Discovery reveals how drug-resistant tumours can shift into a state that responds better to chemotherapy.

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of mortality worldwide, necessitating deeper insights into its molecular underpinnings beyond genetic predisposition. Epigenetic modifications, particularly methylation changes affecting DNA, proteins, and RNA, have emerged as critical regulators of gene expression implicated in cardiac pathophysiology. These heritable yet reversible chemical alterations govern chromatin architecture, transcriptional activity, and post-transcriptional processing without changing underlying nucleotide sequences. Within the spectrum of cardiovascular pathology—including ischemic heart disease, cardiac hypertrophy, heart failure, and atherosclerosis—dysregulated methylation patterns contribute substantially to disease initiation, progression, and phenotypic manifestation. Understanding the distinct and convergent roles of these three major methylation modalities offers promising avenues for developing novel diagnostic biomarkers and targeted therapeutic interventions that could transform precision medicine in cardiology.

Researchers at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and Monash University have developed a vaccine booster candidate administered via the nasal route, which confers strong immunity in the respiratory tract. The study offers a promising strategy to enhance immunity and inform future booster approaches.

Commonly prescribed heart medications, including statins and diuretics, do not negatively affect the survival of patients with multiple myeloma. This reassuring conclusion comes from an international team of researchers who analyzed data from three major Phase III clinical trials involving a total of 1,804 patients. 

New research led by University of Galway has found that burning "low smoke" manufactured fuels release tiny ultrafine particles that are potentially more harmful to human health.

Scientists at the University’s Ryan Institute carried out a series of controlled burn experiments using peat, wood, “low‑smoke” manufactured products, including “low‑smoke” coal - where smoky coal has been prohibited since 2022 - in domestic stoves to understand exactly what different home‑heating fuels release into the air.

The researchers measured the smoke using advanced instruments that track how many particles are produced, how big they are, and what they are made of.

The team also collected real‑world air measurements in Dublin and Birr, Co Offaly over several years, allowing them to compare laboratory results with what people actually breathe during winter pollution episodes.

By combining these measurements with statistical fingerprinting techniques and established lung‑deposition models, the researchers identified which fuels contribute most to harmful pollution and how deeply those particles can penetrate into the respiratory system.

The results - observed in a “low smoke” zone in Ireland but relevant across Europe and highly consequential for rapidly transitioning regions such as China and India - show that EU, international and national regulatory frameworks need to respond faster to the growing body of scientific evidence.

The research has been published in Nature Geosciences here.

The latest episode of Applied Microbiology International’s ‘Under The Lens’ video series turns the spotlight on the contentious issue of raw milk, with AMI Trustee Professor Emmanuel Adukwu interviewing Professor Nicola Holden and Dr Gil Domingue.

Although plastic particles in the air are increasingly coming into focus, knowledge about their distribution and effects is still limited. Chemical analyses from Leipzig now provide details from Germany for the first time: around 4% of the particulate matter consists of plastic. Around two-thirds of this comes from tyre abrasion. Extrapolated, this means that people in a city like Leipzig inhale approximately 2.1 micrograms of plastic per day through the air, which increases the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 9% and from lung cancer by 13%. These findings underscore the need to take global action against plastic pollution and to examine air quality and health at the regional level, write researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) and Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, published by the Nature Publishing Group. The study was conducted as part of the Leibniz Association-funded project "AirPlast".