In a review published in Molecular Biomedicine, a team of Chinese scientists summarizes the pivotal role of N⁶-methyladenosine (m⁶A)—the most abundant chemical modification in eukaryotic mRNA—in cancer biology. The authors describe how m⁶A regulators (writers, erasers, and readers) influence tumor progression, metastasis, treatment resistance, and the tumor microenvironment. They also discuss emerging therapeutic strategies, including small-molecule inhibitors, RNA-based editing technologies, and combination therapies, highlighting m⁶A's potential as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker and a target for precision oncology.

Recently, a research team led by Gengjie Jia at the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in collaboration with Yu Li at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Xin Gao at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and Andrey Rzhetsky at The University of Chicago, published an article in Quantitative Biology titled “An effective encoding of human medical conditions in disease space provides a versatile framework for deciphering disease associations.” The study presents an embedding-based approach that encodes medical records into a high-dimensional disease space, providing a versatile framework for uncovering disease associations, facilitating genetic parameter estimation, and enabling data-driven disease classification. The authors also discuss the key challenges and future prospects of this emerging paradigm.

In a comprehensive review published in MedComm - Oncology, a research team sheds new light on the complex biology and therapeutic challenges of breast cancer brain metastasis (BCBrM). The authors detail the multi-step metastatic cascade, from primary tumor invasion to brain colonization, and highlight key signaling pathways such as TGF-β, Wnt/β-catenin, PI3K/AKT, Notch, HER2-HER3, and JAK/STAT. They also explore the dynamic interactions between tumor cells and the brain microenvironment, including astrocytes, microglia, and neurons, which facilitate immune evasion and metabolic adaptation. The review further discusses advances in preclinical models, emerging CNS-penetrant therapies, and innovative clinical trial designs, offering a roadmap for personalized management of BCBrM.

A new species of jellyfish has been discovered! Researchers at Tohoku University named this venomous creature Physalia mikazuki, after the crescent moon helmet worn by Sendai’s feudal lord Date Masamune.

An Osaka Metropolitan University-led research team studied DNA interstrand crosslinks formation and its associated repair pathways to investigate whether colibactin-induced interstrand crosslinks play a crucial role in genotoxicity. 

New research has found that social interactions among meerkats may be crucial to their health and survival – thanks to the sharing of beneficial gut bacteria.

Synchronization abounds in nature and now researchers at UC San Diego have unlocked the mathematics that govern oscillators operating at similar frequencies in the intestine that create a staircase effect.