Publisher Health

Nearly half of the participants of a recent study who were menstruating regularly at the time of the survey reported heavier bleeding during their periods after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine. Others who did not typically menstruate — including transgender men, people on long-acting contraceptives, and post-menopausal women — also experienced unusual bleeding.The new study — the largest to date — expands on research that has highlighted the temporary effects of Covid-19 vaccines on menstrual cycles, but until now focused primarily on cisgender women who menstruate.Although the vaccines have largely prevented deaths and severe disease with few reported side effects, many medical experts initially brushed aside concerns when women and gender-diverse people started reporting erratic menstrual cycles after receiving the shots.To get a better sense of these post-vaccination experiences, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis distributed an online survey in April 2021 to thousands of people across the globe. After three months, the researchers collected and analyzed more than 39,000 responses from individuals between the ages of 18 and 80 about their menstrual cycles. All the survey respondents had been fully vaccinated — with the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson vaccines or another that had been approved outside the United States. And to the best of their knowledge, the participants had not contracted Covid-19 before getting vaccinated.The research, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, shows that 42 percent of people with regular menstrual cycles experienced heavier bleeding after vaccination, while 44 percent reported no change and 14 percent reported lighter periods. Additionally, 39 percent of respondents on gender-affirming hormone treatments, 71 percent of people on long-acting contraceptives and 66 percent of postmenopausal women experienced breakthrough bleeding after one or both of their shots.“I think it’s important that people know this can happen, so they’re not scared, they’re not shocked and they’re not caught without supplies,” said Katharine Lee, a biological anthropologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and the study’s first author.Dr. Lee cautioned, however, that the study did not compare the results with a control group of people who did not get vaccinated. And it is possible that people who observed changes in their cycles after vaccination may have been more likely to participate in the survey. Still, the findings line up with smaller studies that have reported menstrual changes after vaccination with more robust controls.Importantly, the new study also found that some demographics may be more likely to experience menstrual changes, and the study may help them be better prepared, Dr. Lee said. A heavier menstrual flow was more likely for those who were older, for instance. Survey respondents who used hormonal contraception, had been pregnant in the past or had been diagnosed with a reproductive condition like endometriosis, fibroids or polycystic ovarian syndrome were also more likely to have heavier bleeding during their periods. People who identified as Hispanic or Latino tended to report heavier bleeding too. And people who experienced other side effects of the vaccines, like a fever or fatigue, also had a higher chance of experiencing erratic periods.Postmenopausal women who were slightly younger, around an average age of 60, were more likely to experience breakthrough bleeding after the vaccine than those who were older. But the type of vaccine postmenopausal women received, whether they had other side effects like a fever or whether they had a past pregnancy did not seem to have an effect on their bleeding.Why do these changes occur?Some level of variation in menstruation — the number of days you bleed, the heaviness of your flow and your cycle length — is normal.“Our menstrual cycles are not perfect clocks,” said Dr. Alison Edelman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University who has also studied the impact of Covid-19 vaccines on menstruation.Hormones secreted by the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland and the ovaries regulate the monthly cycle, and they can be affected by both internal and external factors. Stress and illness, weight loss or weight gain, calorie restriction and intense exercise can all change typical patterns of menstruation.The endometrium, which lines the uterus and is shed during menstruation, has also been linked to the immune system. Because of the role it plays in the remodeling of uterine tissue and offering protection against pathogens, it is possible that when vaccines activate the immune system, which is what they should be doing, they also somehow trigger downstream effects in the endometrium, causing a disturbance in your menstrual cycle, Dr. Edelman said. And some individuals may be more sensitive to immune or hormone changes in their body.In her research, Dr. Edelman found that some women’s periods came a day or two later than usual after they got vaccinated against coronavirus. But the changes were temporary — menstruation tended to return to normal after one or two cycles.What to do if you notice menstrual irregularities after the Covid vaccineIf you experience any new or unusual patterns of bleeding, take note of it. The menstrual cycle can be thought of as another vital sign, just like your body temperature or blood pressure, that provides clues about your health, said Dr. Jennifer Kawwass, a reproductive endocrinologist at Emory University, who was not involved in the study.“A significant change in menstrual cycle interval or bleeding profile warrants further investigation to be sure there is not an underlying endocrinologic, hematologic or anatomic cause,” Dr. Kawwass said. Breakthrough bleeding in people who no longer normally menstruate, for example, may also be a warning sign of cervical, ovarian, uterine or vaginal cancer.That being said, subtle variation in your menstrual cycle, if you have regular periods, should not be a cause for concern and does not require that you change anything you would normally do, Dr. Kawwass said.Clinical trials and other studies have already established that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective and are unlikely to impact fertility in the long term.Should you get vaccinated at a certain time in your cycle?Experts agree that the chaos Covid-19 can cause throughout your body, including potential lingering effects, are far worse than any side effects caused by vaccination against the disease.People who have previously gotten a fever after a shot may plan their next dose on a day when they will not have to go in to work, Dr. Edelman said. But you should not let temporary menstrual changes prevent you from getting fully vaccinated or boosted. Since cases are on the rise again, delaying vaccination for two weeks or longer may significantly increase your risk of getting Covid-19, she said.Still, it’s important to track your body’s response to vaccination, and public health officials should acknowledge concerns about menstrual cycle variations in addition to warning people of the risk of getting Covid-19, said Keisha Ray, a bioethics expert at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.The increased transparency around menstrual changes or other side effects of vaccination could also have another benefit: reducing people’s vaccine hesitancy.“We’re trying to be truthful. We’re trying to validate peoples’ lived experiences,” said Dr. Lee. In turn, she hopes that the new research will help improve conversations around people’s health and lead to more inclusive clinical trials in the future.

Parkinson’s is a progressive and debilitating disease of the brain that eventually compromises patients’ ability to walk and even to talk. Its diagnosis is complex, and in the early stages — impossible.
The usual method of visualizing brain structure utilizes a technique most of us are familiar with, called MRI. However, it is not sensitive enough to reveal the biological changes that take place in the brain of Parkinson patients, and at present is primarily only used to eliminate other possible diagnoses.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) researchers, led by Professor Aviv Mezer, realized that the cellular changes in Parkinson’s could possibly be revealed by adapting a related technique, known as quantitative MRI (qMRI). Their method has enabled them to look at microstructures within the part of the deep brain known as the striatum — an organ which is known to deteriorate during the progress of Parkinson’s disease. With a novel method of analysis, developed by Mezer’s doctoral student, Elior Drori, biological changes in the cellar tissue of the striatum were clearly revealed. Moreover, they were able to demonstrate that these changes were associated with the early stages of Parkinson’s and patients’ movement dysfunction. Their findings were published today in the journal Science Advances.
qMRI achieves its sensitivity by taking several MRI images using different excitation energies — rather like taking the same photograph in different colors of lighting. The HU researchers were able to use their qMRI analysis to reveal changes in the tissue structure within distinct regions of the striatum. The structural sensitivity of these measurements could only have been previously achieved in laboratories examining the brain cells of patients post mortem. Not an ideal situation for detecting early disease or monitoring the efficacy of a drug!
“When you don’t have measurements, you don’t know what is normal and what is abnormal brain structure, and what is changing during the progress of the disease,” explained Mezer. The new information will facilitate early diagnosis of the disease and provide “markers” for monitoring the efficacy of future drug therapies. “What we have discovered,” he continued “is the tip of the iceberg.” It is a technique that they will now extend to investigate microstructural changes in other regions of the brain. Furthermore, the team are now developing qMRI into a tool that can be used in a clinical setting. Mezer anticipates that is about 3-5 years down the line.
Drori further suggests that this type of analysis will enable identification of subgroups within the population suffering from Parkinson’s disease — some of whom may respond differently to some drugs than others. Ultimately, he sees this analysis “leading to personalized treatment, allowing future discoveries of drug with each person receiving the most appropriate drug.”
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Although antiretroviral therapy has markedly improved survival in people with AIDS-associated Kaposi sarcoma (a type of cancer caused by a virus), the condition is still a life-threatening problem in low- and middle-income countries.
New research led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) with Ugandan and Kenyan colleagues published in The Lancet Global Health indicates that the best available chemotherapy for Kaposi sarcoma, which is infrequently used in Africa, would improve clinical outcomes and be cost-effective at its current price compared with therapies that are most frequently provided in the region.
For treating Kaposi sarcoma, different chemotherapy regimens vary in effectiveness, toxicity, and cost. Paclitaxel and pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) are the most effective and least toxic therapies, but they are more expensive than other options.
“Despite clinical guidelines that endorse the more effective and better tolerated chemotherapy regimens for Kaposi sarcoma, too many people with HIV are still treated with less effective chemotherapy because of logistics and cost,” says senior author Emily P. Hyle, MD, a physician-investigator at the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at Mass General and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Hyle and first author Esther Freeman, MD, PhD, Director of Clinical Innovation & Education for the Center for Global Health at Mass General and Associate Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School, led an international collaboration to perform a cost-effectiveness analysis of different chemotherapy regimens for treating advanced Kaposi sarcoma in people with HIV on antiretroviral therapy in Kenya.
They found that paclitaxel would improve clinical outcomes and be very cost-effective at its current price compared with bleiomycin-vincristine, which is the most frequently used treatment for advanced Kaposi sarcoma in East Africa.
Over five years, using paclitaxel instead of bleomycin-vincristine to treat 19,150 people with HIV and advanced Kaposi sarcoma in Kenya would save 6,400 years-of-life and would increase cumulative healthcare expenditures by approximately $3.7 million, mostly from HIV-related costs due to a prolonged life expectancy among patients.
At current estimates, PLD would further extend life expectancy but would not be cost-effective compared with paclitaxel; however, this could be addressed if its price was reduced. “PLD is even better tolerated than paclitaxel, and our analysis showed that it would be cost-effective compared with paclitaxel if a 44% price reduction was achieved,” says Hyle.
At an individual level, paclitaxel would improve life expectancy by 4.2 years compared with bleomycin-vincristine, and PLD would improve life expectancy by an additional 0.6 years compared with paclitaxel.
“By encouraging hospitals, health systems, and others to reach for paclitaxel as first line treatment for HIV-associated Kaposi’s sarcoma, we can save lives. The majority of deaths from cancer in the world are in low and middle income countries, and it is our duty to advocate for the highest quality of care, which in this case, is also the most cost-effective,” says Freeman. “We also need to advocate for drug companies to reduce the price of effective chemotherapies in sub-Saharan Africa, similarly to what has been done for antiretroviral therapy pricing in the past, so that more people can have access to life-saving treatment.”
Additional study co-authors include, Nicole C. McCann, BA, Aggrey Semeere, MBChB, MMed, Krishna P. Reddy, MD, Miriam Laker-Oketta, MBChB, Helen Byakwaga, MBChB, PhD, Pamela P. Pei, PhD, Maya E. Hajny Fernandez, BA, Samson Kiprono, MBChB, MMed, Naftali Busakhala, MBChB, Jeffery N. Martin, MD, Toby Maurer, MD, Ingrid V. Bassett, MD, and Kenneth A. Freedberg, MD.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Jerome and Celia Reich Endowed Scholar Award, and the Weissman Family MGH Research Scholar Award.

Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists report they have probed the atomic structure of proteins to add to evidence that the wobbles, shakes and quivers of proteins play a critical role in their ability to function. The findings of the research may help scientists design new drugs that can modify or disrupt the intricate “dances” of proteins to alter their functions.
Results of the researchers’ experiments will be published in the July 15 issue of Science Advances.
Proteins are organic compounds with blueprints that are found in DNA, and which function as the “business ends” of biology, making up the structural components of tissues, along with enzymes, which orchestrate chemical changes within cells.
Though it has long been known that proteins wiggle and move, scientists have debated the significance of this “dancing” act, says Dominique Frueh, Ph.D., associate professor of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “The way proteins engage with the right partner at the right time — essentially, how they communicate — is very important for understanding their function,” he says, “and we have found that protein wiggles are critical for this communication.”
In a bid to further such understanding, Frueh’s team studied the wiggling action of the HMWP2 protein, a type of enzyme called nonribosomal peptide synthetases. These enzymes are made of several domains, or distinct regions, that work together like an assembly line to make complex natural products from small chemicals.
These natural products often have pharmaceutical properties, such as bacitracin, found in topical antibiotic ointments. In the case of HMWP2, its product is yersiniabactin, a molecule that scavenges iron molecules for bacteria, including Escherichia coli, found in urinary tract infections, and Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague.

Small proteins, called chemokines, that direct immune cells toward sites of infection can also form DNA-bound nanoparticles that can induce chronic, dysfunctional immune responses, according to a new study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). The surprising discovery of this new activity for this well-studied class of immune signaling molecules could shed light on some types of immune disorders.
The study, published May 31 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, reveals an entirely new mode of triggering the immune system, through which chemokine-DNA nanoparticles can induce inflammation. Results in preclinical models suggest that this mechanism may play a central role in autoimmune diseases such as scleroderma and lupus.
The work was part of the scientists’ ongoing efforts to understand scleroderma, an autoimmune condition that causes inflammation and hardening of the skin. “We had a project looking at scleroderma and it was shown by us and others a few years ago that patients with this condition have an elevated level of the chemokine CXCL4 in their blood,” said senior author Dr. Franck Barrat, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Michael Bloomberg Chair and senior scientist at HSS. “But the role of this chemokine in disease is unclear and we didn’t expect the chemokine to provoke this particular immune response.”
In setting up controls for one of their experiments, Dr. Barrat’s team, including first author, Dr. Yong Du, a postdoctoral associate in microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine and a member of the HSS Research Institute, discovered that CXCL4 and several other chemokines could induce immune cells called plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) to produce interferon-alpha. Surprisingly, the induction appeared to be independent of known chemokine receptors, indicating that these molecules were activating the immune cells through some previously unknown mechanism.
Subsequent experiments revealed that the chemokines can bind pieces of DNA to form nanoparticles, which then bypass the cells’ chemokine receptors to induce interferon production directly. Tests in mouse models of skin inflammation suggest that this mechanism could account for the chronic immune activation that underlies scleroderma and other autoimmune diseases. The results also suggest that different DNA-chemokine nanoparticles could underlie different diseases. For example, while CXCL4 appears to be important in scleroderma, another chemokine, CXCL10, may perform a similar function in lupus.
Dr. Barrat believes that the DNA-chemokine nanoparticles are likely an essential component of the body’s wound healing system. “Following a skin injury, such as if you cut yourself, dendritic cells infiltrate the skin and create an inflammatory environment to allow for proper closing of the wound. Our findings suggest that these cells do not need to see a pathogen — a virus or bacterium — and can directly sense self-DNA,” he said. “And that inflammation is helping to recruit other cells of the immune system.” In autoimmune disease, the process goes awry, producing a chronic inflammatory state that ultimately damages tissue instead of healing it.
The researchers also collaborated on a related study, published June 14 in Nature Communications, that shows that CXCL4 can induce a similar inflammatory response in monocytes, another important class of immune cells. Taken together, the findings point toward possible strategies to shut down autoimmunity without interfering with normal immune responses.
“It tells you the type of response that you have to stop, not necessarily at the DNA-chemokine level, but potentially more downstream in the cells themselves,” Dr. Barrat said.
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Just like coughing, sneezing, talking and singing, playing wind instruments – particularly those in the brass section — can spread respiratory particles that may carry the COVID-19 virus, according to a Colorado State University study.
Early in the pandemic, CSU engineers led by Professor John Volckens teamed up with musicians and performers to try and quantify respiratory particle emissions from various activities like singing and music-playing. They were seeking to provide insight into just how much performance arts could spread COVID-19 and to inform safety measures moving forward.
They’ve just published the results of their measurements of particle emissions from wind instrument-playing, including brass and woodwinds, in the journal Scientific Reports. A previous analysis looked at emissions from singing and was published in 2021. The papers are co-authored by Dan Goble, director of the CSU School of Music, Theatre and Dance.
The researchers used a cutting-edge aerosol measurement chamber and recruited volunteers to perform in the chamber while aerosol emissions from themselves — or their instruments — were analyzed. For the instruments study, they had 81 volunteer performers of both sexes and varied age — between 12 and 63. The volunteers played wind instruments including the bassoon, clarinet, French horn, oboe, piccolo, saxophone, trombone, trumpet and tuba.
According to the research, brass instruments, on average, produced 191% more aerosols than woodwinds. The researchers’ highest particle counts of brass-playing was even higher than their highest results from singers in their previous study, by nearly a factor of four. Being male was also associated with a 70% increase in emissions from instrument-playing, probably due to lung size and capacity, the researchers think. Louder playing of brass instruments was associated with higher particle counts, but louder playing of woodwinds didn’t increase emissions.
The researchers also took measurements with performers using bell covers in an attempt to mitigate the particle spread, which seemed to work. The use of bell covers reduced emissions from trombone, tuba and trumpet players, with average reductions of 53-73%, but not for oboe or clarinet.
Volckens, a mechanical engineer and aerosols expert who also leads CSU’s mask-testing facility, likened bell covers to blue surgical masks for instruments – good, but not great in terms of limiting spread.
“The data suggest that masks and bell covers cut down half to 75% of particles coming out of the mouth or instrument,” Volckens said. “And the reason blue surgical masks or bell covers don’t work better is that they’re just not a tight fit. These devices don’t achieve an N95 level of protection.”
He also said that “if we could make N95s for instruments,” it would likely help reduce emissions from brass instruments, but not from woodwinds, because those instruments have too many escape holes before the bell. A single-exit instrument like a trumpet is easier to control with protective measures.
This study, and previous ones like it, confirm what the researchers suspected: At the start of the pandemic, particularly before the advent of vaccines, shutting down performing arts in the name of safety likely saved lives.
“I really want to honor them by acknowledging that decision and the economic and mental hardships that followed,” Volckens said. “Thank you for making a really hard sacrifice on our behalf.”
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Materials provided by Colorado State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A new analysis of reports from more than 35,000 people offers the most comprehensive assessment so far of menstrual changes experienced by pre- and post-menopausal individuals in the first two weeks after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Published in the journal Science Advances, the study adds to the evidence that significant numbers of people experience this unexpected side effect.
“Menstruating and formerly menstruating people began sharing that they experienced unexpected bleeding after being administered a COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021,” the scientists who led the study wrote. Because vaccine trials typically do not ask about menstrual cycles or bleeding, this side effect was largely ignored or dismissed.
Doctors who weighed in on the subject after hearing early reports about post-vaccination menstrual changes were often dismissive of patients’ concerns, said Kathryn Clancy, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the research with Katharine Lee, an anthropology professor at Tulane University. Some clinicians said it was unclear how a vaccine could trigger such changes.
However, other vaccines — including those for typhoid, Hepatitis B and HPV — are sometimes associated with changes in menstruation, Clancy said. These side effects are believed to be tied to an uptick in immune-related inflammatory pathways and are less likely to be driven by hormonal changes.
“We suspect that for most people the changes associated with COVID-19 vaccination are short-term, and we encourage anyone who is worried to contact their doctor for further care,” Lee said. “We want to reiterate that getting the vaccine is one of the best ways to prevent getting very sick with COVID, and we know that having COVID itself can lead not only to changes in periods, but also hospitalization, long COVID and death.”
The researchers used a survey to query people about their experiences after vaccination. Launched in April 2021, the survey asked for demographic and other information but focused on respondents’ reproductive history and experiences regarding menstrual bleeding. The team downloaded the data from the surveys on June 29, 2021. Only those who had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 were included in the analysis, as COVID-19 itself is sometimes associated with menstrual changes. The study also excluded data from people 45 to 55 years old to avoid confounding the results by including menstrual changes associated with perimenopause.

Talin is a protein that controls cellular attachment and movement, but its malfunctioning also allows cancer cells to spread. DCL1 is a tumor-suppressing protein. But scientists don’t fully understand how either protein works — or what happens when they don’t work the way they should.
One thing scientists doknow: When it is present in a cell, DCL1 can interact with talin and perhaps interfere with talin’s ability to group cells together. If scientists knew the exact steps in the process, they may be able to identify a treatment option to keep cancer from metastasizing.
To find answers, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee used a unique tool that they built to apply the exact mechanical forces that act on talin in the body, beginning a process called protein unfolding that is necessary for the protein to perform its function.
With the tool, called “single molecule magnetic tweezers,” the scientists measured intracellular mechanical forces and experimented with them in the lab so that they can find what happens to talin when DCL1 is both present and not present in the cell.
They have discovered a unique behavior of talin, induced by mechanical forces, that demonstrates a strong interaction that can explain the antitumor effect of DLC1 when the two proteins bind.
“We still don’t know exactly what goes wrong with talin functioning when cancer cells metastasize,” said Ionel Popa, a UWM physics professor who led the team. “But it looks like talin plays a role in activating the spread of cells when the tumor-suppressing DCL1 is missing. And when DCL1 binds to talin, it appears to block talin from activating cell-spreading.”
The work is published today in the journal Science Advances.

A team of scientists in the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have combined robotics with biology by equipping E. coli bacteria with artificial components to construct biohybrid microrobots. First,, the team attached several nanoliposomes to each bacterium. On their outer circle, these spherical-shaped carriers enclose a material (ICG, green particles) that melts when illuminated by near infrared light. Further towards the middle, inside the aqueous core, the liposomes encapsulate water soluble chemotherapeutic drug molecules (DOX).
The second component the researchers attached to the bacterium is magnetic nanoparticles. When exposed to a magnetic field, the iron oxide particles serve as an on-top booster to this already highly motile microorganism. In this way, it is easier to control the swimming of bacteria — an improved design toward an in vivo application. Meanwhile, the rope binding the liposomes and magnetic particles to the bacterium is a very stable and hard to break streptavidin and biotin complex, which was developed a few years prior and comes in useful when constructing biohybrid microrobots.
E. coli bacteria are fast and versatile swimmers that can navigate through material ranging from liquids to highly viscous tissues. But that is not all, they also have highly advanced sensing capabilities. Bacteria are drawn to chemical gradients such as low oxygen levels or high acidity — both prevalent near tumor tissue. Treating cancer by injecting bacteria in proximity is known as bacteria mediated tumor therapy. The microorganisms flow to where the tumor is located, grow there and in this way activate the immune system of patients. Bacteria mediated tumor therapy has been a therapeutic approach for more than a century.
For the past few decades, scientists have looked for ways to increase the superpowers of this microorganism even further. They equipped bacteria with extra components to help fight the battle. However, adding artificial components is no easy task. Complex chemical reactions are at play, and the density rate of particles loaded onto the bacteria matters to avoid dilution. The team in Stuttgart has now raised the bar quite high. They managed to equip 86 out of 100 bacteria with both liposomes and magnetic particles.
The scientists showed how they succeeded in externally steering such a high-density solution through different courses. First, through an L-shaped narrow channel with two compartments on each end, with one tumor spheroid in each. Second, an even narrower set-up resembling tiny blood vessels. They added an extra permanent magnet on one side and showed how they precisely control the drug-loaded microrobots towards tumor spheroids. And third — going one step further — the team steered the microrobots through a viscous collagen gel (resembling tumor tissue) with three levels of stiffness and porosity, ranging from soft to medium to stiff. The stiffer the collagen, the tighter the web of protein strings, the more difficult it becomes for the bacteria to find a way through the matrix. The team showed that once they add a magnetic field, the bacteria manage to navigate all the way to the other end of the gel as the bacteria had a higher force. Because of constant alignment, the bacteria found a way through the fibers.
Once the microrobots are accumulated at the desired point (the tumor spheroid), a near infrared laser generates rays with temperatures of up to 55 degrees Celsius, triggering a melting process of the liposome and a release of the enclosed drugs. A low pH level or acidic environment also causes the nanoliposomes to break open — hence the drugs are released near a tumor automatically.
“Imagine we would inject such bacteria based microrobots into a cancer patient’s body. With a magnet, we could precisely steer the particles towards the tumor. Once enough microrobots surround the tumor, we point a laser at the tissue and by that trigger the drug release. Now, not only is the immune system triggered to wake up, but the additional drugs also help destroy the tumor,” says Birgül Akolpoglu, a Ph.D. student in the Physical Intelligence Department at MPI-IS. She is the first author of the publication titled “Magnetically steerable bacterial microrobots moving in 3D biological matrices for stimuli-responsive cargo delivery” co-led by former postdoctoral researcher in the Physical Intelligence Department, Dr. Yunus Alapan. It was published in Science Advances on July 15, 2022.
“This on-the-spot delivery would be minimally invasive for the patient, painless, bear minimal toxicity and the drugs would develop their effect where needed and not inside the entire body,” Alapan adds.
“Bacteria-based biohybrid microrobots with medical functionalities could one day battle cancer more effectively. It is a new therapeutic approach not too far away from how we treat cancer today,” says Prof. Dr. Metin Sitti, who leads the Physical Intelligence Department and is the last author of the publication. “The therapeutic effects of medical microrobots in seeking and destroying tumor cells could be substantial. Our work is a great example of basic research that aims to benefit our society.”

A scientific team from MedUni Vienna’s Center for Brain Research has now identified specific cells that regulate the transmission of information between brain areas. This discovery forms the basis for the development of new treatment options for neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism, which are characterised by impaired coordination of information flow in the brain. The study has now been published in the top journal Science.
The scientists focused their basic research on the question of how communication between different brain areas is regulated and how the constantly changing streams of information from different sources can be processed without errors. Ece Sakalar, Thomas Klausberger and Balint Lasztoczi from the Division of Cognitive Neurobiology at MedUni Vienna’s Center for Brain Research sought and found answers in the so-called CA1 area of the hippocampus, a central switchboard in the brain. There, the so-called neurogliaform cells cause the converging information about the current environment and also about relevant past experiences to be combined without being mixed up.
Thus far, science has been in the dark when it comes to the function of neurogliaform cells. “In our preclinical experiments, we have now discovered that neurogliaform cells, by briefly inhibiting other cell types, ensure that current perception and memories of past experiences can be processed both separately and also in combination,” explains study author Balint Lasztoczi. This is what makes it possible, when looking at a photograph of one’s grandmother (sensory information) and spontaneously recalling the smell of her homemade cakes (memory), to remain aware of what is happening in the here and now and what is being remembered.
Traffic light in the flow of information
The regulation of ongoing and remembered information and the smooth flow of communication between brain areas is the basis for a functioning nervous system. In various neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism, this organisation is impaired. In this context, the current research results from the MedUni Vienna study offer hope: by deciphering the function of neurogliaform cells as traffic lights in the flow of information, the researchers are laying foundations for the development of new treatment options. Next in their research, the scientists intend to investigate how the activity of neurogliaform cells can be influenced to form the starting point for new drugs and therapeutic options for neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.
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