Too much of a good thing, it turns out, is a concept that applies to oxygen. And researchers at the University of California at San Francisco are working on a small molecule, Hypoxystat, that can lower tissue oxygen levels and prevent damage when oxygen levels are too high. When administered to mice with the rare mitochondrial disorder Leigh syndrome, the molecule more than tripled their average lifespan.

The map of cystic fibrosis (CF) research is being redrawn in the U.K. as improvements in treatment, and in particular the introduction of CF modulator drugs, mean people with the rare inherited disease are living much longer.

Researchers have altered the genetic code in a strain of Escherichia coli, reducing the number of stop codons from three to one and assigning the freed-up stop codons to nonstandard amino acids. They reported on the recoded bacterium, which they named OCHRE, in Nature on Feb. 5, 2025.

The lung and thrombosis may play a key role in cancer and metastasis progression, according to a collaborative study led by Cornell University scientists.

Using ALK+ lung cancer patient-derived cell lines, researchers have performed phosphoproteomic screening and identified guanylate kinase 1 (GUK1) as a TKI sensitive metabolic molecule in ALK-driven lung cancer. They reported their results online in Cell on Feb. 6, 2025.

The scientific establishment has launched a fight back against the Trump administration and the slew of executive orders that threaten to dismantle research funding, with a warning that the next month could be critical for the future of U.S. science.

New research has uncovered a complex interplay between extracellular matrix (ECM) structure and the transcriptional responses of cancer cells, showing how they alter their gene expression to ‘escape’ from ECM. The findings will make it easier to identify tumors that are likely to metastasize at an early stage.

Researchers from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Queensland, Australia and Emory University have shown that a potential new targeted therapy for childhood brain cancer was effective in infiltrating and killing tumor cells in mouse models.

A large-scale study cross-referencing genomic data from multiple sources with primary care health records has identified genetic overlaps in 72 chronic diseases, opening the way for a more holistic approach to researching, treating and preventing multimorbidity.

Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have identified an RNA-binding protein that increased the translation of Myc mRNA. The authors wrote that their work, which was published online in Nature Cell Biology on Feb. 4, 2025, “transforms the understanding of the translational code in cancer and illuminates therapeutic openings to target the expression of oncogenes.”