This is a new approach to vaccine development called ‘proactive vaccinology’, where scientists build a vaccine before the disease-causing pathogen even emerges. The new vaccine works by training the body’s immune system to recognise specific regions of eight different coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, and several that are currently circulating in bats and have potential to jump to humans and cause a pandemic. Key to its effectiveness is that the specific virus regions the vaccine targets also appear in many related coronaviruses. By training the immune system to attack these r ..read more

When air temperatures in Antarctica rise and glacier ice melts, water can pool on the surface of floating ice shelves, weighing them down and causing the ice to bend. Now, for the first time in the field, researchers have shown that ice shelves don’t just buckle under the weight of meltwater lakes — they fracture. As the climate warms and melt rates in Antarctica increase, this fracturing could cause vulnerable ice shelves to collapse, allowing inland glacier ice to spill into the ocean and contribute to sea level rise. Ice shelves are important for the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s overall health a ..read more

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, combined flexible electronics and soft robotics techniques to develop the devices, which could be used for the diagnosis and treatment of a range of disorders, including epilepsy and chronic pain, or the control of prosthetic limbs. Current tools for interfacing with the peripheral nerves – the 43 pairs of motor and sensory nerves that connect the brain and the spinal cord – are outdated, bulky and carry a high risk of nerve injury. However, the robotic nerve ‘cuffs’ developed by the Cambridge team are sensitive enough to grasp or wrap aroun ..read more

For the first time, the research has shown that this risk is higher in people living in areas of greater socioeconomic deprivation. Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK. Around 56,000 people in the UK are diagnosed each year, the vast majority (over 99%) of whom are women. Improvements in earlier diagnosis and in treatments mean that five year survival rates have been increasing over time, reaching 87% by 2017 in England. People who survive breast cancer are at risk of second primary cancer, but until now the exact risk has been unclear. Previously published research ..read more

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, are developing low-cost light-harvesting semiconductors that power devices for converting water into clean hydrogen fuel, using just the power of the sun. These semiconducting materials, known as copper oxides, are cheap, abundant and non-toxic, but their performance does not come close to silicon, which dominates the semiconductor market. However, the researchers found that by growing the copper oxide crystals in a specific orientation so that electric charges move through the crystals at a diagonal, the charges move much faster and furth ..read more

The virtual centres, supported by the charity LifeArc, will focus on areas where there are significant unmet needs. They will tackle barriers that ordinarily prevent new tests and treatments reaching patients with rare diseases and speed up the delivery of rare disease treatment trials. The centres will bring together leading scientists and rare disease clinical specialists from across the UK for the first time, encouraging new collaborations across different research disciplines and providing improved access to facilities and training. LifeArc Centre for Rare Mitochondrial Diseases Professo ..read more

Artificial intelligence techniques can be helpful for multiple medical applications, such as radiology or oncology, where the ability to recognise patterns in large volumes of data is vital. For these types of applications, the AI compares information against learned examples, draws conclusions, and makes extrapolations. Now, an international team led by researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and including researchers from the University of Cambridge, is exploring the potential of a comparatively new branch of AI for diagnostics and therapy. The researchers found that ..read more

Researchers led by the University of Cambridge used experimental and computer modelling techniques to study the porous carbon electrodes used in supercapacitors. They found that electrodes with a more disordered chemical structure stored far more energy than electrodes with a highly ordered structure. Supercapacitors are a key technology for the energy transition and could be useful for certain forms of public transport, as well as for managing intermittent solar and wind energy generation, but their adoption has been limited by poor energy density. The researchers say their results, reporte ..read more

Professor Steven Barrett has been appointed Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, effective 1 June. He joins the University from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). Barrett’s appointment marks his return to Cambridge, where he was an undergraduate at Pembroke College, and received his PhD. He was a Lecturer in the Department of Engineering from 2008 until 2010, when he joined the faculty at MIT. The Regius Professorships are royal academic titles created by the monarch. The ..read more

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, designed and used an AI-based strategy to identify compounds that block the clumping, or aggregation, of alpha-synuclein, the protein that characterises Parkinson’s. The team used machine learning techniques to quickly screen a chemical library containing millions of entries, and identified five highly potent compounds for further investigation. Parkinson’s affects more than six million people worldwide, with that number projected to triple by 2040. No disease-modifying treatments for the condition are currently available. The process of scr ..read more