Russia and Belarus are being frozen out of international science, with universities and research institutions across Europe suspending joint research projects and calling a halt to the formation of any new collaborations, following the invasion of Ukraine. Initial sanctions announced by European governments called for the severing of direct institution-to-institution links only, with many universities counseling individual researchers to maintain personal relations with Russian peers.

A team of researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that osmolytes such as mannitol, which are used to treat increased intraocular or intracranial pressure, can cause kidney damage by inducing hyperosmotic stress that leads to epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of the tubular epithelial cells.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules aberrantly induced by viral infection or inflammation, have been shown for the first time to form self-antigen/MHC class II complexes that initiate autoantibody production, according to a Japanese study published in the March 4, 2022, edition of Science Advances.

An analysis of brain scans of participants in the UK Biobank has shown there are significant differences between the condition of the brain before and after mild COVID-19 infection. These included a reduction in overall brain size, reduction in grey matter thickness in the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampal gyrus, and changes in markers of tissue damage in regions functionally connected to the primary olfactory cortex. Infected participants also showed, on average, a larger cognitive decline than participants who had not contracted COVID-19.

“In 2015, when I started in this field…. people considered breast cancer a cold tumor,” Marleen Kok told the audience at the European Society of Medical Oncology’s 2022 Targeted Anticancer Therapy meeting (ESMO TAT). But the sensitivity of breast cancer to immunotherapy, or lack thereof, is “not a black and white phenomenon.”

An international collaboration led by scientists at The University of South Australia, SA Pathology in Adelaide, and the de Duve Institute, University of Louvain, Belgium, has discovered biallelic MDFIC pathogenic variants underlying the severe lymphatic disorder, central conducting lymphatic anomaly (CCLA), in seven people from six separate families.

By using engineered retinal pigment epithelial cells to deliver IL-2 into the tumor microenvironment, investigators at Rice University eradicated ovarian and colorectal tumors in mouse models, and elicited T-cell responses after implantation in primates.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital have identified peripheral neuropathy in more than half of a group of long COVID patients, suggesting that it may be a mechanism that contributes to multiple, seemingly disparate, long COVID symptoms.