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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
FDA Accepts for Review Precigen RRP Gene Therapy Candidate

he FDA has granted Priority Review to Precigen’s Biologics License Application (BLA) for its lead candidate PRGN-2012, the company said—a step forward for a gene therapy that, if approved, would be the first treatment indicated for adults with the rare disease of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP).

The FDA also set an August 27 target date for deciding on Precigen’s BLA under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). PRGN-2012—which Precigen has begun to call by its generic name of zopapogene imadenovec—is a gene therapy designed to elicit immune responses directed against cells infected with human papillomavirus (HPV) 6 or HPV 11.

Infection with HPV 6 or HPV 11 causes RRP, a lifelong neoplastic disease of the upper and lower respiratory tracts that can be fatal. According to Precigen, some 27,000 U.S. adults have RRP based on a recently updated internal analysis derived from claims data, and more than 125,000 patients outside the United States have the disease. The standard of care for RRP patients consists of numerous surgeries.

Precigen has projected a “multi-billion-dollar global blockbuster potential” for PRGN-2012. The publicly traded company has not guided investors to a projected list price for the gene therapy, though president and CEO Halen Sabzevari, PhD, told GEN Edge recently that the company has focused on late clinical development and eventual commercialization of PRGN-2012 since the summer.

In July, Precigen announced the appointment of Phil Tennant as chief commercial officer, with initial duties focused on overseeing commercial readiness activities for the potential launch of PRGN-2012.

“We have been basically building our commercial force, and have Phil’s leadership of the commercial effort that he has already assembled, and we feel that we will be ready to launch immediately after the FDA approval,” Sabzevari said.

That effort, she added, will entail Precigen teaming up with partners experienced in commercial activity who will report directly to the company’s commercial force: “It will be completely under our control. We believe that that would be the fastest way for us and also more effective, instead of just building every unit directly from inside.”

Precigen declared the advancement of PRGN02012 its first priority when it reprioritized its clinical portfolio and resources last August, in the process eliminating over 20% of its workforce. Precigen now has about 100 jobs, though the company plans to add some executives in strategic positions, especially in commercial medical affairs, “to address the needs that we have for PRG in 2012 at this moment,” Sabzevari said.

60% surge

Investors appeared to warm up slowly to the news on PRGN-2012, as Precigen shares Tuesday dipped 1% from $1.75 to $1.73, before climbing 6% to $1.84 in early Tuesday trading as of 11:38 am ET. Precigen’s shares have surged 60% over the past six months, climbing from $1.15 on August 26, 2024, as the company has shared a series of positive updates on the clinical development of PRGN-2012 and its other pipeline candidates.

PRGN-2012 was developed through the company’s AdenoVerse® platform, which uses a library of adenovectors for efficient gene delivery of therapeutic effectors, immunomodulators, and vaccine antigens designed to modulate the immune system. Precigen said its AdenoVerse gene therapies have been shown to generate high-level and durable antigen-specific T-cell immune responses, as well as boost these responses via repeat administration.

Precigen’s BLA was supported by positive data from a pivotal Phase I/II trial (NCT04724980) that was presented in June at the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, and published last month in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

The trial met its primary outcome measure, with 18 of 35 patients (51%) achieving complete response, defined as the percentage of patients who did not require an intervention to control RRP in the 12 months after treatment. Thirty of the 35 patients (86%) experienced a decrease in surgical interventions in the year after PRGN-2012 treatment compared to the year before starting treatment. Even more encouraging: patients treated with PRGN-2012 went from a median of four surgeries pre-treatment to zero post-treatment.

Key secondary endpoints included HPV-specific immune responses, the extent of papilloma growth as measured by Derkay scoring, and quality of life as measured by Vocal Handicap Index-10 (VHI-10).

PRGN-2012 earlier received the FDA’s Breakthrough Therapy and Orphan Drug designations, plus an accelerated approval pathway from the agency, as well as the European Commission’s Orphan Drug Designation.

Also in advanced clinical development is a combination therapy of PRGN-2009, a first-in-class AdenoVerse gene therapy for HPV cancers, plus Merck & Co.’s blockbuster cancer immunotherapy Keytruda® (pembrolizumab). The combination is being studied in a Phase II trial (NCT05996523) in newly diagnosed HPV-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC), and another Phase II study (NCT06157151) in recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer. Precigen is conducting both trials under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

PRGN-2009 is designed to optimize HPV 16/18 antigen design and delivery using a gorilla adenovector with a large payload capacity and the ability for repeat administration. PRGN-2009 uses AdenoVerse and Precigen’s UltraVector® platform, which incorporates advanced DNA construction technologies and computational models to design and assemble genetic components into complex gene expression programs. According to the company, UltraVector-enabled matrices facilitate rapid identification of components that yield desired gene expression.

Enrollment pause

Last August as part of its pipeline reprioritization, Precigen paused enrollment in the cervical cancer Phase II trial at non-NCI sites—including the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the University of Washington, according to the trial’s page on ClinicalTrials.gov. The study’s estimated primary completion date is January 2028, compared with November 2025 for the OPSCC trial.

Precigen’s pipeline also includes three candidates based on its chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy platform called UltraCAR-T®, all in trials listed as active but not recruiting patients on ClinicalTrials.gov:

• PRGN-3005, an ovarian cancer candidate using Precigen’s non-viral gene delivery system to simultaneously express a CAR optimized to preferentially target the unshed portion of Mucin 16 (MUC16) on tumor cells, membrane-bound interleukin-15 (mbIL15), and a kill switch. PRGN-3005 has been under study in a Phase I trial (NCT03907527).

• PRGN-3006, a candidate for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) simultaneously expressing a CAR targeting CD33, mbIL15, and a kill switch. Last year Precigen said it completed enrollment in a Phase Ib trial in AML (NCT03927261).

• PRGN-3007, a blood tumor and solid tumor candidate simultaneously expressing a CAR targeting receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1 (ROR1), mbIL15, a kill switch, and a novel mechanism for the intrinsic blockade of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) gene expression. PRGN-3007 has been under study in a Phase I trial (NCT05694364). Among diseases under study in the trial are hematologic chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and solid tumor triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) malignancies.

Precigen has said it is seeking partnerships to pursue the development of PRGN-3008, a CD19-targeting pipeline candidate developed to treat forms of cancer and autoimmune diseases. “We have been basically discussing some of the inbound requests that we have had for partnerships. We think that will be the best way for us to advance the Ultra-CAR-T platform at this point,” Sabzevari said.

What skills are Precigen seeking in a partner for PRGN-3008?

“Definitely the importance of this is to have the financial resources” since Precigen has focused its finances on advancing and eventually commercializing PRGN-2012, Sabzevari said. “The other aspects is, of course, the knowledge in the cell therapy, advancement of that, and also it will be very helpful to have commercial teams that are on the ground.”

UltraCAR-T is a chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy approach designed to differentiate from the CAR-T platforms of competitors by offering increased patient access through rapid manufacturing, lower manufacturing-related costs, and advanced technologies for precise tumor targeting and control of the immune system to achieve improved outcomes. UltraCAR-T cells use the non-viral Sleeping Beauty system, which has been optimized using Precigen’s UltraVector DNA construction platform to deliver a large multigenic payload at high efficiency.

News Team by — February 27, 2025 By News Team in Bio Business News
Harnessing Single-Cell RNA Sequencing to Study Retinal Ganglion Cell Regeneration in Optic Neuropathies

Single-cell RNA sequencing has established itself as one of the most important technologies for studying the transcriptome of individual cells at high resolution. One area where it is making a difference is in the understanding of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) loss in optic neuropathies like glaucoma. Effective strategies for retinal repair and regeneration in these cases are lacking in part because developmental programs required for cell differentiation and maturation are not fully understood. Recently, scientists successfully used cellular reprogramming to regenerate human RGC neurons that demonstrated transcriptional profiles and functional properties characteristic of healthy RGCs. Single-cell RNA sequencing played a pivotal role in confirming the identity of the reprogrammed cells and in revealing the diversity of RGC subtypes.

In the first presentation of this GEN webinar, our expert speaker will present results from the study and how they generated RGC-like induced neurons in under a week by combining the pioneer factor NEUROG2 with RGC-specific TFs, and pre-patterning cells via BMP inhibition. During the webinar, you’ll learn how the particle-templated instant partition sequencing (PIP-seq) technology from Illumina was crucial for identifying and classifying over 30 RGC subtypes. In the second presentation, you’ll hear the results from a third-party case study that compared the performance of Illumina Single Cell with the newest 10X Genomics assay on two different cell types.

News Team by — February 27, 2025 By News Team in Bio Business News
The Best Cold Medicines Aren’t in the Cough and Cold Aisle

When you’re feeling awful because of a cold, you just want something to fix you—if not to cure you, at least to help you temporarily feel better. Unfortunately a lot of remedies are placebos, but some things in the drugstore work better than others.

Before we talk about which medicines are best, here’s an important note to consider: Cold medicines do not cure your cold, nor do they shorten its duration. If you’re reading this because you want to know how to get rid of a cold fast, or what a doctor would prescribe you to get rid of a cold—sorry. Colds are caused by viruses, and there’s no medication that will kill them off the way that antibiotics can kill off bacteria. The point of cold medicines is to help you be a little less miserable while you wait for your immune system to fight it off.

Ignore brand names on cold medicines

The companies that make cold medicines rely on our stuffy-headed memories. If you bought Sudafed (or Mucinex, or Dayquil) the last time you had a cold, they hope you’ll buy the same thing this time, while makers of store brands are hoping you buy something the same color and figure it’s good enough. But the brand name tells you next to nothing about what’s actually inside the package.

Each of the major cold medicine brands sells a variety of products with completely different ingredients. Sometimes, there are so many that the same brand will sell the same thing under two different names. My favorite example of this is the labyrinth of Mucinex products: Their Maximum Strength Fast-Max Severe Congestion and Cough has the same dosage and ingredients as their Maximum Strength Sinus-Max Pressure, Pain, & Cough. Meanwhile, Maximum Strength Sinus-Max Severe Congestion & Pain—which sounds like it should be very similar to the other Sinus-Max product—takes out a cough-related ingredient and swaps in some acetaminophen (that’s Tylenol). You are never going to have much luck navigating the cough and cold aisle on brand names and symptoms alone.

So where to go instead? Well, for quick relief of congestion, you’ll need the good stuff they keep behind the counter.

Pseudoephedrine (original Sudafed) is the good stuff

If you have a stuffy nose, pseudoephedrine is the real deal. In the old days, you could find it on the store shelves. Sudafed was one brand name. (Sudafed, pseudoephedrine, get it?) But pseudoephedrine can be converted into methamphetamine, so a 2006 law restricted its sale. It’s still an over the counter medication, but you’ll need to take the time to show your ID to the pharmacist if you want to buy some.

Studies have shown pseudoephedrine to be effective at clearing nasal congestion. When you feel like your nose is “stuffed” with dried or gooey mucus, that’s not literally true. Blood vessels in the lining of your nose and sinuses swell up, and that’s what narrows the air passages. Pseudoephedrine makes those blood vessels constrict, reducing the swelling and opening your airways so you can breathe easier.

(Pseudoephedrine also constricts blood vessels in other parts of the body, which is why it can increase blood pressure in some people, and why it is sometimes used off-label for priapism, also known as prolonged erections.)

Anything with “PE” in the name isn’t worth buying

Phenylephrine is the decongestant that replaced pseudoephedrine in over-the-counter products. Phenylephrine, the “PE” ingredient, has been known for years to be useless at treating cold symptoms when taken by mouth. This led two pharmacists to write a paper in 2022 entitled “Why Is Oral Phenylephrine on the Market After Compelling Evidence of Its Ineffectiveness as a Decongestant?”) Finally, as of November 2024, the FDA agreed that phenylephrine products will (eventually) be removed from store shelves.

News Team by — February 26, 2025 By News Team in Trending Now
Try Dates Milk: A Natural Remedy For Cold And Cough Grandparents Swear By

Changing weather often brings with it unwelcome sniffles and coughs.  While medications offer some relief, bolstering your immunity from within is key.  Dates, a nutritional powerhouse, are a perfect food to combat these seasonal ailments.  Beyond their delightful flavour in desserts, dates offer a wealth of health benefits, from improved digestion and heart health to effective management of diabetes.  They also shine as a traditional remedy for cold, cough, and flu.

Health Benefits Of Dates:

Both ripe and dried dates are packed with Vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant that strengthens immunity against infections.  They also provide essential vitamins like B1, B2, B3, B5, and A1.  As noted in ‘Healing Foods’ by DK Publishing House, dates have long been a traditional remedy for respiratory ailments, offering relief from sore throats, colds, and bronchial catarrh when consumed as an infusion, extract, syrup, or paste.  Khajur ka doodh, a popular Indian beverage, is a delicious way to harness these benefits. Rich in fibre and minerals, dates also contribute to warmth within the body, explaining their frequent use in winter sweet treats like ladoos and halwa.

Khajur Ka Doodh Recipe:

This simple recipe allows you to easily prepare Khajur ka doodh at home:

Ingredients:

2 cups milk
1/2 cup dates (deseeded and chopped)
1 1/2 tbsp almonds
Half tsp powdered cinnamon
Sugar (to taste) or 1 tbsp honey

Instructions:

  1. Soak the Dates: In half a cup of milk, soak the chopped dates for approximately 40 minutes to soften them. This step helps in blending the dates smoothly.
  2. Blend the Mixture: Transfer the soaked dates and milk into a blender. Add the almonds to the mixture as well. Blend the ingredients until you achieve a smooth consistency. Set this mixture aside.
  3. Heat the Remaining Milk: In a separate pan, boil the remaining milk.
  4. Combine and Simmer: Once the milk starts boiling, add the date and almond mixture to the pan. Incorporate the cinnamon and sugar (or honey) at this stage. Simmer the combined ingredients for about 5 minutes, allowing the flavours to meld together.
  5. Serve Warm: Pour the Khajur ka doodh into serving glasses or mugs. Garnish with roasted almonds for added texture and visual appeal. Serve hot for maximum comfort and relief.

 

This warm and nourishing beverage not only tastes delicious but also offers a natural way to combat common illnesses. The combination of dates,milk, and spices creates a soothing and immune-boosting drink.  Enjoy a glass of Khajur ka doodh to stay healthy throughout the changing weather.

News Team by — February 26, 2025 By News Team in Trending Now
Extending “Custom Made” Microscopy Limits

Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) say they have made an important leap forward with a novel methodology that adds an important microscopy capability to life scientists’ toolbox.

The advance represents a 1,000-fold improvement in speed and throughput in Brillouin microscopy and provides a way to view light-sensitive organisms more efficiently, according to Carlo Bevilacqua, an optical engineer in EMBL’s Prevedel Team and lead author of the study, “Full-field Brillouin microscopy based on an imaging Fourier-transform spectrometer” published in Nature Photonics.

“We were on a quest to speed up image acquisition,” said Bevilacqua. “Over the years, we have progressed from being able to see just a pixel at a time to a line of 100 pixels, to now a full plane that offers a view of approximately 10,000 pixels.”

The technology is based on a phenomenon first predicted in 1922 by French physicist Léon Brillouin. He showed that when light is shone on a material, it interacts with naturally occurring thermal vibrations within, exchanging energy and thereby slightly shifting the frequency (or color) of the light. Measuring the spectrum (colors) of the scattered light reveals information about a material’s physical characteristics.

Using Brillouin scattering for microscopy purposes came much later—in the early 2000s—when other technological advancements enabled scientists to measure tiny frequency shifts with high precision and sufficient throughput. This allowed them to compute the mechanical properties of living biological samples. However, at that point, scientists were only able to view one pixel at a time. The process was therefore quite time-consuming, and it severely limited how the microscopy method could be used in biology.

In 2022, Bevilacqua and others in the Prevedel group were able to first expand the field of view to a line, and now with this latest development, to a full 2D field of view, which also helps speed up 3D imaging.

“Just as the development of light-sheet microscopy here at EMBL marked a revolution in light microscopy because it allowed for faster, high-resolution, and minimally phototoxic imaging of biological samples, so too does this advance in the area of mechanical or Brillouin imaging,” pointed out Robert Prevedel, PhD, group leader and senior author on the paper. “We hope this new technology—with minimal light intensity—opens one more ‘window’ for life scientists’ exploration.”

News Team by — February 26, 2025 By News Team in Biotechnology Daily
Alzheimer’s Disease Could Be Influenced by HSV-1 Infections via Jumping Genes

New research from scientists at Cleveland Clinic’s Genome Center and their collaborators at other institutions describes a pathway that human herpes simplex-1 (HSV-1) can use to contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. They have also identified two FDA-approved drugs that successfully reversed the pathway in the lab. Full details are published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association in a paper titled, “Human herpesvirus-associated transposable element activation in human aging brains with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Feixiong Cheng, PhD, Genome Center director and senior author on the study, claims that their findings provide concrete evidence of a possible link between human herpesviruses and Alzheimer’s disease. Many people around the world are either currently infected or will contract herpesviruses by adulthood. Some infections are asymptomatic while others cause minor illnesses. However, even after the illnesses subside, infected individuals carry the virus for the rest of their lives.

While herpesviruses are generally harmless when they are suppressed, there is evidence that shows that immune systems can lose the ability to suppress them under certain conditions including as people age. Circumstantial evidence from other studies has linked HSV-1 to Alzheimer’s disease, but the exact mechanism was not known.

Cheng and his team hypothesized that latent HPV-1 infections could trigger Alzheimer’s disease by directly activating the transposable elements that they had previously connected to disease progression in aging brains. Transposable elements are small pieces of DNA that can physically “jump” out of chromosomes and randomly move to far-away regions of our DNA.

For this study, the researchers mapped all of the transposable elements associated with Alzheimer’s disease in aging brains. The investigators then analyzed four publicly available RNA sequencing datasets from hundreds of healthy and Alzheimer’s-affected brain cells. 

They identified several transposable elements that were more highly activated in Alzheimer’s-affected brains containing HSV RNA, compared to uninfected or healthy brains. They then tested HSV-1 infected brain cells to see whether the identified transposable elements were activated. They also assessed any effects on neuroinflammation and protein accumulation, which are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

What they found was that when people either contract HSV-1 or when latent infections become active with age, the infection is linked with the activation of transposable elements like LINE-1. Once these are activated, they disrupt important genetic processes in the brain that are associated with the accumulation of Tau and other Alzheimer’s-linked proteins which contribute to inflammation and neurodegeneration in the brain.

Next, the scientists analyzed publicly available health records to see if people who were prescribed antiviral herpes medications were less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s later in life. They found evidence suggesting that two herpes medications, valacyclovir and acyclovir, were associated with significantly reduced instances of Alzheimer’s disease. When they tested the drugs in virus-infected human brain organoid models, they seemed to successfully reverse the activation of transposable elements that impact the Alzheimer’s disease pathway.

Commenting on the study, Cheng noted that their findings could open a door to “new strategies for treating other neurological diseases associated with herpesviruses or other viruses.”

News Team by — February 26, 2025 By News Team in Biotechnology Daily
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