Teaching the Immune System to Fight Childhood Cancer — With mRNA and Peptides
There are few things in oncology more sobering than paediatric cancer statistics. Neuroblastoma — a tumour that develops in immature nerve cells and typically affects children under five — accounts for around 15% of paediatric cancer deaths.
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MIT's Nanotube Sensor That Finds Bladder Cancer Before You Can See It
Bladder cancer has an unfair reputation for being survivable — which it often is, when caught early. The less-discussed part is what "early" actually looks like in practice: roughly 85,000 people are diagnosed in the US alone each year.
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A Baby, a Base Editor, and Six Months to Save a Life
There is a version of this story that ends badly. It almost did. KJ Muldoon was born with severe carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency — a diagnosis that essentially means his liver could not process protein without toxic consequences.
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Diagnosing Brain Tumours While the Patient Is Still in Surgery?
There's a particular kind of pressure in a neurosurgical theatre. A surgeon has just removed a small piece of brain tissue — a biopsy, perhaps only a millimetre or two across — and what happens next determines everything.
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Paula Hammond Is Teaching Nanoparticles to Multitask — And It Might Change How We Treat Cancer
There is a particular frustration in oncology that does not get discussed enough outside of research circles: cancer adapts. You give a patient a drug. It works — sometimes brilliantly, sometimes briefly — and then it stops.
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Tiny Balls, Big Problems: How SNAs Are Sneaking Past the Brain's Defences
There is a reason glioblastoma has gone decades without a new approved drug. It is not that scientists haven't tried. It is that the brain, in its infinite wisdom, has constructed a wall so effective it keeps out almost everything — including treatment.
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When Your Skin Has a Better Idea Than Your Surgeon
There's a compound in your skin that protects you from UV radiation, tints peacock feathers iridescent blue without a single drop of blue pigment, and is found in deep-sea fish that have never once seen the sun.
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Nanoscience, and the Future of Sustainable Textiles
There is something quietly embarrassing about the textile industry. We have spent decades engineering clothes that perform brilliantly — stretch, wick, insulate, repel — and then promptly become very difficult to get rid of.
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An AI That Reads Brain Tumour Slides Better Than Specialists — In 12 Minutes
Brain tumour diagnosis has always been one of medicine's more unforgiving bottlenecks. You have a patient, a tissue sample, and a question that needs answering as quickly as possible: what exactly is this, and what do we do next?
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