eliminate diseased cells. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has explored an alternative approach involving CD4 T lymphocytes.

Long considered mere auxiliary cells, their therapeutic potential has been considered of secondary importance. But the scientists have discovered that they also have a strong killing capacity, while continuing to support other immune cells. Using cell engineering technologies, the team reprogrammed the cells to target a tumor marker found in many cancers, both in adults and children. These results, published in the journal Science Advances, offer hope for a faster therapeutic strategy that could benefit a greater number of patients.

Traditionally considered as auxiliary cells, CD4 T cells produce molecules to support the action of other immune cells by facilitating their functions, migration or proliferation in the organism. The recent work by Camilla Jandus, Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology, in the Center for Inflammation Research and in the Translational Research Center in Onco-hematology at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, shows that they have been vastly underestimated.