New clue to halting leukemia relapse

A protein domain once considered of little importance may be key to helping patients who are fighting acute myeloid leukemia (AML) avoid a relapse.

Researchers at Rice Univ., working with colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine and the Univ. of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, have made a small molecule that could deliver a one-two punch to proteins that resist chemotherapy in patients with AML.

The protein, called STAT3, interferes with chemotherapy by halting the death of cancerous cells and allowing them to proliferate. The molecule discovered at Rice locates and then attacks a previously unknown binding site on STAT3, disrupting its disease-promoting effects.

The new work led by Rice chemist Zachary Ball, Baylor pediatrician Michele Redell and MD Anderson oncologist David Tweardy appears in Angewandte Chemie.

Long-sought chiral anomaly detected in crystalline material

A study by Princeton Univ. researchers presents evidence for a long-sought phenomenon—first theorized in the 1960s and predicted to be found in crystals in 1983—called the "chiral anomaly" in a metallic compound of sodium and bismuth. The additional finding of an increase in conductivity in the material may suggest ways to improve electrical conductance and minimize energy consumption in future electronic devices.

"Our research fulfills a famous prediction in physics for which confirmation seemed unattainable," said N. Phuan Ong, Princeton's Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, who co-led the research with Robert Cava, Princeton's Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry. "The increase in conductivity in the crystal and its dramatic appearance under the right conditions left little doubt that we had observed the long-sought chiral anomaly."
The study was published online in Science.The chiral anomaly—which describes how elementary particles can switch their orientation in the presence of electric and magnetic fields—stems from the observation that right- and left-handedness (or "chirality" after the Greek word for hand) is ubiquitous in nature. For example, most chemical structures and many elementary particles come in right- and left-handed forms that are mirror images of each other.

Distant planet’s interior chemistry may differ from our own

As astronomers continue finding new rocky planets around distant stars, high-pressure physicists are considering what the interiors of those planets might be like and how their chemistry could differ from that found on Earth. New work from a team including three Carnegie scientists demonstrates that different magnesium compounds could be abundant inside other planets as compared to Earth. Their work is published by Scientific Reports.

Oxygen and magnesium are the two most-abundant elements in Earth's mantle. However, when scientists are predicting the chemical compositions of rocky, terrestrial planets outside of our own solar system, they shouldn't assume that other rocky planets would have Earth-like mantle mineralogy, according to a research team including Carnegie's Sergey Lobanov, Nicholas Holtgrewe and Alexander Goncharov.

Enabling the design of hybrid glasses

A new method of manufacturing glass could lead to the production of “designer glasses” with applications in advanced photonics, whilst also facilitating industrial scale carbon capture and storage. An international team of researchers, writing in Nature Communications, report how they have managed to use a relatively new family of sponge-like porous materials to develop new hybrid glasses.

The work revolves around a family of compounds called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are cage-like structures consisting of metal ions, linked by organic bonds. Their porous properties have led to proposed application in carbon capture, hydrogen storage and toxic gas separations, due to their ability to selectively adsorb and store pre-selected target molecules, much like a building a sieve which discriminates not only on size, but also chemical identity.

Hookah and E-Cigs Viewed as Safe by the Young

With the taste of tobacco masked by flavors, such as green apple and bubble gum, hookah may make it easy to forget the harsh effects of tobacco on the body. Similarly, some chemicals used to flavor e-cigarettes, while considered safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) due to their use in foods, are known respiratory irritants, and have led some to think danger lies in inhalation rather than digestion.

In a study focusing on young adults’ perceptions of various forms of tobacco products relative to traditional cigarettes, researchers found young adults under 25 are more likely to rate hookah and e-cigarettes as safer.
This is concerning as it suggests even a substantial portion of nonsmokers may view hookah as a relatively safer and acceptable way to use tobacco, according to the researchers.