In a wide-ranging interview published in Brain Medicine, Dr. Mary L. Phillips, Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, describes a career built on one stubborn conviction: that the emotional storms of bipolar disorder leave traceable fingerprints in neural circuitry, and that those fingerprints can be read before the storm arrives. Elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2024 and recipient of the Society of Biological Psychiatry Gold Medal Award that same year, Dr. Phillips discusses the mentors who shaped her, her translational agenda for developing circuit-level biomarkers to identify at-risk youth, and the frustration that propelled her from clinical observation toward precision psychiatry. She also reveals that her greatest fear is boredom, her greatest extravagance is a 2003 red Ford Thunderbird, and her philosophy fits seven words: goals and routes, never confuse the two.

In order to identify the intervention targets for vascular calcification in diabetic atherosclerotic plaques, Prof. Zhongqun Wang's team at the Department of Cardiology, Affiliated Hospital of Jiangsu University has performed spatial metabolomics and single-cell transcriptomics analyses on the anterior tibial arteries of diabetic foot amputations. Results indicated that the catabolism of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) was enhanced and the expression of BCAT2 (a key metabolic enzyme in the BCAA catabolic pathway) in VSMCs was increased in the calcified anterior tibial arteries of patients with diabetic foot undergoing amputation.

On-chip gas sensors are crucial for environmental and health monitoring but have struggled with high sensitivity. A team from PolyU has now developed a novel suspended chalcogenide waveguide photothermal spectroscopy that dramatically enhances the on-chip sensing performance. The chip-scale sensor achieves an unprecedented detection limit of 330 ppb for acetylene gas, a large dynamic range for 6 orders of magnitude, and fast response under 1 second, setting a new benchmark for integrated photonic gas sensors.

A nationwide Japanese registry analysis highlights a major gap in routine chronic kidney disease (CKD) care: metabolic acidosis is frequently missed because serum bicarbonate levels are rarely measured. In this study, it was found that half of the tested CKD patients presented low bicarbonate levels. Similar patterns in North America suggest a global issue. Because metabolic acidosis accelerates kidney decline and increases mortality, bicarbonate monitoring represents a simple, actionable opportunity to improve CKD outcomes in clinical practice.