Researchers at the faculty have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) method to help them identify potential new medicines for Alzheimer's. The new medicineseems to be more precise. No side effects were documented during tests with worms and mice.

The cells' waste management is destroyed by Alzheimer's disease
One of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease is the degeneration and loss of nerve cells in the brain as we age. A cell is like a finely tuned machinery. The cell needs energy to perform its tasks. The energy comes from energy factories called mitochondria.

In young, healthy cells, old or damaged mitochondria are removed from the cell in a process called mitophagy.The research groupfound that when we get older, we have more broken mitochondria, and the cells will not be able to remove all of them anymore.An accumulation of broken mitochondria clogs the cell’s ordinary processes and eventually, the cell will die. – Cells need the energy generated by the mitochondria to clear this "garbage". Just like a machine will stop working if it is not maintained, says associate professor Evandro F. Fang, the leader of the research group.

Fang leads an international research group at The Institute of clinical medicine, University of Oslo and Akershus University Hospital.

A new method for treating Alzheimer’s disease

A new potential method for treating thedisease is described by Fang's group in a new study:

– We may be able to reduce or stop the progress of the disease with the patient. We can do this by increasing the cell’s ability to self-clean, Fang says. Because the clogging of the machinery is a part of the problem, the researchers had to find a way toboost the cleaning process.They looked into the use of so-called mitophagy inducers. The idea was to find a way toincrease the level of waste management in the patient’s brain cells. – We can compare this to hiring extra personnel to clear a cleaning backlog in a factory, Fang explains.

Fang's group described how It may be possible to finda way to stimulate the cells' own self-cleansing systemin 2019.

The treatment may improve other organs

The rebootof mitophagy gives the patient several advantages: It will increase the clearance of brain cell garbage and the cleaning process will be more effective in itself. It may also increase the cleaning in other other organs, not only the brain. – By turning up mitophagy, we may also be able to increase the quality of other organs, like their heart and muscles. A stronger body is important to reduce the effects of the disease, Fang notes.

Used AI to find possible candidates for a new medication

It takes a lot of time and effort to develop a new drug, and it is a very expensive process.
The researchers wanted to find substances that may induce the cleaning process. They used AI to search for substances similar to known mitophagy inducers.

The computer programbrowsed through a large catalogue of substances and identified two candidates,Rhapontigenin andKaempferol. They used mice and nematodes, a type of worms, to document whether use of these substances ontheir nerve cells inhibited memory loss. – We spent three months searching from a library of around3000 known mitophagy-inducing substances. If we had used traditional techniques to discover a newdrug, it would likely have taken more than three years to find potential drug candidates’, Fang explains.

The researchers have filed a patent on the new medication for Alzheimer’s disease

Fang and his colleagues have filed a patent on Rhapontigenin for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. They are now working on describing both how Rhapontigenin and Kaempferol may help usdelay the progression of memory loss, and how it may help us reduce disease progression when it has occured. In addition, they are also going to describe the in-depth molecular mechanisms that help Kaempferol and Rhapontigenin to induce mitophagy.

Original article 

Scientists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich, Helmholtz Munich, and Technical University of Munich have shown that the immune system is capable of neutralizing even Omicron after a total of three exposures to the viral spike protein.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 has continued to evolve, with new variants of concern (VoCs) spreading rapidly. Highly contagious and partially capable of evading the immune response, Omicron has become the dominant variant in most countries.

Answers to the question how the immune systems can be “educated” to battle Omicron and other immune escape variants of the virus are provided by a team led by Professor Ulrike Protzer (Institute of Virology at Technical University of Munich and Helmholtz Munich), Professor Percy Knolle (University Hospital rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich), and Professor Oliver T. Keppler (Max von Pettenkofer Institute and Gene Center Munich at LMU). As they report in Nature Medicine, a total of three exposures to the viral spike protein leads to production of virus neutralizing antibodies not only in high quantity, but also high quality. These high-quality antibodies bind to the viral spike protein more vigorously and are also capable of effectively fighting the Omicron variant. This applies to triple-vaccinated people, to people who have recovered from Covid-19 and then had two vaccinations, and to double-vaccinated people who then had a breakthrough infection.

Un nuovo studio internazionale coordinato dal Dipartimento di Medicina molecolare della Sapienza e dall’Università di Cambridge, sostenuto anche da Fondazione AIRC per la ricerca sul cancro, ha stimato su un campione di più di 5.000 famiglie l’associazione delle mutazioni nei geni BRCA1 e BRCA2 con il rischio di sviluppare, in entrambi i sessi, 22 tipi di cancro, tra cui quello alla prostata, al pancreas e allo stomaco. I risultati sono stati pubblicati sulla rivista Journal of Clinical Oncology
Le mutazioni nei geni BRCA1 e BRCA2 sono soprattutto note in quanto nelle famiglie di portatori aumentano sensibilmente il rischio di sviluppare carcinomi della mammella e dell’ovaio. Queste conoscenze hanno anche permesso di realizzare adeguati programmi di screening mirati alla prevenzione di queste neoplasie. Finora tuttavia non si sapeva con altrettanta precisione se le stesse mutazioni potessero aumentare il rischio di sviluppare altri tipi di tumori.

Un team di ricerca del Cnr-Igg ha identificato il ruolo dei parametri climatici e della vegetazione sui flussi di CO2 nella tundra artica. I risultati, ottenuti grazie a campagne di misura e modelli matematici, sono pubblicati su Scientific Reports

Non solo radiazione solare e temperatura. Nella tundra artica l’umidità del suolo, l’abbondanza ed il tipo di vegetazione controllano lo scambio di CO2 tra suolo, vegetazione e atmosfera. È la conclusione di uno studio realizzato da un team di ricerca dell’Istituto di geoscienze e georisorse del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Cnr-Igg) e pubblicato sulla rivista Scientific Reports.

I ricercatori hanno analizzato le misure di flussi di anidride carbonica nella tundra artica dell’isola di Spitzbergen (Norvegia), nel bacino del torrente Bayelva, non lontano dalla stazione artica Dirigibile Italia del Cnr, identificando le variabili climatiche ed ecologiche da cui tali flussi dipendono.

La ricerca delle Università di Pisa e della Tuscia pubblicata sulla rivista Social Indicators Research

In Italia le persone a rischio di povertà alimentare sono il 22,3% dell'intera popolazione, un tasso che varia a livello regionale dal 14,6% dell’Umbria, al 29,6% dell’Abruzzo, al 18,7 % della Toscana, con elevati livelli di disuguaglianze soprattutto per quanto riguarda ortaggi, carne e pesce. Questi dati emergono da uno studio pubblicato sulla rivista Social Indicators Research firmato da Stefano Marchetti dell’Università di Pisa e Luca Secondi dell’Università della Tuscia a partire dall'Indagine sulla Spesa delle Famiglie italiane del 2017 dell'Istat.

“L’indagine – sottolinea Stefano Marchetti, professore di statistica del Dipartimento di Economia e Management – non riguarda la povertà assoluta, cioè l’impossibilità di comprare un dato paniere di beni alimentari, ma la povertà relativa, ovvero coloro che hanno una capacità di spesa per alimenti al di sotto di una certa soglia media che in Italia si attesta intorno ai 162 euro procapite, cifra che varia da regione a regione e da ricalibrare nel caso di famiglie numerose”.