Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that kills more than a million people worldwide every year. The pathogen that causes the disease, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is deadly in part because of its complex outer envelope, which helps it evade immune responses of infected hosts. In an ACS Infectious Diseases paper, researchers developed a chemical probe to study a key component of this envelope. Their results provide a step toward finding new ways of inactivating the bacterium.

Cancer diagnoses traditionally require invasive or labor-intensive procedures such as tissue biopsies. Now, research published in ACS Central Science reveals a method that uses pulsed infrared light to identify molecular profiles in blood plasma that could indicate the presence of certain common cancers. In this proof-of-concept study, blood plasma from more than 2,000 people was analyzed to link molecular patterns to lung cancer, extrapolating a potential “cancer fingerprint.”

Wear and tear on plastic products releases small to nearly invisible plastic particles, which could impact people’s health when consumed or inhaled. To make these particles biodegradable, researchers created plastics from plant starch instead of petroleum. An initial study published in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry shows how animals consuming particles from this alternative material developed health problems such as liver damage and gut microbiome imbalances.