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Vitamin K Triples Neurons, Orange Arctic Rivers & Prostate Immunotherapy
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Today's science news covers a vitamin K analog that triples neuron growth, Arctic rivers turning orange from thawing permafrost, and a prostate cancer immunotherapy cutting recurrence by a third. Six breakthrough stories spanning neuroscience, climate, and oncology — all in under 15 minutes.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A new platform can design personalised cancer-fighting proteins in four to six weeks. That's not a typo.
On a related front in targeted therapy, a bispecific antibody called amivantamab is producing results that are hard to ignore. In a trial of a hundred and two head-and-neck cancer patients where chemotherapy and immunotherapy had already failed, fifteen achieved complete tumour disappearance.
Shifting from cancer to neuroscience. Japanese researchers have developed a modified vitamin K compound that converts three times more neural stem cells into functioning neurons than natural vitamin K does.
USC's Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute has built something genuinely useful for diagnostics. Using diffusion MRI data from fifty-four thousand five hundred and eighty-three people, they've produced lifespan reference charts for white matter, the neural pathways connecting brain regions.
In climate science, new research has confirmed the causal mechanism behind a striking phenomenon: pristine Arctic rivers turning orange. It's not one process.
One more development worth noting. A combination of aglatimagene immunotherapy and radiotherapy reduced prostate cancer recurrence to seventeen percent, compared to twenty-five percent for radiotherapy alone in intermediate-to-high-risk localised disease.
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