Pioneering Gene Therapy Cures Patients’ Cancer And Is Still Working 10 Years On
A study of two of the first patients to receive T lymphocytes reprogrammed to fight their specific cancers has shown the cells maintain their presence and effectiveness over a decade after the treatment. In this therapy, patients' immune cells are collected and engineered to recognize cancer cells they would otherwise miss. Once primed, the T cells attack the cancer, making it the first cell therapy made from the patient's own immune system.
Highly Virulent Variant Of HIV Identified In The Netherlands
Researchers have identified more than 100 individuals in the Netherlands with a distinct strain of the subtype B HIV-1 — the most common subtype of HIV-1 in Europe — which has been called VB. The variant leads to a viral load in the blood between higher than the average HIV infection, also leading to twice as fast CD4 T cell decline, placing individuals at risk of more rapidly developing AIDS and higher infectivity.
Second Ever Trojan Asteroid Discovered Sharing Earth’s Orbit
Called 2020 XL5, the space rock is located in one of the gravitational sweet spots in the Earth-Sun system, roughly 60 degrees ahead of our planet in its orbit, and is a great candidate for future flyby missions. It is about 1.2 kilometers (0.73 miles) in size, about three times the size of the first Earth trojan. "Trojan asteroids" are asteroids that occupy a stable Lagrangian point in a planet's orbit around the Sun.
Cosmic Catastrophe Led To Downfall Of A Native American Culture 1,500 Years Ago
A scattering of rare elements discovered across the Ohio River Valley could indicate that a cosmic cataclysm helped towards the decline of a Native American culture some 1,500 years ago. Rare metals, such as iridium and platinum, as well as stony meteorite fragments called pallasites, were detected at 11 different sites once inhabited by people of the Hopewell culture. A charcoal layer was also found, indicating the land was exposed to a sudden burst of extreme heat.
People With Anxiety Are More Likely To Experience And Enjoy ASMR
An autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is mostly felt as a tingling sensation that starts in the head and moves down the neck, and new research indicates it may be more common in people with anxiety and neuroticism. When watching ASMR trigger videos, participants who experience ASMR showed higher rates of anxiety beforehand, but this was often alleviated by the video. Control participants did not.
FEATURE:
Scientists Infected People With COVID-19 On Purpose. This Is What They Learned
Given everything we’ve heard about the COVID-19 death tolls across the world, would you volunteer to get infected? For 34 healthy young people, the answer was “yes”. So what did researchers learn from this?
