Pritzker School of Medicine

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 28, 2024 -- For older adults, having greater numbers of sensory disabilities is associated with worse subsequent mental health, according to a study published online Aug. 27 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society . Alexander Z. Wang, from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, and colleagues examined the impact of hearing, vision, and olfaction disability on mental health outcomes in older U.S. adults using data from the first three rounds of the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (2005/6, 2010/11, and 2015/16). Data were analyzed from 3,940 respondents during 10 years of follow-up. The researchers observed an association for a greater number of sensory disabilities with a greater risk for low self-rated mental health, frequent depressive symptoms, frequent perceived stress , and frequent loneliness symptoms over time. Older adults with a greater number of sensory disabilities had an increased risk for low self-rated mental health and loneliness symptoms over time after adjustment for covariates (hazard ratios, 1.22 and 1.13, respectively). Older adults with vision disability had an increased risk for low self-rated mental health and loneliness symptoms in a Cox proportional hazards model (hazard ratios, 1.34 and 1.21, respectively). "Increased awareness about the role that sensory disabilities may have on mental health in older adults may help physicians and other health care professionals to provide targeted assessment of specific mental health conditions for older adults based on their sensory disabilities and provide more personalized care to patients," the authors write. One author disclosed ties to Sanofi/Regeneron and Optinose. Abstract/Full Text Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

Argonne scientists have used isoporous membranes -- membranes with pores of equal size and shape -- and recirculation to create separations at the nanoscale that overcome previous limitations. Imagine a close basketball game that comes down to the final shot. The probability of the ball going through the hoop might be fairly low, but it would dramatically increase if the player were afforded the opportunity to shoot it over and over. A similar idea is at play in the scientific field of membrane separations, a key process central to industries that include everything from biotechnology to petrochemicals to water treatment to food and beverage. "Separations lie at the heart of so many of the products we use in our everyday lives," said Seth Darling, head of the Advanced Materials for Energy Water Systems (AMEWS) Center at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. ​"Membranes are the key to achieving efficient separations." Many commercial processes use membranes to separate out different sizes of solutes, which are substances that are dissolved in water or other fluids. Nearly all commercial membranes are polydisperse, which means that their pore sizes are not consistent. For these membranes, it's nearly impossible to do a sharp separation of materials as different sizes of solutes can fit through different pores. ​"Essentially all commercial membranes, all membranes that are actually used for anything, have a wide range of pore sizes -- little pores, medium pores and big pores," Darling said. Darling and his colleagues at Argonne and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago have been interested in looking at the properties of isoporous membranes, which are membranes in which all the pores are the same size. Previously, scientists had believed there was a limit to the sharpness of the separations that they could achieve at the nanoscale, not only because of variations in pore size, but also a phenomenon called ​"hindered transport." Hindered transport refers to the internal resistance of the fluid medium as the solute attempts to go through the pore. "The water in the pore will create drag on a molecule or particle that's trying to get through, causing it to slow down," Darling said. ​"Those slower solutes appear to be rejected by the membrane. Counterintuitively, objects even half the size of the pore will end up being rejected about half the time." Overcoming rejection created by hindered transport would enable unprecedented selectivity in size-based separations, he explained. "The regime we're interested in involves pores approximately 10 nanometers in diameter. With a perfect membrane and proper process design, we believe we could separate solutes with as little as a five percent difference in size. Current membranes have no chance to pull that off," Darling said. In a new study, Darling and his colleagues uncovered a dynamic that could only be revealed by studying isoporous membranes, and that gives hope for surmounting hindered transport limitations. ​"Until now, scientists had implicitly assumed that each solute only gets one try to go through a pore, and that hindered transport would produce rejection of many solutes that were smaller than the pore size, causing them to remain in the feed stream rather than the output stream," Darling added. ​"Although it might seem obvious to some, people never really considered a situation in which the solutes could make multiple attempts to get through a membrane." To give the solute molecules multiple chances to get through the pore required cycling the feed solution for multiple weeks. ​"Even with an extended period of experimentation, we're still only seeing individual solutes trying to get through a pore a couple of times on average, but it makes a big difference in moving the separation curve towards a sharper step-like function," Darling said. ​"Given longer time, or more likely an improved process design, we believe we will see a clear, sharp separation right where the pore size matched the solute size." The insights learned from isoporous membranes could be applicable to existing membrane materials engineered to increase the number of opportunities for solutes to pass through the pores. ​"If these fundamental studies can be successfully transferred to industrial membrane separations, it could have tremendous impact across numerous sectors of our economy," he said. The work was supported by DOE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

中国上海、苏州，2024年4月3日，科望医药宣布任命医学博士Jason John Luke为公司科学顾问委员会成员。科望医药联合创始人，首席科学官卢宏韬博士表示：很高兴Luke博士加入科望科学顾问委员会，Luke博士在临床和转化免疫治疗方面的专业知识，以及他在实体瘤早期药物开发方面的经验，是对我们现有科学家团队的有力补充。Luke博士目前是匹兹堡大学医学院的副教授，免疫治疗与药物开发中心的主任，同时也是UPMC希尔曼癌症中心临床研究副主任。此前，他曾任芝加哥大学医学院助理教授、波士顿布莱根妇女医院主治医生、以及哈佛大学医学院的医学讲师。Luke博士在罗莎琳德·富兰克林医科大学（芝加哥医学院）获得医学博士学位，并在爱荷华大学获得微生物学学士学位。他在波士顿大学医学中心完成了住院医师培训。Luke博士在纽约的威尔康奈尔医学中心完成了医学研究员工作，并在纽约纪念斯隆-凯特琳癌症中心完成了医学肿瘤学研究员工作。关于科望医药的科学顾问委员会成员信息：关于科望医药科望医药是一家处于临床阶段的生物医药公司，致力于开发变革性的肿瘤免疫治疗药物，旨在造福全世界的癌症患者。公司的创新聚焦在肿瘤微环境的研究，探索和验证更有效的杀伤肿瘤的机制。基于自主开发的专利平台，科望已建立起全球创新的肿瘤免疫治疗产品管线，包括新型的BiME®平台，连接和激活巨噬细胞以消灭肿瘤细胞，同时不会引发炎性细胞因子风暴。更多信息，请访问科望网站www.elpiscience.com。