Toxic amino acids, peptides, and proteins — which first evolved as molecular weapons deployed by species in conflict — can also serve as blueprints for pharmaceutical innovation.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 3
In this episode of The Moss Report, Ben Moss sits down with Dr. Ralph Moss to explore the real-world pros and cons of using artificial intelligence in cancer research and care.
From AI-generated health advice to PubMed citations that don’t exist, this honest conversation covers what AI tools are getting right—and where they can dangerously mislead.
Dr. Moss shares the results of his own AI test across five major platforms, exposing their strengths and surprising failures.
Whether you’re a cancer patient, caregiver, or simply curious about how AI is shaping the future of medicine, this episode is essential listening.
Links and Resources:
🌿 The Moss Method – Fight Cancer Naturally – (Paperback, Hardcover, Kindle) https://amzn.to/4dGvVjp.
Scientists in Europe have tested an anti-aging drug cocktail in mice and found that it extended the animals’ lifespans by around 30 percent. The mice stayed healthier for longer too, with less chronic inflammation and delayed cancer onset.
The two drugs are rapamycin and trametinib, which are both used to treat different types of cancer. Rapamycin is also often used to prevent organ rejection, and has shown promise in extending lifespans in animal tests. Trametinib, meanwhile, has been shown to extend the lifespan of fruit flies, but whether that worked in larger animals remained to be seen.
So for a new study, a research team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Germany investigated how both drugs, on their own and together, could extend lifespan in mice.
A pioneering biobattery has been shown to reduce tumor growth in the body and could hold the key to a new drug-free immunotherapy treatment in cancer patients.
The breakthrough, a global collaboration between Distinguished Professor Gordon Wallace and Professor Caiyun Wang from the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) at the University of Wollongong (UOW) and researchers from Jilin University in China, is outlined in a new paper published in Science Advances.
Biobatteries have the same basic parts as regular batteries—two electrodes (anode and cathode), a separator and an electrolyte—but use biological processes to create electricity. The paper examines how biobatteries can be used to target tumors and spark a localized immunotherapy response in the body.
Published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity—is the first to suggest that a tumor-driving gene known as AEG-1 actively regulates the inflammation responsible for causing chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), a common and painful side effect of cancer treatment. Eliminating the function of this gene using targeted therapies could become a critical strategy for managing a debilitating side effect experienced by many cancer patients.
Researchers have uncovered that some childhood cancers have a substantially higher number of DNA changes than previously thought, changing the way we view children’s tumors and possibly opening up new or repurposed treatment options.
Concentrating on a type of childhood kidney cancer, known as Wilms tumor, an international team genetically sequenced multiple tumors at a resolution that was previously not possible.
This collaboration included researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge, Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology, the Oncode Institute in the Netherlands, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
A new drug targeting inflammation in the brain has been shown to bolster the blood-brain barrier in mice, pioneering a potential shift in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“Finding [the drug] blocks brain inflammation and protects the blood-brain barrier was an exciting new discovery,” says pathologist Sanford Markowitz from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).
What’s more, the researchers note that amyloid levels – the abnormally clumping proteins traditionally thought to play a role in the progress of Alzheimer’s – remained the same. This suggests the new treatment, focusing on an immune protein called 15-PGDH, targets a completely different physiological pathway than many existing medications.
As the population ages, multimorbidity, or when a patient has multiple diseases at once, is becoming increasingly common. The onset of one disease increases the risk of developing other diseases, making it necessary to investigate how a range of risk factors together affect such accumulation. Prior studies have focused on individual risk factors and related individual diseases.
A study explored how the risk factors measured from birth to middle age and unmeasured, or latent, factors covering the entire lifespan predict and explain the incidence of chronic diseases in eight organ systems from middle to old age: the cardiovascular, metabolic, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, respiratory, neurological and psychiatric systems, and the sensory organs.
The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity journal, analyzed 22 risk factors, including age, sex, early life (e.g., size at birth, early childhood growth, childhood wartime evacuee status), socioeconomic factors (e.g., socioeconomic status in childhood, income in adulthood), lifestyle factors (e.g., smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, diet), clinical measurements and biomarkers (e.g., body mass index, blood pressure, blood glucose).
Analysis flags hundreds of studies that seem to follow a template, reporting correlations between complex health conditions and single variables based on publicly available data sets.
The process of necrosis, a form of cell death, may represent one of the most promising ways to change the course of human aging, disease and even space travel, according to a new study by researchers at UCL, drug discovery company LinkGevity and the European Space Agency (ESA).
In the study, published in Oncogene, an international team of scientists and clinicians explore the potential of necrosis —when cells die unexpectedly as a result of infection, injury or disease—to reshape our understanding and treatment of age-related conditions.
Challenging prevailing views, the paper brings together evidence from cancer biology, regenerative medicine, kidney disease, and space health to argue that necrosis is not merely an endpoint, but a key driver of aging that presents an opportunity for intervention.