FDA Approves Breakthrough Pancreatic Cancer Drug, Ushering a New Era

FDA approves daraxonrasib, first breakthrough drug for metastatic pancreatic cancer The two-pills-a-day therapy, sold as Rasonque, extended median overall survival to 13.2 months in a Phase 3 trial versus chemotherapy for patients with specific cancer-driving mutations. It offers a new option for a disease where tumors often stop responding to chemo. 1

Two injections reverse Alzheimer's damage and restore cognition in mice University of South Carolina scientists used a Nano-ERASER nanogel to degrade the PTBP1 protein in astrocytes, triggering them to become new functional neurons in organoids and mouse models. The treated mice showed improved memory and nest-building behavior. 2

NASA's Roman telescope set to launch August 30 to probe dark energy Roman will join major surveys targeting the mysterious force driving cosmic acceleration, just as tensions between early- and late-universe measurements hint dark energy may be more complex than the standard model. It could herald a revolution in cosmology. 3

Webb finds hidden stars make early galaxies far more massive Analyzing nine massive, mature galaxies from the early Universe, astronomers found a large population of faint, low-mass stars concealed by brighter ones, overturning assumptions about star size distributions and deepening the puzzle of how such galaxies formed so quickly. 4

JWST shows how gas winds set a clock on planet formation A survey of 72 young Sun-like stars with JWST's MIRI instrument reveals that different types of disk winds dominate at different stages, determining how long gas remains available to build giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn. 5

Nanobubble collapse enables catalyst-free ammonia synthesis at room temperature Chinese Academy of Sciences researchers harnessed the transient energy of collapsing nitrogen-hydrogen nanobubbles in water to activate nitrogen, producing ammonia under mild conditions. The approach could offer a greener alternative to the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process. 6

Researchers get two genetic codes working simultaneously in one system The synthetic biology advance avoids re-engineering every gene in a genome by letting two codes operate side by side, potentially accelerating efforts to add new amino acids to proteins. It has not yet been tested in living cells. 7

Physicists hunting one particle find two unexpected exotic structures instead At Jefferson Lab's GlueX experiment, a photon beam striking a proton produced two new signals that may belong to the puzzling XYZ class of particles, which don't fit the conventional quark model. The results were reported in Physical Review Letters. 8

Expedition discovers 149 new deep-sea species at Indian Ocean seamounts Surveys around Christmas and Cocos islands, down to 5,431 meters, found new black corals, sea worms, sea cucumbers, fish, and a parasitic barnacle, plus a 'Shark Tooth Graveyard' with about 1,000 teeth spanning 22 million years. 9

NASA's Pandora mission begins its study of exoplanet atmospheres The first Astrophysics Pioneers small satellite will observe at least 20 exoplanets and their host stars in visible and near-infrared light, helping disentangle starlight contamination in atmospheric measurements and laying groundwork for JWST and future observatories. 10

Gut bacteria send altered signals in Parkinson's disease, study finds University of Oulu researchers found people with Parkinson's have more and larger bacterial extracellular vesicles in stool, carrying a different mix of proteins. The findings suggest microbial communication, not just bacterial abundance, may be involved in the disease. 11

Shaken ultracold atom lattice simulates extreme quantum chaos Physicists used a periodically shaken lattice of ultracold atoms to emulate chaotic quantum behavior, offering a controllable testbed for a regime that is normally intractable. The work appears in Physics Today. 12