Sleep may matter more than screen time, exercise or diet for young people to succeed in school and maintain healthy friendships.

USC researchers have received a five-year NIH grant of up to $3.2 million to investigate how the hormone thymulin regulates age-related inflammation, or inflammaging, and whether it can improve responses to cancer immunotherapy. Building on earlier findings that thymulin helps suppress chronic inflammation and may enhance treatment effectiveness in older mice, the team will study its molecular mechanisms and therapeutic potential in aged mouse models of breast cancer and melanoma, as well as in human cells. The project aims to clarify how aging alters the immune system and to identify new strategies that could help older patients respond better to immunotherapy and potentially combat metastatic cancer.

Dr. Jeffrey Keller, Hibernia National Bank/Edward G. Schleider Endowed Chair at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and Sara Seifert, president of Minnesota HealthSolutions, have received a new National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to develop an innovative digital health platform that will help parents support teenagers with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as they learn to drive. Teen drivers with ADHD represent one of the highest risk groups for motor vehicle crashes.

The Phase I SBIR award of $353,306, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, supports the collaboration between Pennington Biomedical and Minnesota HealthSolutions. 

The study, published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, followed 756 participants over an 11-year period and examined whether reduced cardiac function could lead to adverse brain health outcomes even in the absence of cardiovascular disease. The research used data from the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project (VMAP), a unique longitudinal cohort designed to investigate vascular contributions to brain aging.