Using a deep learning algorithm and PET images of the brain, researchers were able to train an artificial intelligence program to spot the signs of Alzheimer’s disease more than six years ahead of a final clinical diagnosis. Read more.
Several years ago, Anton Toutov was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, working in the lab of Nobel prize-winning chemist Robert Grubbs. He and a colleague discovered they could make carbon–silicon bonds with a safe and inexpensive potassium catalyst. This ability to make silicon-containing organic molecules without using rare and expensive precious metal catalysts is the basis for a new spin-out company, Fuzionaire Diagnostics, based in California.
The firm’s initial goal is to use potassium catalysis to make positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracers that can diagnose and image a wide variety of diseases, and accelerate drug discovery. Read more.
Engaging in regular exercise can help preserve the motor and non-motor function of Parkinson’s disease patients, most likely as a result of an increased release of dopamine in the brain, a small study suggests. Read more.
Researchers have developed a new nuclear medicine tracer that could improve diagnosis and treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. Research has found that the new tracer, 99mTc-HYNIC-cMBP, produced clearer images in less time than currently used tracers and was more rapidly eliminated from the body, reducing radiation exposure. Read more.
Antiretroviral drugs have transformed HIV infection from a death sentence to a chronic condition for many people who carry the virus. But because HIV never truly leaves the body, the virus rebounds rapidly if patients stop taking the drugs for even a short time.
Now scientists are trying to figure out how, and where, HIV hides when blood tests show that a person’s viral load is low or undetectable. The location of this reservoir has long been a mystery, but that could soon change. Read more.
