Researchers at Concordia University have developed magnet-guided soft robots designed to safely navigate blood vessels and remove dangerous clots linked to strokes and heart attacks. The flexible devices can maneuver through narrow, complex pathways more precisely than conventional tools, potentially reducing damage to surrounding tissue and improving outcomes in minimally invasive treatments for life-threatening vascular conditions.

Researchers found that toxic metal particles in rural North China air are smaller and potentially more harmful than those in urban areas. The study showed that village pollution was strongly linked to biomass and coal burning, while urban pollution was mainly associated with dust-related mineral particles. The findings highlight the overlooked health risks faced by rural populations exposed to PM_2.5-bound heavy metals.

As the global transition to renewable energy intensifies, the search for high-performance batteries and efficient electrocatalysts has become a critical race against time. Traditionally, discovering these materials required years of "trial-and-error" laboratory experiments. Now, a comprehensive review published in the journal ENGINEERING Energy by researchers from Tongji University reveals how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fundamentally shifting this paradigm.

Xuebijing injection (XBJ), a clinically widely used traditional Chinese medicine formulation, ameliorates LPS-induced acute lung injury (ALI) through multi-target synergy. It inhibits inflammation and ferroptosis by directly binding to five key proteins (PKM2, ENO1, PBK, EIF3I, Keap1), suppressing the MAPK/NF-κB/NLRP3 signaling axis, restoring alveolar barrier integrity and immune homeostasis, providing new mechanistic evidence and therapeutic prospects for ALI treatment.

A novel TGFβ3 signaling cascade drives metastatic progression in muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) by rewiring succinate metabolism. In a SMAD3/4-independent manner, TGFβ3 promotes assembly of the SMAD2/ETV4/CARM1 transcriptional complex, which epigenetically activates sulfide quinone oxidoreductase (SQOR) to trigger mitochondrial metabolic reprogramming and succinate accumulation. Accumulated succinate acts as a paracrine signal to induce smooth muscle cell (SMC)-to-endothelial-like cell (ELC) transdifferentiation, fostering stromal remodeling and vascular niche formation for metastasis. Structure-based virtual screening identifies L-chicoric acid as a specific inhibitor that disrupts SMAD2-ETV4 interaction, blocking the metabolic axis and suppressing MIBC metastasis, highlighting this pathway as a promising therapeutic target.

A team of researchers from China Pharmaceutical University and King's College London has identified MT2A as a key biomarker and candidate host target that connects zinc dysregulation to COVID-19 mortality. A PRISMA-guided meta-analysis of 1,972 hospitalized COVID-19 patients showed that zinc supplementation reduced mortality (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.36–0.64). Multi-omics integration further revealed that MT2A, enriched in myeloid lineages, is closely associated with COVID-19 severity, viral entry/processing pathways, and innate immune sensing, with its expression peaking early after infection, providing new insights for biomarker-guided stratification and host-directed intervention strategies.

Substrate inhibition is a longstanding bottleneck in microbial fermentation, particularly in lactic acid bacteria, where excessive substrate concentrations can paradoxically suppress growth and product formation. Conventional models, such as Haldane type formulations, are widely used but remain largely phenomenological, limiting their interpretability and predictive power for process optimization. Bridging this gap requires models that not only fit experimental data but also capture the underlying biological mechanisms.