Outfitting cells in “invisibility cloaks” may offer an easier, less damaging treatment pathway for people with diabetes undergoing cell therapy, according to researchers at Penn State. The team manufactured these cloaks out of a jelly-like material known as hydrogel, which the team called biomimetic zona pellucida (BZP). The scientists reported that this thin layer of hydrogel effectively hid the therapeutic cells from the body’s immune system, while reducing blood sugar levels in a series of diabetic mice for 100 days, substantially longer than traditional cell therapies for diabetes.

A disability advocate and theatre performer, a population health professional and a ballet teacher are among 78 aspiring doctors who donned their white coats at Duke-NUS Medical School today, bringing professional skills and lived experiences from well beyond the traditional route into medicine.

Blood tests measuring plasma p-tau217 offer a promising, non-invasive alternative for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. In a multicenter head-to-head evaluation, researchers compared nine commercial p-tau217 assays. While seven assays demonstrated high diagnostic accuracy for detecting amyloid pathology, two showed substantially lower performance. The findings emphasize that these tests are not interchangeable and require tailored calibration for clinical use.

A research team led by Director KIM V. Narry at the Center for RNA Research within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has discovered compact viral RNA elements that can make mRNA more stable and increase protein production. These elements could provide a simple way to develop longer-lasting and more efficient mRNA technologies for vaccines and other RNA-based therapeutics. The study also uncovered an unexpected mechanism by which viruses recruit cellular enzymes to protect their RNA from degradation.

This review synthesizes the global evolution of aquatic ecosystem health research and calls for a paradigm shift from isolated, indicator-based assessment to integrated, watershed-scale governance. Led by Qiuwen Chen from Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, the research team argues that aquatic ecosystem health must be understood as a coupled social–ecological and process-based property—linking ecological structure with hydrological and biogeochemical processes, socio-economic drivers, and adaptive governance—rather than as a simple aggregation of water-quality or biological metrics.