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The emerging cancer treatment that’s exciting scientists: ‘We’ve just scratched the surface on what’s possible’

Late last month, Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill put the treatment in the spotlight, revealing his stage three cancer was in remission after undergoing CAR T-cell therapy as part of a clinical trial in Sydney. He stopped short of describing his remission as a miracle – the success, he said, was “science at its best”

The history of CAR (for “chimeric antigen receptor”) T-cell therapy is one of small discoveries accumulating over decades, leading to major advances in patient care. Pioneered in the 1990s, the therapy has exploded in the past decade. Four CAR T-cell therapies have been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for use in Australia since 2018. All are for blood cancers.

The success of those therapies is increasing enthusiasm among researchers and clinicians that CAR T-cell therapies will soon become a major weapon in the battle against cancer. It is now being tweaked to combat solid tumours, with promising early signs of success tempered by the difficulties in tailoring T-cells to find their target. The future may even see it become an injectable.

CRISPR safeguard changes how engineered microbes can be controlled

Engineered microorganisms are widely used in industrial biotechnology and biopharmaceutical applications, including the production of biofuels, sustainable chemicals, and therapeutic compounds. However, concerns remain regarding the unintended environmental release and uncontrolled proliferation of genetically engineered microbes. For this reason, biocontainment technologies, which are designed to prevent microorganisms from surviving outside controlled environments, have become increasingly important in both academia and industry.

Conventional biocontainment strategies have relied on auxotrophy-based approaches, toxin–antitoxin systems, or DNA cleavage-based technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9. However, these methods often suffer from environmental dependency, genetic instability, and the risk of unintended mutations and cellular stress caused by DNA double-strand breaks.

In particular, DNA cleavage-based systems may compromise genomic stability and allow certain mutant cells to escape survival control. In addition, CRISPR interference (CRISPRi)-based systems are inherently reversible, posing challenges for achieving complete and permanent control of cell viability.

Spontaneous Emergence of Self-Replicating Molecules Containing Nucleobases and Amino Acids

The conditions that led to the formation of the first organisms and the ways that life originates from a lifeless chemical soup are poorly understood. The recent hypothesis of “RNA-peptide coevolution” suggests that the current close relationship between amino acids and nucleobases may well have extended to the origin of life. We now show how the interplay between these compound classes can give rise to new self-replicating molecules using a dynamic combinatorial approach. We report two strategies for the fabrication of chimeric amino acid/nucleobase self-replicating macrocycles capable of exponential growth. The first one relies on mixing nucleobase-and peptide-based building blocks, where the ligation of these two gives rise to highly specific chimeric ring structures. The second one starts from peptide nucleic acid (PNA) building blocks in which nucleobases are already linked to amino acids from the start. While previously reported nucleic acid-based self-replicating systems rely on presynthesis of (short) oligonucleotide sequences, self-replication in the present systems start from units containing only a single nucleobase. Self-replication is accompanied by self-assembly, spontaneously giving rise to an ordered one-dimensional arrangement of nucleobase nanostructures.

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Conflict of interest statement.

Tumor-Infiltrating Clonal Hematopoiesis and Pan-Cancer Prognosis in Patients With Solid Tumors

Tumor-infiltrating clonal hematopoiesis was detected in 18% of patients with solid tumors and associated with older age, prior cytotoxic chemotherapy, and reduced overall survival, especially in breast cancer.

This retrospective cohort study investigated the association of TI-CH with clinical factors and its impact on OS in patients with solid tumors. The prevalence of TI-CH in this patient cohort was higher than in treatment-naive cohorts but lower than that in cohorts with higher rates of cytotoxic chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In addition, the prevalence of TI-CH was higher in patients with MSI-high colorectal tumors than in those with MSS colorectal tumors. Analysis of clinical factors revealed that each decade of increasing age and a history of cytotoxic chemotherapy were significantly associated with higher odds of TI-CH. Although TI-CH was associated with worse OS in the whole cohort (pan-cancer analysis), this outcome was most pronounced in patients with breast tumors. Furthermore, TI-CH of GATA2 in the whole cohort and TI-CH of TET2 in patients with breast tumors had the most prominent associations with worse OS.

The accumulation of somatic variants in hematopoietic stem cells with age provides a competitive advantage, leading to CHIP.2 Additionally, cytotoxic chemotherapy induces gene-specific clonal expansion by allowing clones with variants in DNA damage response genes (eg, TP53, PPM1D) to outcompete other clones because such variants are associated with chemoresistance.25 The TI-CH prevalence in our study was intermediate between treatment-naive and treatment-experienced cohorts. It was higher than in the former due to prior therapy and lower than in the latter owing to reduced exposure to cytotoxic chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This finding is notable given this study cohort’s older age, a known factor for increasing CHIP prevalence.6, 7 Furthermore, we found that TI-CH prevalence was higher in patients with MSI-high colorectal tumors than in those with MSS colorectal tumors. To our knowledge, this finding has not been previously reported.

Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy is a major cause of hemorrhagic stroke, a frequent contributor to age-related cognitive impairment, and a key component in adverse responses to beta-amyloid (Aβ) immunotherapy. Defined by pathological deposition of Aβ in the small blood vessels of the brain, cerebral amyloid angiopathy is most often diagnosed on the basis of magnetic resonance imaging studies showing multiple hemorrhages or leptomeningeal blood products within or overlying the cerebral cortex. The disorder typically manifests as hemorrhagic stroke or as a contributing factor to cognitive decline and, less commonly, with transient focal neurologic symptoms or a cerebral inflammatory autoimmune syndrome.

How Many Satellites are There in Space?

A satellite is any object that orbits another body in space. Earth’s only natural satellite is the Moon. Every other satellite around Earth, more than 14,000 of them as of early 2026, is artificial. The first one was launched in October 1957 by the Soviet Union; recent ones are reaching orbit at a rate of roughly 60 per week, almost all of them part of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. The orbital environment around Earth has changed more in the last six years than in the previous sixty, and the trajectory of that change is what makes the satellite question worth revisiting in 2026.

Scientists Say This Simple Supplement May Actually Reverse Heart Disease

Scientists in Japan say a common supplement may actually help “unclog” certain diseased heart arteries from the inside out.

A simple food supplement sold in Japan may have helped reverse a dangerous form of heart disease that often resists standard treatment, according to researchers at Osaka University. The findings, originally published in the European Heart Journal, continue to attract attention because they describe something rarely seen in cardiology: clogged heart arteries becoming noticeably clearer after a nutritional intervention rather than conventional cholesterol lowering alone.

Scientists target a hidden form of heart disease.

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