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Cancer Research UK bets on Manchester with £6-million funding boost
A side-by-side biophysical comparison of five single-domain antibody scaffolds used for synthetic display libraries
A molten salt metal-air electrolyzer for recycling superalloy
Ultrafast Hopping Transfer Enables High-Anion Conduction
Perceptions of research participation among underrepresented groups: Insights using freelisting methodology
Background Low enrollment and retention in clinical research disproportionately impact Black, Hispanic or Latinx, women, and rural populations, undermining generalizability and perpetuating health disparities. However, few studies have compared mechanisms driving underrepresentation across populations. Freelisting is a qualitative methodology that elicits lists of terms, explores perspectives about domains, and identifies common themes within groups with shared characteristics; however, it has not been systematically applied to understand research participation across underrepresented populations. Objective To explore perspectives on clinical research participation across underrepresented populations using freelisting methodology to ultimately inform culturally-responsive recruitment strategies. Methods We conducted a web-based freelisting survey among adults who identified as Black, Hispanic or Latinx, women, and/or resided in rural communities between May and September 2023 across the Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Washington, DC metro areas. Participants listed words or phrases that came to mind in response to three prompts about research and participation. Using Anthropac software, we calculated salience indices to assess the relative importance of terms within and across the underrepresented groups. Terms were categorized by sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) and examined by demographic group and prior research experience. Results Of 101 participants (56% Black, 23% Hispanic or Latinx, 80% women, 46% rural), several salient terms were shared, including ‘study,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘search,’ and ‘scary.’ Sentiment regarding being approached for research was generally positive. In contrast, sentiment about becoming a participant varied, with more negative terms among those never previously invited to join research. ‘Research misconduct’ emerged as uniquely salient among Black participants. Individuals with prior research experience conveyed more positive sentiments overall. Conclusions Underrepresented populations hold positive and negative views about clinical research, with more negative perceptions among those never previously approached. These findings suggest that proactive outreach to individuals who have never previously been approached, combined with efforts to address persistent negative perceptions such as fear, may be among the most impactful strategies for improving research representativeness. Future work is needed to understand the contextual information surrounding the sentiments we found, and to elucidate the mechanisms underlying these sentiments, ultimately enabling the development of more effective, culturally-responsive recruitment and retention strategies across diverse groups.
The associations of childhood and adolescence psychosocial risks with social relations in midlife
Abstract We examined whether the accumulation of psychosocial risk factors (socioeconomic risks, health behavioural risks, stressful life-events and psycho-emotional risks) in childhood and adolescence contributes to insufficient social relations (loneliness, frequency and heterogeneity of social contacts and social support) in adulthood participants from the longitudinal Young Finns Study with a 38-year follow-up ( N = 1787, 56% female). Results from regression models indicated that a higher cumulative number of risks in childhood and adolescence was associated (1-SD increase) with higher loneliness (B = 0.32, 95% CI 0.19 ; 0.45), lower perceived social support (B=-0.32, 95% CI -0.45 ; -0.19), lower frequency of social contacts (B = 0.19, 0.06 ; 0.32), and lower heterogeneity in social contacts (B=-0.33, -0.47 ; -0.20) in midlife. Causal mediation analysis suggested that depressive symptoms partially mediate the relationship between cumulative childhood and adolescent psychosocial risks and adult social relations (mediation proportion range between 7% and 18%). Educational attainment mediated the relationship between cumulative psychosocial risk and social relations heterogeneity by 8%, while income mediated the association with loneliness, social support and social relations heterogeneity by 9% to 11%. In conclusion, this study underscores the potentially profound and lasting impact of psychosocial risks encountered during childhood and adolescence on social relations in adulthood.
TROP2 targeting reveals therapy-driven cell state dynamics in colorectal cancer
Abstract Metastasis remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality and is driven by pronounced tumour cell plasticity 1 . Here we identify the transmembrane glycoprotein trophoblast cell-surface antigen 2 (TROP2) as a marker of poor-prognosis colorectal cancer (CRC) associated with WNT low , fetal-like tumour cell states that are linked to metastasis and therapy resistance. Functional analyses demonstrate that TROP2 + cells exhibit context-dependent stem-like capacity and the ability to initiate metastatic outgrowth. Given that these detrimental tumour states converge on the cell-surface antigen TROP2, we explored therapeutic targeting of this cell population using clinically relevant TROP2-directed antibody–drug conjugates. Time-resolved analyses reveal therapy-associated dynamics in tumour cell state composition between WNT hi LGR5 + states and WNT low TROP2 + fetal-like states. Conventional chemotherapy promotes the induction of TROP2-expressing cells, whereas TROP2 antibody–drug conjugates selectively target these populations and remodel the tumour cell state landscape. Exploiting this plasticity, combined chemotherapy and TROP2 targeting enhances anti-tumour efficacy in patient-derived models. Together, our findings identify TROP2 as a therapeutic vulnerability of CRC and highlight the importance of targeting tumour cell states to improve therapeutic efficacy and overcome resistance in advanced disease.
Characterization of the splicing isoform TuSp1-sv provides novel insights into spidroin functional diversification
Interpretable spatial multi-omics data integration and dimensionality reduction with SpaMV
Nucleoside 3′-Phosphorofluoridates for P(V)-Based Oligonucleotide Synthesis
Nine keys for successful interprofessional collaboration Based on observing facilitators and barriers during different types of treatment meetings: A qualitative study
Introduction The increasing prevalence of multimorbidity requires effective collaboration between health professionals. Both interprofessional (IP) and multidisciplinary (MD) collaboration can be used for this purpose. IP collaboration refers to professionals working together toward a common patient-centred goal. In contrast, MD collaboration involves health professionals advocating for their own specialty, which may result in different disease-centred goals for the same patient. This study aims to evaluate and compare these two types of collaboration and develop recommendations for successful collaboration for patients with multimorbidity. Methods This qualitative study employed a rapid ethnographic non-participatory approach. We observed IP and MD treatment meetings using video and audio recordings to identify factors that might influence collaboration between health professionals. Data were analysed iteratively by multiple researchers using a thematic and conventional content analysis. Results There were clear differences between the observed meetings. The IP meetings had a roundtable setting, designated chair, discussions around a common patient-centred goal, active participants, and a relaxed atmosphere that facilitated interprofessional learning. Conversely, the MD meetings had a theatre design, disease-centred discussion, more passive participants, and a less relaxed atmosphere with fewer opportunities for learning. Five participants attended both settings. These participants were more actively engaged and contributed more to interprofessional learning in the IP meetings than in the MD meetings. Conclusion This study showed multiple factors that may influence collaboration and participants’ behaviour, particularly regarding active participation, learning, and patient-centred care. These factors were translated into nine keys for optimizing collaboration, which could support improvement in collaborative practice.
A compact Kolmogorov–Arnold network mixer for long-term time series forecasting
Abstract Long-term time series forecasting (LTSF) underpins critical applications from energy management to weather prediction, yet achieving reliable multi-step-ahead accuracy remains challenging. Existing LTSF approaches, dominated by MLP- and Transformer-based architectures, either rely on simple linear mappings or introduce increasingly complex hand-crafted inductive biases, raising the question of whether a more expressive nonlinear modeling core could offer a useful alternative. In this work, we investigate whether Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KANs), which use learnable basis functions on network edges to model nonlinear relationships, can serve as effective modeling components for LTSF, and under which design choices they are most useful. Motivated by this question, we propose KANMixer, a compact KAN-centered architecture consisting of a multi-scale pooling frontend, KAN-based temporal mixing blocks, and KAN-based prediction heads. Unlike KAN-based forecasting models that combine KAN with decomposition-heavy or mixture-based pipelines, KANMixer is designed as a simple and controlled architecture for examining the role of KAN components in LTSF. Under a unified five-run reproduction protocol on seven standard benchmarks, KANMixer achieves competitive performance against representative LTSF baselines, especially on ETT-style datasets, while showing dataset-dependent limitations. Additional statistical tests, ablations, efficiency profiling, Gaussian-noise evaluation, and hyperparameter sensitivity analysis show that the practical value of KAN depends on basis-function choice, architectural placement, and computational constraints. These results suggest that KANs are promising but not plug-and-play components for LTSF, and that their benefits should be evaluated together with robustness and efficiency trade-offs.
Creatine metabolism regulates trophectoderm formation in early mouse embryos via an energy-cytoskeleton-YAP axis
Rotational observation of kinetically hindered neutral radical pairs
Mechanical Gating of Redox Access in Molecular Electrocatalysis
An exercise-associated gut microbiota signature enhances endurance performance: A study combining a human cohort and a mice FMT model
Background The gut microbiota is closely related to exercise, but the interrelationship between the two remains elusive. In this study, we aimed to explore differences in the gut microbiota between young adults with exercise and sedentary lifestyles. In addition, we evaluated the effects of gut microbiota from these different lifestyle populations on endurance exercise capacity. Methods The exercise status and nutritional characteristics of young adults were evaluated by PARS-3 and food frequency questionnaires. The gut microbiota of young adults from exercise and sedentary lifestyle groups was analyzed by 16S rRNA analysis. Subsequently, we performed fecal bacteria transplantation (FMT) from the human donors into mice and evaluated the effects on their endurance exercise capacity. Results The exercise group exhibited significantly higher gut microbiota diversity compared to the sedentary group. Several beneficial bacteria, including Veillonella, Faecalibacterium, and Bacteroides, were enriched in the exercise group. The FMT experiment confirmed that mice receiving microbiota from the exercise group showed significantly improved endurance exercise capacity. Conclusion Young people who exercise regularly possess a more diverse gut microbiota enriched with beneficial bacteria. This exercise-associated microbiota has the potential to directly improve exercise capacity.