This week in science

A curative treatment for diabetes, improving solar efficiency, and how cells remember our experiences.

Neil Baugh
October 02, 2024

Happy Wednesday morning! Thanks for joining in for another week. It’s This Week in Science and I’ve picked out some cool pieces for you.

1. Curing diabetes with cell transplantation (1 patient)

Transplantation of chemically induced pluripotent stem-cell-derived islets under abdominal anterior rectus sheath in a type 1 diabetes patient

We report the 1-year results from one patient as the preliminary analysis of a first-in-human phase I clinical trial (ChiCTR2300072200) assessing the …

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867424010225

A new report detailing how a woman was treated with her own engineered cells to treat her type 1 diabetes. She received a transplant of her own cells and began producing her own insulin. She was able to stop her insulin treatments and rely solely on her transplanted cells to produce it for up to a year after. It’s an incredible step towards a cure for diabetes.

Nice writeup: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03129-3

Full study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867424010225

2. Improving solar cell efficiency

This study looks at preventing device damage from common manufacturing techniques, including vacuum-oven drying. This damage prevention helps improve solar panel efficiency while maintaining the panels manufacturability.

The study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp0790

3. The cells that remember your experiences

Human hippocampal and entorhinal neurons encode the temporal structure of experience - Nature

Single-neuron recordings from intracranial electrodes inserted into human brains for clinical reasons suggest that the temporal structure of human experience is encoded in human hippocampal and entorhinal neurons.

www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07973-1

How do our brains record our experiences, and mostly get the timing right, just through neural activity? How do our memories keep the correct(ish) order in time?

This study explores exactly that question by observing single-neuron activity in people who already had neural implants for other medical reasons. They found that hippocampal and entorhinal neurons change their activity to record experiences.

A nice writeup: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03116-8

The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07973-1

4. A new treatment for 24/7 ringing in the ears (tinnitus)

Combining sound with tongue stimulation for the treatment of tinnitus: a multi-site single-arm controlled pivotal trial - Nature Communications

Bimodal neuromodulation combining sound therapy with electrical tongue stimulation using the Lenire device is a nonsurgical treatment for tinnitus. Here, the authors show the positive efficacy and safety results of a controlled one-arm pivotal trial that led to FDA De Novo approval of the Lenire device.

www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50473-z

Was very interested in this one for personal reasons. I’ve had tinnitus, also known as a constant ringing in my ears, for about 6 or 7 years now due to concussions. As far as I know, there are limited to no available treatments.

This study found that electrical stimulation of the tongue (yep, tongue) combined with sound therapy produced a reduction in intensity in patients with tinnitus. Exciting to see where this leads!

See you next week for more science,

Neil

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