Researchers from LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center will join thousands of nutrition scientists and professionals from around the world at NUTRITION 2026, the annual flagship meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, or ASN, taking place July 25–28 in National Harbor, Maryland. NUTRITION 2026 will feature more than 1,650 scientific presentations and bring together researchers, clinicians, educators, industry leaders, policymakers and other professionals to share the latest advances in nutrition science and its application to human health.

Published in Metabolism, the study “Dynamic Regulation of Circulating Endotrophin by Changes in Fat Mass in Humans” found that circulating levels of endotrophin – a protein fragment released as fat tissue expands and remodels – consistently increased when people gained body fat and decreased when they lost body fat. The findings suggest endotrophin could serve as a valuable biomarker of metabolic health and may one day become a target for therapies aimed at reducing the health risks associated with obesity.

Tumors can evade immune attack by manipulating the thymus, the organ where T cells are trained. Researchers from Japan discovered that specialized immune cells called plasmacytoid dendritic cells transport tumor antigens to the thymus, promoting immune tolerance to tumors. Disrupting this process in mice enhanced anti-tumor immunity and reduced tumor growth. The findings reveal a previously unrecognized mechanism of tumor immune evasion and identify CCR9 as a potential target for future cancer immunotherapies. 

Salk scientists and collaborators publish the first single-cell atlas to simultaneously map 3D genome architecture and DNA methylation across the human body—86,689 cells spanning 16 tissues, 35 major cell types, and 206 subtypes. The atlas pinpoints cell types where epigenetic features overlap with genetic risk for conditions including atrial fibrillation, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and blood-glucose regulation, helping explain how non-coding DNA variants may contribute to disease. All data are freely available through an interactive browser, providing a reference for gene-regulation research and a training resource for AI models that predict the impact of genetic variants.

By studying a gene linked to congenital heart defects, scientists from Gladstone Institutes uncovered a new mechanism for how small drops in protein levels scramble the 3D structure of DNA, resulting in disease.

Off-the-shelf and mass-producible immune cells fight solid human tumors engrafted into mice. The Kobe University development is a significant contribution towards faster and cheaper cancer immunotherapy.