As a new member of BLOODPAC, a leading international consortium on liquid biopsy, the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute will contribute to advancing liquid biopsy research and developing standards and validation protocols, with the aim of bringing this knowledge back to the Catalan and Spanish health system.

The Josep Carreras Institute becomes the first Spanish institution to become part of this prominent international consortium, contributing its expertise in blood cancers research to a global network of academic, industry and regulatory stakeholders.

SUTD researchers have found that older adults are most open to embracing social chatbots that feel authentic and socially engaging but not too human, offering clear lessons for designers of AI companions.

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers conducted a scoping review to identify radiology studies validating commercially available medical AI products and to note reporting trends for sex, age, and ethnic demographic subgroups.

Safe dietary strategies to enhance fat metabolism might help mitigate excess fat accumulation within skeletal muscle. Now, researchers have discovered that pterostilbene, a natural dietary compound, modulates lipid metabolism in muscle cells by protecting a key metabolic protein, PPARδ, from degradation. Rather than directly activating the protein, pterostilbene stabilizes PPARδ, enabling increased fatty acid oxidation and reducing lipid accumulation. The findings can support future nutritional approaches for improving metabolic health.

Dementia poses a growing global public health burden, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where cognitive screening coverage remains limited. Current risk estimation tools often depend on cognitive testing or biomarkers, restricting their applicability in community and primary care settings. To establish and validate a data-driven analytical framework for developing a cognitive-testing-free dementia risk estimation tool (Cog-Free) using routinely collected health examination data.

A nationwide Japanese birth cohort study of 101,864 children found that ovulation induction, intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization were associated with a higher risk of Kawasaki disease before age five compared with spontaneous conception. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection showed no clear difference in risk. The findings remained broadly consistent after adjustment for maternal comorbidities and highlight the need for further research into underlying mechanisms.