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These drugs could give Alzheimer’s patients a longer life of independence, study shows

ST. LOUIS — For decades, researchers have searched for effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, a devastating neurodegenerative condition that affects memory, thinking, and the ability to perform everyday activities. The recent approval of new medications offers a glimmer of hope, but questions remain about how much these treatments actually help patients in meaningful ways. A new study from the Washington University School of Medicine provides a fresh perspective on this question, focusing on what matters most to patients and their families: maintaining independence in daily life.

When pharmaceutical companies test new Alzheimer’s treatments, they typically measure success using clinical scales that may not translate clearly to real-world benefits. The Clinical Dementia Rating Sum of Boxes (CDR-SB) is one such scale frequently used in clinical trials. But what does a small improvement on this scale actually mean for patients and their families? Does it translate to more time living independently? More days being able to manage finances, drive, or prepare meals?

These questions drove researchers to conduct a detailed analysis examining how scores on clinical tests relate to practical outcomes that patients and families deeply value—specifically, how long people can maintain independence in their daily activities. Their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions provide a new framework for understanding treatment benefits.

“What we were trying to do was figure out how to give people a piece of information that would be meaningful to them and help them make decisions about their care,” says senior author Dr. Sarah Hartz, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry at WashU Medicine, in a statement. “What people want to know is how long they will be able to live independently, not something abstract like the percent change in decline.”

Which Alzheimer’s drugs provide the biggest benefits?

The study found that two recently approved medications, lecanemab and donanemab, could potentially extend independence in daily activities by approximately 10 months for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. This finding helps translate abstract clinical trial results into tangible benefits that patients and families can understand when making treatment decisions.

Alzheimer’s disease progressively damages the brain, leading to a decline in memory, thinking, and eventually the ability to perform everyday tasks. The disease follows a typical progression from mild cognitive impairment to increasing dependency in daily activities. For many families, maintaining independence for as long as possible is a primary goal, allowing loved ones to continue living at home, managing their own affairs, and preserving their dignity and quality of life.

The study focused on individuals with early onset of Alzheimer’s disease who would be eligible for the new anti-amyloid treatments. These treatments target and remove amyloid plaques in the brain, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Lecanemab (approved in July 2023) and donanemab (approved in July 2024) have shown modest but statistically significant effects in slowing disease progression in clinical trials.

However, the clinical meaningfulness of these treatments has been debated. Some experts have questioned whether the small improvements seen on clinical scales justify the treatments’ costs, potential side effects, and the burden of regular intravenous infusions. These medications can cost tens of thousands of dollars annually and carry risks of side effects, including brain swelling or bleeding that are usually mild but can occasionally be serious.

Making the right decision

Patients and their families face difficult decisions when considering these new treatments. As the study authors note, they must decide whether to undergo a treatment that will not make them better or even stop the disease progression. At best, it will only slow the decline. The treatment requires biweekly or monthly infusions and carries risks that should be carefully considered.

“My patients want to know, ‘How long can I drive? How long will I be able to take care of my own personal hygiene? How much time would this treatment give me?’” says co-author Dr. Suzanne Schindler, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology and a WashU Medicine physician who treats people with Alzheimer’s disease. “The question of whether or not these drugs would be helpful for any particular person is complicated and has to do with not only medical factors but the patient’s priorities, preferences, and risk tolerance.”

The Washington University researchers sought to bridge this gap between clinical trial measurements and real-world outcomes. They asked: How do scores on the CDR-SB scale relate to independence in daily activities, and how much additional independence might these new treatments provide?

An extra year (or more) of independence

The research team studied 282 participants from the Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center who had either very mild or mild Alzheimer’s disease with confirmed amyloid pathology (the abnormal protein deposits characteristic of the disease). The participants were followed for an average of 2.9 years, with researchers regularly assessing their cognitive abilities and functional independence.

The study looked at two types of daily activities. First, instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) include managing finances, driving or arranging transportation, remembering medications and appointments, and preparing meals. These activities represent the practical skills needed for independent living. Second, basic activities of daily living (BADLs) include fundamental self-care tasks like bathing, dressing, and grooming.

By analyzing how CDR-SB scores related to independence in these activities over time, the researchers identified critical thresholds. They found that loss of independence in IADLs typically occurred when a person’s CDR-SB score exceeded 4.5, while loss of independence in basic self-care activities occurred much later, when the CDR-SB score exceeded 11.5.

The researchers then used data from clinical trials of lecanemab and donanemab to estimate how much these treatments might delay reaching these critical thresholds. For someone with early Alzheimer’s disease (baseline CDR-SB score of 2), treatment with lecanemab could potentially extend independence in IADLs by approximately 10 months. For those treated with donanemab who had low or medium levels of tau protein (another Alzheimer’s biomarker), independence might be extended by approximately 13 months.

Using their analysis of disease progression and treatment effects, the researchers provided more specific estimates for patients at different stages. A typical person with very mild symptoms could expect to live independently for another 29 months without treatment, compared to 39 months with lecanemab and 37 months with donanemab.

For people with more advanced symptoms who were already having difficulty living independently, the focus shifted to how long they could maintain independence in basic self-care activities. The researchers calculated that a typical person at this stage could expect to manage self-care independently for an additional 26 months if treated with lecanemab, and 19 months with donanemab.

Assisted living is costly

Rather than focusing solely on statistical improvements in test scores, patients and families can now better understand the potential real-world benefits: additional months of being able to manage finances, drive, remember medications, and prepare meals independently.

In the United States, the average annual cost of assisted living is over $56,000, while nursing home care averages around $100,000 per year. Extending independence could potentially reduce these costs and the tremendous burden on family caregivers, who provided an estimated 18 billion hours of unpaid assistance in 2022, valued at $339.5 billion.

The study’s findings may also help clinicians have more informed conversations with patients and families about treatment options. When discussing whether to pursue these new medications, they can now frame the discussion around the potential for extended independence rather than abstract improvements on clinical scales.

It’s important to note that the effects of these treatments vary based on a person’s disease stage and biological factors. For example, individuals with higher levels of tau protein in their brains showed less benefit from donanemab treatment. Those who start treatment earlier in the disease course (with lower CDR-SB scores) generally gain more additional months of independence than those who start treatment at later stages.

“The purpose of this study is not to advocate for or against these medications,” adds Dr. Hartz. “The purpose of the paper is to put the impact of these medications into context in ways that can help people make the decisions that are best for themselves and their family members.”

For patients with Alzheimer’s disease and their families, maintaining independence isn’t just about convenience; it’s about preserving dignity, quality of life, and personal identity for as long as possible. This research helps clarify what these new treatments might actually mean in the daily lives of those affected by this devastating disease. This study provides patients and clinicians with practical information to weigh treatment benefits against costs and risks, helping them navigate the complex terrain of Alzheimer’s care decisions.

News Team by — February 28, 2025 By News Team in Trending Now
Top-rated diet lowers cancer risk in a surprising way, new study finds

Meals from the sunny Mediterranean have been shown to reduce the risk of developing prostate, cervical and colorectal cancer, while also decreasing the risk of women dying from any cancer by 17%.

The Mediterranean diet also wins gold medals for healthy weight loss and lowering obesity. Obesity is a leading risk factor for cancer and many other chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart and kidney disease, stroke and more.

Now, a large, observational study sheds light on the ways in which the Mediterranean diet may reduce cancer risk — and it’s not just via weight loss.

“This was somewhat surprising. Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet was associated with lower obesity-related cancer risk regardless of BMI (body mass index) or fat distribution,” said first author Inmaculada Aguilera-Buenosvinos, a postdoctoral scientist in the department of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Health Research in Pamplona, Spain

“This suggests that other mechanisms — such as reduced inflammation, improved metabolic health, or dietary interactions with the microbiome — may be responsible for the protective effects,” said Aguilera-Buenosvinos, also a postdoctoral scientist at the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, in an email.

A plant-based diet

The Mediterranean diet features simple, plant-based cooking, with much of each meal focused on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and seeds, with a few nuts and a heavy emphasis on extra-virgin olive oil. Fats other than olive oil, such as butter, are consumed rarely, if at all, and sugar and refined foods should be avoided.

“Fiber contributes to fullness and supports a healthy microbiome,” Wohlford said. “Plants are also packed with antioxidants and phytonutrients, which appear to reduce inflammation in the body. We have to eat a variety of plants to get the different nutrients and antioxidants that may help reduce overall cancer risk.”

In the Mediterranean diet, red meat is used sparingly, often only to flavor a dish. Eating healthy, oily fish, which are packed with omega-3 fatty acids, is encouraged, while eggs, dairy and poultry are eaten in much smaller portions than in the traditional Western diet.

The highly processed foods typical in a Western diet can contain chemicals and additives that cause “oxidative damage which can lead to cancer,” said Dr. Neil Iyengar, associate professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and breast cancer oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, both in New York City.

“What we put into our bodies every day can impact nearly every function of our body through hormones, fat and muscle tissue, and the delicate balance of bacteria in our gut,” said Iyengar, who was not involved in the new study.

“Consuming a minimally processed, plant forward diet can help to reduce or even reverse the oxidative damage that a poor diet can cause to our body,” he said in an email. “We are also starting to see some limited evidence that this type of diet — minimally processed, high fiber, and plant-forward — may even help some cancer therapies to be more effective.”

Each dietary change helps

The study, published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, analyzed diet and medical data on more than 450,000 people taking part in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, or EPIC study, which enrolled participants between 35 and 70 years from 1992 to 2000 across 23 centers in 10 countries. Three of those countries — Greece, Italy and Spain — are known for their use of the Mediterranean diet; the other seven countries are not (Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK).

People who most closely adhered to the Mediterranean diet had about a 6% lower risk of developing obesity-related cancers compared to those with less adherence, the study found. While that number may appear small, the significance grows when applied to larger populations, Aguilera-Buenosvinos said.

“Even a small reduction in risk at the individual level can translate into thousands of preventable cancer cases when applied at the population level,” she said. “Promoting adherence to the Mediterranean Diet as a low-cost, accessible, and sustainable dietary pattern could have a major impact on cancer prevention strategies.”

Having occasional breaks from the diet also helped keep cancer at bay, although not as much as fully embracing the Mediterranean style of eating, the study found.

“In other words, it’s ok to have a ‘cheat’ meal here and there,” Iyengar said. “The diet had an even higher protective effect for smokers, which is likely because smokers are starting at a higher risk compared to non-smokers.”

Oddly, the study did not find the Mediterranean diet lowered the risk of hormone cancers, such as breast cancers, a finding that contradicts prior research.

Tips for getting started on the Mediterranean diet

Americans are used to eating ultraprocessed foods, which populate up to 70% of all grocery store shelves, so moving to a plant-based diet can appear difficult at first,

“It can be very overwhelming if you’re not used to eating the Mediterranean diet or plants in general,” Wohlford said. “Set small goals. A good first step is look at what your diet might be missing rather than focusing on removing forbidden foods.”

Add blueberries to your morning meal, munch on a handful of nuts for a snack, and eating a salad with lunch are good ways to start, she said. Then try to fill more of your dinner plate with vegetables, whole grains and legumes, and consider a piece of fruit for dessert.

“We really want a consistent diet that can be sustained over time,” Wohlford said. “Trying a Mediterranean style diet for three or four months to meet certain metrics is not necessarily going to reduce your risk of cancer. You want to adopt this type of diet consistently throughout the course of the rest of your life.”

News Team by — February 28, 2025 By News Team in Trending Now
Xolography-based method enables 3D printing of living tissues with light

Xolography is a novel light printing technique that has been explored for dental products and in-space manufacturing. At Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), this technique has now been adapted to 3D print living cells. This research can pave the way for 3D-printed kidneys and muscle tissue. The team pioneered the Xolography-based method to produce tiny structures with features as small as 20 µm—approximately the size of a human cell.

These results are published in Advanced Materials.

Is Xolography the technique that will enable a future of 3D-printed hearts and kidneys?

“Unfortunately, this is still entirely speculative for now, I’m afraid,” cautions researcher Miguel Dias Castilho. “For now, we still view technology as a hacker space.”

This pioneering spirit is perfectly reflected in the printer, an early tissue printing prototype, whose sheer orange acrylic casing reveals an inside of wires, projectors, copper coils, and tiny digital displays.

While it may seem speculative for now, the detailed and lightning-fast printing of living tissue in a suitcase-sized, orange 3D printer is completely real.

“Our research is a necessary first step for the future of tissue engineering. Right now, it can print more physiologically relevant 3D environments for cell culture, and in the long term, it could help make 3D-printed organs a reality,” says Dias Castilho.

Tissue printing with light

At the heart of the machine sits a tiny cuvette containing a fluid that transforms into a solid as if by magic. But instead of waving a magic wand, Lena Stoecker, who is a Ph.D. of Dias Castilho’s brand-new Biomaterials Engineering and Biofabrication group, projects beams of light onto liquids to conjure up viable cell-laden geometries.

Stoecker has successfully adapted a novel 3D printing technique called Xolography to print biomaterials. While demonstrating the printer by putting a cuvette with a liquid inside, Stoecker explains what drew her to 3D printing tissues: “I first encountered 3D printing as a student assistant during my studies of mechanical engineering and business administration. We employed 3D printing mainly for prototyping and tooling for small series production, and I was fascinated by the technology’s possibility to realize (almost) any idea.”

Biomedical challenges

It is no surprise that Stoecker gravitated towards tissue engineering, as it is by nature a multidisciplinary field combining the expertise of molecular biologists, engineers and designers.

The biggest trifold challenge facing tissue engineers everywhere is to create viable 3D tissues that closely resemble the natural environment of cells, to create them fast, and to do it precisely. This is the holy grail.

“There was a big hype around 3D printing for biomedical engineering, but technologies failed to meet the high expectations,” Stoecker explains. “My dream for Xolography would be to develop into a technology that is actually able to create tissue and organ models to study disease and develop cures.”

A technique from the field of design

Xolography is a groundbreaking fusion of engineering, physics and chemistry, where light is used to 3D print liquid polymers. It harnesses the power of intersecting light beams of distinct wavelengths within a light-reactive fluid. As light rays converge, they turn the fluid into a detailed, solid 3D object the size of a gummi bear in under a minute.

The technology was developed by German chemist Stefan Hecht and physicist Martin Regehly, who further adapted it for diverse applications in their spin-off business Xolo. Four years ago, Hecht mused about Xolography potentially being used for generating complex biological structures.

Dias Castilho explains, “Four years ago, Xolo was looking to advance its technology into biomedical applications, while my team was searching for a disruptive technology that could potentially offer high resolution, fast manufacturing speeds, and scalability—so it’s a perfect marriage.”

Today, the TU/e-researchers at the Biomaterials Engineering and Biofabrication group made printing tissue with light a reality. Hecht and Regehly follow the findings of the research group with interest, as they are the first scientists to use this technology to print living materials in the world.

That did not happen overnight, as the researchers had to overcome some additional challenges to adapt Xolography to printing living tissue.

“The materials used must be biocompatible, for one. Besides the hydrogels we were developing for the process, we found that the photoinitiator system itself was not very cell-friendly and had to be replaced. In close collaboration with the company, we developed and optimized the material formulations to ensure they are safe for biomedical applications,” says Dias Castilho.

News Team by — February 28, 2025 By News Team in Biotechnology Daily
Anti-inflammatory Drug Weakens Immune System’s Response to Brain Cancer

By analyzing single-cell and spatial transcriptomic data from myeloid cells from 85 brain tumors, scientists from McGill University, the Broad Institute, and elsewhere found that a commonly prescribed anti-swelling drug, dexamethasone, suppresses the immune system for weeks after dosing, inhibiting its response to the cancer. The findings could open a door to more effective strategies for managing cancer-related inflammation in the brain as well as improved immunotherapies.

Full details were published in a Nature paper titled, “Programs, origins and immunomodulatory functions of myeloid cells in glioma.” In it, the researchers explain that they used single-cell and spatial data to learn how myeloid cells affect the immune system’s response to gliomas, tumors that develop in the brain or spinal cord. “In gliomas, myeloid cells are the most prevalent non-malignant cell type, comprising up to 50% of cells in a tumor,” the researchers wrote in Nature. “Tumor-associated myeloid cells can influence the molecular state of malignant cells as well as tumor-infiltrating T cells …. They can also recruit and suppress other myeloid cells.”

The study data revealed a consistent organization of cells within brain cancer, where each type of myeloid cell was found in specific areas and tailored to its role in the tumor. Notably, the researchers identified two types of immunosuppressive myeloid cells. In patients treated with dexamethasone, these specific cell types had a significantly higher immunosuppressive effect than those who had not been treated. And the effect was stronger as the drug dose increased.

Furthermore, when the scientists exposed myeloid cells that were categorized as non-immunosuppressive to dexamethasone, they found that these cells quickly became immunosuppressive following exposure. And the effect lasted a long time.

Swelling from brain cancer can cause serious side effects and even death if not addressed. However, in light of these findings, “doctors should ask themselves if dexamethasone is truly needed in each case it’s prescribed,” said Charles Couturier, MD, PhD, a neurosurgeon-scientist at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University and one of the study’s lead authors. “It is important to balance the need to reduce swelling with the need for a healthy immune response. We need to start developing alternatives to dexamethasone that do not inhibit immune response in patients.”  
News Team by — February 28, 2025 By News Team in Bio Business News
An ancient RNA-guided system could simplify delivery of gene editing therapies

A vast search of natural diversity has led scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to uncover ancient systems with the potential to expand the genome-editing toolbox. These systems, which the researchers call TIGR (Tandem Interspaced Guide RNA) systems, use RNA to guide them to specific sites on DNA.

TIGR systems can be reprogrammed to target any DNA sequence of interest, and they have distinct functional modules that can act on the targeted DNA. In addition to its modularity, TIGR is very compact compared to other RNA-guided systems, like CRISPR, which is a major advantage for delivering it in a therapeutic context.

These findings appear in the journal Science.

“This is a very versatile RNA-guided system with a lot of diverse functionalities,” says Feng Zhang, the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT who led the research. The TIGR-associated (Tas) proteins that Zhang’s team found share a characteristic RNA-binding component that interacts with an RNA guide that directs it to a specific site in the genome. Some cut the DNA at that site, using an adjacent DNA-cutting segment of the protein. That modularity could facilitate tool development, allowing researchers to swap useful new features into natural Tas proteins.

“Nature is pretty incredible,” remarks Zhang, who is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a core member of the Broad Institute, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and biological engineering at MIT, and co-director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics at MIT.

“It’s got a tremendous amount of diversity, and we have been exploring that natural diversity to find new biological mechanisms and harnessing them for different applications to manipulate biological processes,” he says.

Previously, Zhang’s team had adapted bacterial CRISPR systems into gene-editing tools that have transformed modern biology. His team has also found a variety of programmable proteins, both from CRISPR systems and beyond.

In their new work, to find novel programmable systems, the team began by zeroing in on a structural feature of the CRISPR Cas9 protein that binds to the enzyme’s RNA guide. That is a key feature that has made Cas9 such a powerful tool.

“Being RNA-guided makes it relatively easy to reprogram, because we know how RNA binds to other DNA or other RNA,” Zhang explains. His team searched hundreds of millions of biological proteins with known or predicted structures, looking for any that shared a similar domain. To find more distantly related proteins, they used an iterative process: from Cas9, they identified a protein called IS110, which had previously been shown by others to bind RNA. They then zeroed in on the structural features of IS110 that enable RNA binding and repeated their search.

At this point, the search had turned up so many distantly related proteins that the team turned to artificial intelligence to make sense of the list.

“When you are doing iterative, deep mining, the resulting hits can be so diverse that they are difficult to analyze using standard phylogenetic methods, which rely on conserved sequences,” explains Guilhem Faure, a computational biologist in Zhang’s lab.

News Team by — February 28, 2025 By News Team in Biotechnology Daily
Extreme Heat Accelerates Biological Aging in Older Adults

Research by scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) Leonard Davis School of Gerontology suggests that greater exposure to extreme heat may accelerate biological aging in older adults.

The study, which examined the association between ambient outdoor heat and epigenetic aging in thousands of individuals aged 56 years and older, raises new concerns about how climate change and heat waves could affect long-term health and aging at the molecular level.

Research lead Jennifer Ailshire, PhD, professor of gerontology and sociology at the USC Leonard Davis School, said people in neighborhoods that experience more days of high heat show greater biological aging on average than residents of cooler regions.

Ailshire is senior author of the team’s published paper in Science Advances, titled “Ambient outdoor heat and accelerated epigenetic aging among older adults in the US,” in which the team concluded, “These findings provide insights into the biological underpinnings linking heat to aging-related morbidity and mortality risks.”

Biological age is a measure of how well the body functions at the molecular, cellular, and system levels, as opposed to chronological age based on one’s birthdate. Having a biological age greater than one’s chronological age is associated with higher risk for disease and mortality.

“Global warming has intensified extreme heat events, posing serious risks to public health,” the authors wrote. “The frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme heat events are expected to grow rapidly in the coming decades, affecting more than 100 million Americans in 2050.” Exposure to extreme heat has long been associated with negative health outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases, and an increased risk of death, but the link to biological aging isn’t well understood.

Ailshire and co-author Eunyoung Choi, PhD, USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology alumna and postdoctoral scholar, examined how biological age changed in more than 3,600 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) participants aged 56 years and older from throughout the United States. Blood samples taken at various time points during the six-year study period were analyzed for epigenetic changes, or changes in the way individual genes are turned off or on by a process called DNA methylation (DNAm).

“This study examines the association between heat and epigenetic aging in a nationally representative, diverse sample of older adults,” they explained. The effects on the body of heat events may not manifest immediately as clinical conditions, the investigators continued. “Rather, these environmental insults may elicit subclinical deterioration at the biological level, accelerating biological aging, which precedes the subsequent development of diseases and disabilities.” And while the effects of heat on DNAm have been reported across a number of different species, including fish, chickens, and some mammals, there have been very few studies in humans. “Our study bridges this gap by examining epigenetic age (or clock), a molecular marker of biological aging based on DNAm levels throughout the genome.”

To carry out their study the researchers used mathematical tools called epigenetic clocks to analyze DNA methylation patterns and estimate biological ages at each time point. They then compared participants’ changes in biological age to their location’s heat index history and the number of heat days reported by the National Weather Service from 2010 to 2016.

The National Weather Service Heat Index Chart categorizes heat index values into three levels based on the potential risk of adverse health effects. The “Caution” level includes heat index values ranging from 80°F to 90°F, the “Extreme Caution” level includes values between 90°F and 103°F, and the “Danger” level includes values between 103°F and 124°F. Days in all three levels were included as heat days in the study.

The analysis revealed a significant correlation between neighborhoods with more days of extreme heat and individuals experiencing greater increases in biological age, Choi said. This correlation persisted even after controlling for socioeconomic and other demographic differences, as well as lifestyle factors such as physical activity, alcohol consumption, and smoking, she added. “Our findings reveal significant associations between more heat days and accelerated epigenetic aging, particularly for longer-term periods,” the authors stated.

“Participants living in areas where heat days, as defined as Extreme Caution or higher levels (≥90°F), occur half the year, such as Phoenix, Arizona, experienced up to 14 months of additional biological aging compared to those living in areas with fewer than 10 heat days per year,” Choi commented. “Even after controlling for several factors, we found this association. Just because you live in an area with more heat days, you’re aging faster biologically.”

All three epigenetic clocks employed in the study—PCPhenoAge, PCGrimAge, and DunedinPACE—revealed this association when analyzing epigenetic aging over a 1- to 6-year period. “We found consistent associations between long-term heat days and accelerated epigenetic aging across PCPhenoAge, PCGrimAge, and DunedinPACE,” the investigators noted. PCPhenoAge also showed the association after short (7 days) and medium (30–60 days) periods of time, indicating that heat-related epigenetic changes could happen relatively quickly, and some of them may accumulate over time. “Specifically, we observe that short-and mid-term heat conditions are significantly associated with increases in PCPhenoAge, while more heat days more than 1 year and 6 years are linked to accelerated epigenetic aging in all epigenetic clocks,” they added.

Older adults are particularly vulnerable to the effects of high heat, Ailshire said. She noted that the study used heat index, rather than just air temperature, to take relative humidity into account as they analyzed results.

“It’s really about the combination of heat and humidity, particularly for older adults, because older adults don’t sweat the same way. We start to lose our ability to have the skin-cooling effect that comes from that evaporation of sweat,” she explained. “If you’re in a high humidity place, you don’t get as much of that cooling effect. You have to look at your area’s temperature and your humidity to really understand what your risk might be.”

The next steps for the researchers will be to determine what other factors might make someone more vulnerable to heat-related biological aging and how it might connect to clinical outcomes. “Our study provides insights into the biological underpinnings linking heat to the broader spectrum of aging-related morbidity and mortality risks,” they wrote. “We demonstrated that short-, mid-, and long-term ambient outdoor heat can significantly accelerate epigenetic aging within a diverse, nationally representative cohort of older adults.”

In the meantime, the study results could also prompt policymakers, architects, and others to keep heat mitigation and age-friendly features in mind as they update cities’ infrastructure, from placing sidewalks and building bus stops with shade in mind to planting more trees and increasing urban green space, Ailshire said. The findings, the investigators noted in their report, provide “strong evidence critical for guiding public policy and advocacy initiatives aimed at developing mitigation strategies against climate change.”

Ailshire added, “If everywhere is getting warmer and the population is aging, and these people are vulnerable, then we need to get really a lot smarter about these mitigation strategies.”

The authors further concluded, “… our findings serve as a foundation for the development of targeted public health interventions, providing a strategic framework for addressing the adverse biological impacts triggered by extreme heat.”

News Team by — February 28, 2025 By News Team in Bio Business News
Audit finds thousands were improperly enrolled in Illinois health care program for noncitizens, while costs were vastly underestimated

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration vastly underestimated the cost and popularity of a pair of health insurance programs for immigrants who are not citizens that has ended up costing the state $1.6 billion since the initiative began in 2020, according to an audit report released Wednesday.

Aside from inaccurate projections of the programs’ cost and the number of people who would enroll, the audit uncovered more than 6,000 people enrolled in the programs who were listed as “undocumented” despite having Social Security numbers, and nearly 700 who were enrolled in the program for people 65 and older despite being younger than that. In addition, almost 400 people were enrolled in the programs but appeared to have been in the country long enough to qualify for Medicaid, which is jointly funded by the federal government.

The report from Illinois Auditor General Frank Mautino’s office was published a week after Pritzker proposed eliminating funding for the program that provides Medicaid-style insurance coverage for people younger than 65 who are in the country without legal permission or are in the U.S. legally but have not yet qualified for a green card. The cut, estimated to save $330 million, was part of Pritzker’s plan to close a budget hole once pegged at more than $3 billion.

The cost overruns were particularly pronounced in the program for younger recipients, with the actual expenditure of $485 million through the three years ending June 30, 2023, coming in at nearly four times the estimated cost of $126 million, according to the audit.

At a news conference in Chicago on Wednesday to announce another round of medical debt relief for Illinois residents, Pritzker did not answer directly when asked why the estimates his administration used for the programs were so far off. Instead, he said some individuals were at times kept on the programs’ rolls for a period before the state determined they were no longer eligible, either because of a change in immigration or employment status or some other factor.

Despite his proposal to do away with funding for coverage of those under 65, Pritzker reiterated his support for universal health care coverage in an unspecified form.

“The broader context is people need to get health care,” Pritzker said, adding: “It’s some evidence, anyway, that there are an awful lot of people out there that need coverage who aren’t getting it or who will do anything to get it, and I think that’s a sad state of affairs in our society.”

As of December, there were 41,505 people enrolled in the programs — one for those 65 and older, one for those under 65. Roughly 80% of them were in the program for younger immigrants for which Pritzker has proposed eliminating funding beginning July 1.

Illinois initially offered Medicaid-style health care coverage for noncitizen immigrants 65 and older in 2020 under a program called Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors. This group of recipients was ineligible for the traditional health insurance program for the poor, which is jointly funded by the federal government.

This state-run health care initiative has been expanded twice and now covers those 42 and older. The ballooning costs of the program complicated budget negotiations two years ago.

Together, the two programs do not extend to the asylum-seekers arriving in Chicago from the southern U.S. border.

The two programs launched in Illinois at a time when Medicaid redeterminations — annual checks that verify whether an enrollee is eligible for that benefit — were put on pause by the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the costs for the programs eventually spiraled upward and the issue has roiled the General Assembly in recent years. In February 2023, Pritzker took steps to curtail enrollment in the programs after an initial cost estimate from his administration of $220 million swelled fivefold three months later to $1.1 billion. Ultimately, a little over $500 million was set aside in the budget that passed by the legislature that spring.

Last year, the governor announced plans to cut as many as 6,000 health care recipients across the two programs to save more money.

Pritzker in the past has defended immigrant health care as a state effort to save more taxpayer money by providing this kind of coverage to noncitizens by keeping them out of emergency rooms and hospitals. But hours after announcing his budget proposal last week, Pritzker explained how there’s been people of working age in the 42-to-64 program that have later been able to find a better-paying job “that has health care associated with it.”

“Yes, we’re making sacrifices across the budget,” Pritzker said in his ceremonial office at the state Capitol. “I’m making sacrifices on things that matter to me.”

News Team by — February 27, 2025 By News Team in Trending Now
UnitedHealthcare is offering buyouts to employees in benefits unit, could pursue layoffs, sources say

UnitedHealthcare is offering certain employees in its benefits operations unit the option to accept buyouts if they quit by March 3, following a tumultuous year for the insurance giant, CNBC has learned.

Those who don’t accept the offer will continue in either their current role or a comparable position, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC. If the company does not meet a resignation quota through buyouts, it will lay off employees, the people said, citing an internal resource site.

The company declined to share how many employees received buyout offers under the so-called Voluntary Resignation Separation Program. The benefits operations unit oversees multiple subdivisions that help manage customer service, claims, enrollment, customers’ insurance benefits and more, one person said.  

UnitedHealthcare, the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, is the largest private health insurer in the U.S. UnitedHealth Group had more than 440,000 employees as of December 2023, but it does not disclose how many people work in its benefits segment or overall insurance business.

UnitedHealth Group is the biggest health-care conglomerate in the U.S. based on revenue and its roughly $460 billion market cap, but it has tried to cut costs as medical expenses increase for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries and it deals with the fallout from the costly cyberattack against its subsidiary Change Healthcare. It has also faced renewed anger over high health-care costs in the U.S., following the killing of its insurance unit CEO Brian Thompson in December.

Employees eligible for the buyouts include full-time or part-time U.S. workers assigned to four internal segments under benefits operations, including corporate, consumer operations, core services and provider services, according to an internal memo sent Monday and viewed by CNBC.

“This voluntary option is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure our team is best positioned to meet the evolving needs of the people and customers we are honored to serve,” a UnitedHealth spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “We continue to grow our workforce with more than 3,200 positions currently available on UnitedHealth Group’s careers site.”

The company expects employees’ termination date to be no sooner than May 1, according to the memo. The memo said some employees who accept buyouts may need to work beyond that date, but the company does not expect to require them to work past Nov. 13.

Their severance packages will depend on the number of years they have spent at the company and their salary grade, and will kick in on their termination date, the memo said. The benefits provided to employees included in any potential future layoffs may not be “as favorable” as those offered to workers under the buyout program, according to the memo. 

Workers who received the buyout offers are in shock, said the people familiar with the matter, especially after UnitedHealth Group reported its highest-ever annual revenue in 2024. The company said in its January earnings release that it generated $400.3 billion in revenue in 2024, up 8% year over year.

UnitedHealth executives said during the company’s fourth-quarter call in January that “digital adoption” helped the company lower costs. CEO Andrew Witty called it a “modernization agenda” which includes but isn’t limited to artificial intelligence.

He added that UnitedHealth is “just kind of scratching the surface of the opportunity.”

Workers were informed about the buyouts Monday during a meeting that lasted around 10 minutes and were told they will have the opportunity to ask questions in information sessions in the coming days, the people said.

The buyouts follow the shooting of Thompson, which unleashed a torrent of pent-up anger and resentment toward the insurance industry and renewed calls for reform.

That came only months after Change Healthcare, which processes medical claims, was hit by a cyberattack in February 2024 that compromised the protected health information of around 190 million people. UnitedHealth Group has paid out more than $3 billion to providers affected by the cyberattack.

UnitedHealth Group also laid off workers in its Optum health services division last year.

Shares of the company closed up 2% on Wednesday.

News Team by — February 27, 2025 By News Team in Trending Now
Scientists build robot to track plant-fungal trade networks, revealing nature’s underground supply chains

New research published in the journal Nature on February 26, 2025, uses advanced robotics to track the hyper-efficient supply chains formed between plants and mycorrhizal fungi as they trade carbon and nutrients across the complex, living networks that help regulate the Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems.

Understanding the plant-fungal trade is urgent because these fungal networks draw down around 13 billion tons of CO2 per year into the soil—equivalent to ~1/3 of global energy-related emissions.

More than 80% of plant species on Earth form partnerships with mycorrhizal fungi, in which phosphorus and nitrogen collected by fungi are exchanged for plant carbon. Despite their global importance, scientists did not understand how these brainless organisms construct expansive and efficient supply chains across their underground networks.

Using a custom-built imaging robot, the international research team of 28 scientists discovered that the fungi construct a lace-like mycelial network that moves carbon outward from plant roots in a wave-like formation. To support this growth, fungi move resources to-and-from plant roots using a system of two-way traffic, controlling flow speed and width of these fungal highways as needed.

To seek further resources, the fungi deployed special growing branches as microscopic “pathfinders” to explore new territory, appearing to favor trade opportunities with future plant partners over short-term growth within immediate surroundings. The researchers describe how these behaviors appear to be coordinated by simple, local “rules” that prevent the fungus from “over-building” and define a unique ‘traveling wave strategy’ for growth, resource exploration, and trade.

“We’ve been mapping the decentralized decision-making processes of mycorrhizal fungal networks, exposing a hyper-efficient blueprint for an underground supply chain,” said Evolutionary Biologist and co-author Dr. Toby Kiers of Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit.

“Humans increasingly rely on AI algorithms to build supply chains that are efficient and resilient. Yet mycorrhizal fungi have been solving these problems for more than 450 million years. This is the kind of research that keeps you up at night because these fungi are such important underground circulatory systems for nutrients and carbon.”

Advanced robotics to track fungal decision-making

Discovering these new fungal behaviors was only possible because the team built an imaging robot that ran 24/7 in Amsterdam, allowing measurements of how the fungi reshaped their trade routes over time and space.

“We discovered that these fungi are constantly adapting their trade routes, adding loops to shorten paths so they could efficiently deliver nutrients to plant roots,” said Dr. Thomas Shimizu, co-author and biophysicist from the physics institute AMOLF in Amsterdam.

Similar to navigation apps tracking congestion, the team then measured “traffic flows” at specific coordinates in the fungal road system, quantifying how fast resources were flowing to and from the root, tracking more than 100,000 particle flows. “By using our robot instead of a human being, we cut the lab time from a century to around three years,” added Shimizu.

“Robotics is making it possible to study fungal behavior in unprecedented detail, and at an unprecedented scale,” said co-author Dr. Merlin Sheldrake. “These techniques open the door to future work to understand the ways that these living, sensing, networks regulate ecosystem function and the Earth’s nutrient cycles.”

Data critical for understanding carbon draw down

The data collected are becoming increasingly important as atmospheric CO2 increases. Scientists want to understand how fungal networks control flows of carbon belowground. Kiers, also Executive Director of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), the non-profit organization mapping Earth’s mycorrhizal networks adds, “Because these fungal networks are key entry points of carbon into global soils, we can now explore what triggers fungi to increase carbon flows underground.”

As in human supply chains, the efficiency of mycorrhizal fungal supply-chains depends on the ability of a network to produce and deliver goods to the right place, at the right time, at the lowest possible cost. Dr. Howard Stone, co-author and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University adds, “Understanding how these fungal networks adjust internal flows and resource trading to build supply chains in response to environment stimuli will be an important direction for future research.”

Whether and how designers of human-built supply chains can learn from these principles evolved by plants and fungi over hundreds of millions of years is an exciting frontier. The team is now in the final stages of building a new robot which will increase data collection by a further 10x, allowing them to explore how fungal networks respond to rapid environmental change, including increases in disturbance and rising temperatures.

News Team by — February 27, 2025 By News Team in Biotechnology Daily
Organic electrochemical transistors enhance bioelectronic sensor sensitivity by three orders of magnitude

In a breakthrough that could transform bioelectronic sensing, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Rice University has developed a new method to dramatically enhance the sensitivity of enzymatic and microbial fuel cells using organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). The research was recently published in the journal Device.

The innovative approach amplifies electrical signals by three orders of magnitude and improves signal-to-noise ratios, potentially enabling the next generation of highly sensitive, low-power biosensors for health and environmental monitoring.

“We have demonstrated a simple yet powerful technique to amplify weak bioelectronic signals using OECTs, overcoming previous challenges in integrating fuel cells with electrochemical sensors,” said corresponding author Rafael Verduzco, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and materials science and nanoengineering. “This method opens the door to more versatile and efficient biosensors that could be applied in medicine, environmental monitoring and even wearable technology.”

Traditional biosensors rely on direct interactions between target biomolecules and the sensor device, which can pose limitations when the electrolyte environment is incompatible. This research circumvents that challenge by electronically coupling fuel cells with OECTs instead of introducing biomolecules directly into the sensor.

“One of the biggest hurdles in bioelectronic sensing has been designing systems that work in different chemical environments without compromising performance,” said corresponding author Caroline Ajo-Franklin, professor of biosciences, director of the Rice Synthetic Biology Institute and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar. “By keeping the OECT and fuel cell separate, we ensured optimal conditions for both components while still achieving powerful signal amplification.”

OECTs are thin-film transistors that operate in aqueous environments and have gained attention for their high sensitivity and low-voltage operation. For the study, the team integrated OECTs with two types of biofuel cells to enhance their performance.

The first type, enzymatic fuel cells, utilize glucose dehydrogenase to catalyze glucose oxidation, generating electricity in the process. The second type, microbial fuel cells, rely on electroactive bacteria to metabolize organic substrates and produce current. The OECTs were then coupled with the fuel cells in two different configurations: a cathode-gate configuration and an anode-gate configuration.

The researchers found that OECTs can amplify signals from enzymatic and microbial fuel cells by factors ranging from 1,000 to 7,000 depending on the configuration and fuel cell type. This amplification is significantly higher than traditional electrochemical amplification techniques, which typically achieve signal enhancements in the range of 10 to 100 times stronger.

The team discovered that the cathode-gate configuration provided the best amplification, especially when using a specific polymer as the channel material. The anode-gate configuration also showed strong amplification but posed potential challenges at higher fuel cell currents, leading to irreversible degradation in some cases.

Along with boosting signal strength, the researchers found that OECTs also reduced background noise, making measurements more precise. Traditional sensors can struggle with interference and weak signals, but the OECTs produced clearer, more reliable data.

“We observed that even tiny electrochemical changes in the fuel cell were translated into large, easily detectable electrical signals through the OECT,” said Ravindra Saxena, co-first author of the study and graduate student in the applied physics program at Rice’s Smalley-Curl Institute. “This means that we can detect biomolecules and contaminants with much greater sensitivity than before.”

The real-world applications for this technology are vast, and the research team successfully demonstrated a miniaturized version of the system on a single glass slide, proving that the technique is scalable and can be used in portable biosensors.

One of the most promising applications is arsenite detection—a critical need in water safety. The team engineered E. coli bacteria with an arsenite-responsive extracellular electron transfer pathway, enabling them to detect the presence of arsenite at concentrations as low as 0.1 micromoles per liter with a clear, measurable response from the OECT-amplified signal.

Beyond environmental applications, the system could revolutionize wearable health monitoring, where power-efficient and highly sensitive biosensors are in high demand. For example, lactate sensing in sweat, which is an indicator of muscle fatigue, was successfully demonstrated using microbial fuel cells.

“Athletes, medical patients and even soldiers could benefit from real-time metabolic monitoring without the need for complex, high-power electronics,” said co-first author Xu Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biosciences.

The researchers emphasized that understanding the power dynamics between OECTs and fuel cells is key to optimizing sensor performance, and they identified two distinct operational modes. In the power-mismatched mode, the fuel cell generates less power than the OECT requires, leading to higher sensitivity but operating closer to short-circuit conditions. In contrast, the power-matched mode occurs when the fuel cell produces sufficient power to drive the OECT, resulting in more stable and accurate readings.

“By fine-tuning these interactions, we can design sensors tailored for different applications, from highly sensitive medical diagnostics to robust environmental monitors,” Verduzco said. “We believe this approach will change how we think about bioelectronic sensing. It’s a simple, effective and scalable solution.”

News Team by — February 27, 2025 By News Team in Biotechnology Daily
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