#riken

#riken

The Stanley Family Foundation announced another $280 million for the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute earlier this month, bringing its total contributions to the Massachusetts-based nonprofit over $1 billion.

Modern scientific societies are increasingly vulnerable due to their dependence on membership fees and journal subscriptions, which are being challenged by the rise of virtual networking and open-access publishing.

Dr. Bishop and Varmus showed that oncogenes - genes that cause cancer - are not foreign genes introduced into the body by viruses, as was widely believed at the time. Instead, normal versions of oncogenes are present in healthy cells, where they help regulate normal growth.

When mitochondria are exposed to tissue or blood, they lose the electrical gradient across their outer membrane. Mitochondria that lack such a gradient are recognized by a cell's internal machinery as damaged and quickly destroyed. The vast majority of previous studies involved injecting 'naked' mitochondria directly into the bloodstream or tissue sites, but the approach isn't very efficient, so researchers often have to use 'ridiculous' doses of mitochondria.

Known as ExStra, this is a permanent national funding programme designed to strengthen research at the nation's top universities and make them more competitive internationally. While the ExStra programme allows for up to 15 "Excellent Universities" (Exzellenzuniversitaten), only ten institutions have made the grade for the next round of funding.

Three economists jointly won a Nobel Prize in late 2025 for their groundbreaking quantitative work analyzing how, and why, economies grow. Their math is complicated - but their conclusion is simple: to foster economic expansion, policymakers need to promote technological innovation and stoke competition between rival firms. The surest way to foster that innovation and competition is to strengthen intellectual property rights.

Scientists in the laboratory of Rendong Yang, PhD, associate professor of Urology, have developed a new large language model that can interpret transcriptomic data in cancer cell lines more accurately than conventional approaches, as detailed in a recent study published in Nature Communications. Long-read RNA sequencing technologies have transformed transcriptomics research by detecting complex RNA splicing and gene fusion events that have often been missed by conventional short-read RNA-sequencing methods.

Calling nanoscientists: your field needs you to try to replicate a landmark finding that quantum dots can act as biosensors inside living cells. As part of the first large-scale effort in the physical sciences to tackle the reproducibility crisis, researchers in France and the Netherlands are offering funds and resources in exchange for a few months of work. "We are trying to use

Anthropic, however, is pushing a different idea: that AI agents may matter more in the unglamorous work between discoveries. In exclusive interviews announcing new partnerships with the Allen Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Anthropic's head of life sciences Jonah Cool and Grace Huynh, executive director of AI applications at the Allen Institute, said the elite science labs are using Claude-powered AI agents to tackle the analysis, annotation, and coordination bottlenecks that can stretch research timelines into years.

Mucopolysaccharidosis type II (MPS II), or Hunter syndrome, is a rare genetic disorder primarily affecting boys, caused by a deficiency in the enzyme needed to break down sugar molecules. This harmful buildup in cells and tissues impacts multiple body systems, causing frequent infections, organ enlargement and developmental disabilities. Management involves supportive care and enzyme replacement therapy, as there is currently no cure,

Structural biology is essential for understanding diseases and for developing drugs and vaccines. Africa has few specialists in this field, owing to limited infrastructure, training and mentorship opportunities - despite the efforts of non-profit organizations such as BioStruct-Africa, which I co-founded. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00072-3Competing Interests E.N. received a 2024 Google Award for a socially impactful project enabled by AlphaFold and Google DeepMind sponsorship in 2025 to support the BioStruct-Africa structural-biology training event (series 6). E.N. is also supported by a Wellcome Trust award (grant number 222999/Z/21/Z).

Northwestern University has launched the Simpson Querrey Brain Health Institute (SQ-Brain), made possible by nearly $25 million in philanthropic funding from university trustee Kimberly K. Querrey ('22, '23 P). SQ-Brain envisions a future where our brains last as long as our bodies a world where brain health is continuously measurable, modifiable and monitorable across the lifespan, and where prevention of cognitive decline and brain injury is anchored in neurovascular biology and precision medicine.

Science@Cal is proud to present a series of free public science lectures on the third Saturday of every month. These talks are given by renowned UC Berkeley scientists and aimed at general audiences. Talks take place on the UC Berkeley campus at 11 am. Doors open thirty minutes before the talk and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Each talk is planned to last an hour, plus time for at least a few questions at the end.

A study led by Stanford Medicine researchers has found that an injection blocking a protein linked to aging can reverse the natural loss of knee cartilage in older mice. The same treatment also stopped arthritis from developing after knee injuries that resemble ACL tears, which are common among athletes and recreational exercisers. Researchers note that an oral version of the treatment is already being tested in clinical trials aimed at treating age-related muscle weakness.