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Anthony Letai denies political interference during his first year and says NCI's grant numbers are up again

Analysis of 140 species suggests the risks of sons are offset by evolutionary advantages

A surprising immune system signal may help explain why zebrafish can regenerate damaged spinal cords so effectively. Researchers found that certain neutrophils release Il-4, which calms harmful inflammation and allows injured nerve fibers to grow again. Without these cells, healing stalled, but adding Il-4 restored regeneration. Scientists now want to know whether the same mechanism could someday be harnessed to improve spinal cord repair in humans.

A chemical commonly used in dry cleaning and found in some household products may be an overlooked threat to liver health. Researchers found that people with detectable levels of tetrachloroethylene (PCE) in their blood were three times more likely to have significant liver fibrosis, a dangerous buildup of scar tissue that can eventually lead to liver failure or cancer. The risk climbed sharply as PCE levels increased, even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, race, education, alcohol use, and metabolic conditions.

Mutations are fundamental to oncogenesis, yet they cannot fully explain cancer progression, as oncogenic mutations frequently accumulate in healthy tissues without immediate malignancy. In the liver, β-catenin mutations are highly prevalent in hepatocellular carcinoma but are widely considered weak or cooperative drivers, raising the question of how their oncogenic potential is contextually regulated. Aging and chronic injury are major determinants of cancer risk. However, how declining tissue...

Millions of people worldwide suffer from sarcopenia, a clinically recognized syndrome that is defined as the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength. Sarcopenia reduces mobility, leads to falls and fractures, and increases the risk of death, posing an ever-increasing health-care and economic burden to society. There are currently no approved therapies for the syndrome, partly owing to its multifactorial aetiology, highlighting the need for therapies with pleiotropic beneficial...

Drugs for aging-related diseases may modulate aging itself, but standard clinical trial designs cannot detect such effects. Aging clocks could close this gap, but epigenetic models often yield inconsistent, hard-to-interpret results. In contrast, proteomic clocks, by tracking the immediate effectors of biological change, may excel in providing aging biomarkers or mechanistic insight. Here we compare six proteomic clocks (ProtAge, OrganAge(mortality), OrganAge(chrono), PAC, ipfP3GPT and PAOPAC)...

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There is increasing recognition that a broader array of biological changes may contribute to the clinical expression of cognitive decline. As such, an emerging and often overlooked consideration in dementia is apathy, gait dysfunction, motoric-cognitive risk syndrome, and their interplay. Broadly, apathy, gait dysfunction, and motoric-cognitive risk may reflect changes across multiple physiological and neural systems acting as clinical markers bridging normal aging and overt dementia, thereby...

Antibody imprinting is well recognized, yet its long-term dynamics and epitope specificity remain poorly understood. Here, we studied individuals sequentially infected with SARS-CoV-1 (SARS-1) and SARS-CoV-2 (SARS-2) over two decades and found durable imprinting of antibody responses following SARS-2 BF.7 breakthrough infection. Approximately 60% of isolated monoclonal antibodies were SARS-1 imprinted and targeted conserved receptor-binding domain regions, whereas 37% overcame imprinting to...

Atherosclerosis (AS) is the main pathological basis of cardiovascular diseases, and its pathogenesis and treatment strategies remain major challenges. Recent advances in single-cell RNA sequencing and lineage tracing have revealed that vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are not merely passive structural components of atherosclerotic plaques, but highly plastic participants that undergo clonal expansion, phenotypic modulation, and transdifferentiation into functionally diverse cell states....

Recent advances in biomarker profiling, wearable sensing, and high-density longitudinal self-monitoring have generated detailed individual-level datasets demonstrating that many ageing-associated measures, including cardiometabolic markers, inflammatory signals, functional performance metrics, and epigenetic age estimates remain highly modifiable in adulthood. However, these data also reveal substantial heterogeneity in response timescales and durability, with rapid reversibility of many...

CONCLUSIONS: Stomach cancer mortality rates declined substantially among adults aged 65 years or older, but absolute deaths declined less because demographic growth and ageing offset epidemiological gains, with burden increasingly concentrated at the oldest ages. Progress should therefore be assessed using both age-standardised rates and absolute burden.

Vascular endothelial senescence is a pivotal driver of age-related pathologies. Metabolism plays a critical regulatory role in endothelial cell senescence. Our previous studies have shown that deficiency of DHCR24, a gene involved in lipid metabolism, promotes endothelial cell senescence. However, how DHCR24 participates in endothelial cell senescence through lipid metabolism remains unclear. Using endothelial-specific DHCR24 knockout mice and replicative senescent human umbilical vein...

Aging is frequently perceived negatively due to its association with declines in brain and motor function yet not all aspects of brain function are equally affected. The cerebellum, a brain region closely linked to motor control, undergoes clear structural changes with age, but the impact of this degeneration on cerebellar function remains debated. The present study thoroughly investigates the impact of age on cerebellar function by measuring cerebellar motor and cognitive performance across the...

Science chats with illustrator Ulli Lust, whose work is countering ice age gender myths

Could math help explain why some relationships survive life’s inevitable stresses while others slowly fall apart? Researchers have spent decades developing mathematical models that treat romantic feelings as changing systems, revealing patterns in attraction, emotional reactions, conflict, and recovery.

A large study of nearly 74,000 men suggests that long-term use of tadalafil, best known as Cialis, may be linked to a higher risk of glaucoma and other eye pressure problems. Men prescribed the drug for urinary symptoms caused by an enlarged prostate were 22% more likely to develop glaucoma, 32% more likely to develop ocular hypertension, and 33% more likely to be diagnosed with primary open-angle glaucoma or start glaucoma treatment over five years.