Tardigrades may hold clues to cancer care, study finds
A protein from tardigrades, called Dsup, may shield healthy cells from radiation damage
Scientists used nanoparticles to deliver mRNA instructions for producing Dsup in mice
Treated cells showed less DNA breakage and no signs of protecting nearby tumor tissue
LOS ANGELES - Radiation therapy is a vital treatment for many cancer patients, but it often comes with severe side effects, especially when healthy tissues are damaged in the process.
For patients with head and neck or prostate cancer, radiation can inflame oral tissue or harm the rectum, making recovery especially difficult.
Now, scientists are turning to a surprising source for help: tardigrades — tiny, resilient animals known for surviving extreme environments, including radiation levels that would be lethal to most organisms.
The backstory
The research, supported by the National Institutes of Health, centers around a tardigrade protein called Dsup, short for "damage suppressor." This protein binds to DNA and helps prevent it from breaking — a key cause of side effects in radiation therapy.
In a study published February 26 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers from MIT and the University of Iowa explored whether Dsup could be used to protect healthy human tissues. They developed nanoparticles that delivered messenger RNA (mRNA) instructions to produce Dsup in targeted cells.
In experiments on mice, Dsup production peaked around six hours after injection and faded after a few days. When healthy tissue was exposed to radiation similar to cancer treatment levels, mice treated with the Dsup-encoded nanoparticles had far less DNA damage than untreated ones.
Dig deeper
One major concern was whether Dsup might unintentionally shield cancer cells. However, researchers found the effects were localized — limited to the area where the nanoparticles were injected — reducing the risk that nearby tumor tissue would also be protected.
Still, this is an early-stage study. The findings are promising, but more research is needed to refine the approach and explore whether it can be used safely and effectively in human patients.
What they're saying
"Radiation is an important tool for treating all kinds of cancer, but the side effects caused by radiation-induced damage to healthy tissue can be severe enough to stop patients from completing the therapy," Dr. James Byrne of the University of Iowa told the NIH.
"This is an entirely novel approach for protecting healthy tissue and may eventually offer a way to optimize radiation therapy for patients while minimizing these debilitating side effects," Byrne added.
The Source
This report is based on findings published February 26, 2025, in Nature Biomedical Engineering by researchers from MIT and the University of Iowa, with support from the National Institutes of Health. The study focused on the Dsup protein found in tardigrades and its use in protecting healthy tissue from radiation damage using mRNA-loaded nanoparticles in mice. All experimental outcomes, quotes, and background are sourced directly from NIH reporting and the original research publication.
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Boston Globe
13 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Vietnam aches for its MIAs. Will America stop funding science to identify them?
The search for around 2,600 missing Americans from the Vietnam War has been a first-order issue for Washington and Hanoi ever since the conflict ended. But on that humid June afternoon in northern Vietnam, grave diggers with doctorates were gathering the bones of Vietnam's own missing warriors, whose ranks exceed 1 million, with an urgency and reverence befitting a task long overdue. The scientists were there to advance a recent breakthrough by putting it to use. A few months earlier, they and their partners — including the International Commission on Missing Persons, in The Hague — had figured out the chemistry and computing required to identify remains as badly degraded as those often found in Vietnam's acidic, tropical soil. For the first time, tiny snips of DNA taken from bones up to 70 years old could be used to link the country's fallen soldiers to distant relatives, unlocking lost truths and deeper healing. 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The country's common practice of ancestor worship, with offerings left at graves and shrines, dictates that if the dead aren't interred with other ancestors, the person's soul wanders homeless and hungry. Burying and honoring the dead is considered an obligation of the living. Vietnam's official efforts to account for those killed in the war have often been haphazard and hampered by bureaucracy. The remains of at least 300,000 fighters for North Vietnam have been found but not identified. In 2014, the Vietnamese government took a major step toward addressing those shortcomings, announcing that it would invest $25 million in a DNA identification project. A new lab opened on the outskirts of Hanoi in 2019. A year later, the International Commission on Missing Persons came on board. The project expanded with $7.4 million from USAID, awarded over five years, a fraction of what is spent annually to find and identify missing Americans. Experts such as Thomas Parsons have tried to fill gaps in the effort. Wiry and lean, with a frame easily lost in a lab coat, Parsons is a globally recognized authority on forensic genetics and the international commission's lead scientist in Vietnam. Advertisement In March, at the lab near Hanoi, he resembled a mountain climber with no mountain to climb. On a table, a NextSeq 1000, a 'high-throughput' sequencing system delivered in November at a cost of about $220,000, sat idle. It was one of many sophisticated machines covered in plastic after USAID's elimination. Parsons and his Vietnamese colleagues stressed that US foreign aid was not a handout, but rather a way to train Vietnam's researchers for an ambitious task using new genetic methods and technologies. 'We've already achieved a lot,' said Tran Trung Thanh, a molecular biologist and the lab's deputy director. 'We need more time to apply it in practice.' 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Miami Herald
15 hours ago
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Vietnam aches for its MIAs. Will America stop funding science to identify them?
The tombstones said 'unknown martyr.' The bones were decades old and covered in reddish mud, staining the white lab coats of a half-dozen visiting scientists. 'This tooth good?' asked a junior researcher, holding up a jawbone pulled from a grave. 'No, too decayed,' said his boss, an experienced geneticist. 'It has a copper dental crown.' The search for around 2,600 missing Americans from the Vietnam War has been a first-order issue for Washington and Hanoi ever since the conflict ended. But on that humid June afternoon in northern Vietnam, grave diggers with doctorates were gathering the bones of Vietnam's own missing warriors, whose ranks exceed 1 million, with an urgency and reverence befitting a task long overdue. The scientists were there to advance a recent breakthrough by putting it to use. A few months earlier, they and their partners -- including the International Commission on Missing Persons, in The Hague -- had figured out the chemistry and computing required to identify remains as badly degraded as those often found in Vietnam's acidic, tropical soil. For the first time, tiny snips of DNA taken from bones up to 70 years old could be used to link the country's fallen soldiers to distant relatives, unlocking lost truths and deeper healing. Families from Vietnam's north and south, their anguish still festering 50 years after the war ended, could find reconciliation in graves where their war dead lie together. Americans still unaccounted for might be found, too, as Vietnam's identification efforts expanded. Methods honed locally could also extend far beyond Vietnam, to help identify those lost to wildfires, typhoons or other natural disasters worldwide. 'Groundbreaking,' said Tim McMahon, director of DNA operations for the U.S. Defense Department. That's how he described the new methods of accounting for the lost, adding: 'It's the next jump in identification.' One thing that DNA analysis requires, however, is practice. Repetition at scale improves technique. But for Vietnam and the world, the opportunity that comes with the largest human identification project on the planet is now being threatened by the Trump administration's hostility toward foreign aid. The five-year grant from the United States that had sustained Vietnam's DNA project -- paying for sequencing machines and collaborations with the U.S. military and the International Commission on Missing Persons -- was suspended with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development in January. The restored money that's left runs out in September. Before the disruptions, the scientists doing exhumations said they had aimed to identify 1,000 Vietnamese MIAs by July 11, the 30th anniversary of normalized U.S.-Vietnam relations. That, they believed, would prove what former enemies could accomplish by pursuing closure through science. Now they are hoping for one. What Vietnam Wants Thousands of miles from Washington, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vu Thi Ninh Thuy, 42, shared a common Vietnamese war story. A parade marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the conflict had just finished. As graying veterans strolled past the hotel where U.S. generals once briefed reporters on daily body counts, she brought up her uncle, who vanished while fighting the Americans in 1974. Her eyes darting with emotion, she recounted how her childhood had been filled with exploratory trips south and north to look for him. Her family questioned his comrades. They visited local officials and eventually found a psychic who directed them, incorrectly, to a location not far from where we stood on that April morning. 'We all feel restless until we can find their remains,' she said. 'Everyone who is Vietnamese wants to bring their loved ones closer to home.' Modern psychology teaches that 'ambiguous loss' -- where death remains unverified and without resolution -- freezes the grieving process, leading to chronic sorrow. In Vietnam, the pain is compounded by ancient beliefs. The country's common practice of ancestor worship, with offerings left at graves and shrines, dictates that if the dead aren't interred with other ancestors, the person's soul wanders homeless and hungry. Burying and honoring the dead is considered an obligation of the living. Vietnam's official efforts to account for those killed in the war have often been haphazard and hampered by bureaucracy. The remains of at least 300,000 fighters for North Vietnam have been found but not identified. In 2014, the Vietnamese government took a major step toward addressing those shortcomings, announcing that it would invest $25 million in a DNA identification project. A new lab opened on the outskirts of Hanoi in 2019. A year later, the International Commission on Missing Persons came on board. The project expanded with $7.4 million from USAID, awarded over five years, a fraction of what is spent annually to find and identify missing Americans. Experts like Thomas Parsons have tried to fill gaps in the effort. Wiry and lean, with a frame easily lost in a lab coat, Parsons is a globally recognized authority on forensic genetics and the international commission's lead scientist in Vietnam. When we met in March at the lab near Hanoi, he resembled a mountain climber with no mountain to climb. On a table, a NextSeq 1000, a 'high-throughput' sequencing system delivered in November at a cost of about $220,000, sat idle. It was one of many sophisticated machines covered in plastic after USAID's elimination. Parsons and his Vietnamese colleagues stressed that U.S. foreign aid was not a handout, but rather a way to train Vietnam's researchers for an ambitious task using new genetic methods and technologies. 'We've already achieved a lot,' said Tran Trung Thanh, a molecular biologist and the lab's deputy director. 'We need more time to apply it in practice.' The main breakthrough occurred a few months before President Donald Trump's inauguration with 23 Vietnamese bone samples degraded by age and tropical conditions. Using chemical solutions and high-tech analysis, scientists from the international commission found that 70% of the samples generated DNA profiles capable of being matched to a parent or child. Several samples generated enough genetic material to connect with a single great-great-grandchild or even a first cousin's child or parent. Before last year, 9 of every 10 Vietnamese bone samples yielded nothing identifiable. 'The breakthrough is the successful implementation in Vietnam of these tools that are emerging from the cutting edge of forensic science, in a context where other methods fail,' Parsons said. Another scientist compared their work to searching for crumbs of a corn flake in a mountain of sand. Duty and Doubts Bob Connor, 78, a chatty Air Force veteran who lives near Philadelphia, signed up to fight Communists as a young man. More recently, he helped find a mass grave for their dead that he had heard about during a tour outside Saigon in 1968. Since 2016, Connor says, he has located around 8,000 unidentified Vietnamese. The official tally of Americans who went missing during the Vietnam War is 2,646. 'The families are the key to the whole thing, from a standpoint that it's no different from our MIAs,' he said. 'Should we walk away from it -- hell no,' he added. 'We owe it to them.' Since President Bill Clinton announced the restoration of diplomatic relations 30 years ago, Vietnam has handed over more than 1,000 sets of American remains. Ambassador Marc Knapper, the son of a Vietnam veteran, has lobbied behind the scenes for the United States to continue supporting Vietnam's MIA program. The International Commission on Missing Persons also wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking that funding be restored. In March, the project received a partial reprieve. U.S. officials told scientists that they would receive the money allotted through the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. A State Department spokesperson said that maintaining 'the right mix of programs to support U.S. national security and other core national interests of the United States requires an agile approach.' Even without such uncertainty, the U.S.-Vietnam relationship has already been battered. Vietnam and the United States on Wednesday reached a preliminary agreement that will add tariffs of 20% to 40% on imports from Vietnam -- a major blow for its economy that follows sharp cuts in foreign aid for health, education and the environment. Trump's approach 'has shaken Vietnamese confidence in the United States,' said Tim Rieser, a former adviser to then-Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a key figure in U.S.-Vietnam reconciliation. 'They have told us the Chinese are already stepping into the vacuum.' Reduced ambitions for partnership with the United States are increasingly the norm. Instead of requesting another five-year grant, the International Commission on Missing Persons has requested $3 million from the United States to keep the project going for 12 to 18 months. 'If we don't receive funding beyond September,' Kathryne Bomberger, the commission's director general, said in an interview, 'the program will probably end.' If that happens, American remains commingled with those of Vietnamese soldiers may never be found, and growth in humanitarian identification will be stunted. Families on the cusp of clarity will remain in limbo for longer, and possibly forever. At the cemetery in the country's north, the scientists soldiered on, maintaining faith in their grisly labor. They had just a few weeks to make an identification, maybe for remains from the 'American War,' maybe from a war against China in 1979. On their final day, a family appeared, laying out fruit and dove-white flowers and lighting incense at the grave of a soldier lucky enough to have been buried with a name. Thanh, the project's deputy director, watched quietly as the scratch of shovels on dirt mingled with birdsong. 'We just want to bring certainty,' Thanh said. 'To give people information they've never had.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Her Fevers Returned Every Day. Would Anything Stop Them?
The 28-year-old woman had just put her 6-week-old baby down for a nap when the now familiar sensations began. Cold descended on her body as if it were a frigid January in their small town of Bettendorf, Iowa, and not a golden April morning. Her teeth chattered and her arms and legs shook and jerked, shivering to heat this self-made winter. Minutes later the cold disappeared, replaced by an achy heaviness and heat. A thermometer confirmed what the new mother and her husband already knew. Her fever was back. This had been a pattern, once or twice a day, for the past two weeks: bone-rattling cold quickly replaced by the heat of fevers that rose to 102 or 103 degrees and lasted until vanquished by acetaminophen. She already had been to the urgent-care center in Moline, Ill., just across the Mississippi River, where she was given a 10-day course of antibiotics. But that day she would take the last dose, and still the intermittent fevers raged on. Even when they subsided, as they always did, she still had some pain between her legs from the stitches she received when the baby was born. That pain disappeared a few days after she got home but suddenly reappeared with her fevers — a full month after her delivery. That morning the worried young parents packed up their baby and headed to the OB-GYN clinic at the University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center in Iowa City where they had a previously scheduled follow-up visit. Searching for an Infection The midwife listened to their story and then gently examined the woman. It was clear that some of the stitches hadn't held, and the torn skin, carefully sutured at the time of the birth, had reopened, oozing purulence in a couple of places. The whole area was exquisitely tender. She was admitted to the hospital and immediately started on two broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics. The next day, she was taken to an operating room and put to sleep so that the region could be examined more fully. Under the bright lights of the O.R., it was clear that the open areas of the suture line had been infected, but after the antibiotics, they appeared to be healing well. An examination of the cervix was unremarkable. Nor did her breasts show any signs of the inflammation that can complicate breastfeeding. It was all very reassuring to her doctors. And yet she continued to have these dramatic daily fevers as she remained in the hospital. So where was the infection? Cultures from the surgical site were uninformative. Samples of her blood and urine grew no bacteria. A CT scan didn't show any hidden areas of inflammation or clots that might have been seeded with germs. And the patient herself had no other complaints. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
