There is no known cure for Huntington's disease. A genetic mutation creates harmful proteins that accumulate and cause the disease's typical symptoms. A team from the Department of Human Genetics at Ruhr University Bochum has now shown how targeted ubiquitin tagging at two positions in the mutated huntingtin protein affects its breakdown and distribution within the cell. This insight could provide a starting point for future therapies. The team in Bochum, led by Professor Hoa Huu Phuc Nguyen, worked closely with Israeli researcher Professor Aaron Ciechanover, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004 for his work on the protein degradation system. The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports the findings in its issue of January 8, 2026.

Critical care medicine (CCM) in China is entering a new phase with the release of comprehensive national guidelines that redefine how intensive care units (ICUs) are planned, staffed, and managed. Published in Journal of Intensive Medicine on December 30, 2025, the consensus document integrates lessons learned from major public health emergencies with long-term system planning. It proposes tiered standards covering infrastructure, workforce development, quality management, digital transformation, and emergency preparedness, aiming to strengthen resilience, consistency, and equity in critical care delivery across hospitals nationwide.

Researchers have proposed a novel integrated framework to understand the complex progression of autoimmune skin diseases. A review from a team of researchers at the Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, China moves beyond studying isolated immune components. It introduces a "time-sequential immune cascade" model combined with a "random multi-hit" theory, offering a fresh lens to view diseases like vitiligo, alopecia areata, psoriasis, and pemphigus vulgaris.

A team of researchers, through a collaborative study, now points to functional connectome uniqueness (an individual-level measure from brain fingerprinting that captures how distinctive a person’s intrinsic connectivity patterns are) as a reliable framework for discovering neurobiological biomarkers of major depressive disorder (MDD). This approach of individual connectivity profiles may cut through study heterogeneity and enhance reproducibility in biomarker research for MDD.

Epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation play a key role in regulating gene expression. Emerging evidence suggests that intermediates generated during DNA demethylation may have distinct biological roles. However, their detection remains challenging due to their low abundance. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a novel light-sensitive oligonucleotide probe that selectively crosslinks with 5-formylcytosine, an epigenetically important intermediate, enabling its detection in target DNA and complex biological samples.

Next-generation vascular stents can make cardiovascular therapies minimally invasive and vascular treatments safe and less burdensome. In a new advancement, researchers from Japan and China have successfully proposed a novel adaptive 4D-printed vascular stent based on shape-memory polymer composite. The stent exhibits mechanical flexibility, radial strength, biomechanical compliance, and cytocompatibility in in vitro and in vivo experiments, making them promising for future clinical applications.

BrainIAC is an innovative AI foundation model developed by Mass General Brigham that was trained on nearly 49,000 brain MRI scans to identify key neurological health indicators, such as brain age and dementia risk, without the need for extensive labeled datasets. In a new study, it outperformed traditional task-specific models, demonstrating effectiveness in various clinical applications.

An interdisciplinary multi-centre research team led by the LKS Faculty of Medicine (HKUMed) and Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Hong Kong has constructed the world's largest multi-omics atlas of brain metastases. This comprehensive analysis included 1,032 brain metastasis samples from diverse primary tumours, together with 82 matched primary tumours and 20 glioblastomas (a highly malignant type of brain tumour) as controls. The findings provide a novel framework for classifying brain metastases and establish a foundation for the development of personalised treatment strategies, advancing the field of precision oncology. This breakthrough was published in the international journal Nature Communications.