Category: 8. Health

Newswise — Inflammatory bowel disease, which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, has long been considered a modern condition of the industrialized West, with cases steadily increasing in North America and Europe throughout the 20th century. New research conducted by an international consortium shows that IBD and related conditions are now spreading through developing regions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as well.

The study, published in Nature, used data from more than 500 population-based studies covering more than 80 geographic regions to describe a pattern of four distinct stages IBD progresses through as it first appears in a region and spreads through the population. In describing these stages, the researchers hope to provide resources and guidance to local health care systems for coping with the growing burden of patients with IBD.

The research was conducted by the Global IBD Visualization of Epidemiology Studies in the 21st Century (GIVES 21) consortium, a group of international IBD and public health experts led by Gilaad G. Kaplan, MD, from the University of Calgary and Siew C. Ng, MBBS, PhD, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. GIVES21 has built a large repository of IBD epidemiology data and offers open access to the complete dataset for researchers, clinicians, and patients worldwide through a web application.

“This has been a huge, collaborative effort to understand IBD around the globe,” said GIVES21 team member David T. Rubin, MD, the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago.

“Now that we recognize what’s happening with IBD in emerging areas of the world, we can start focusing on being able to treat it in places where these conditions are new. We can also study it in these emerging areas so we might get new clues as to what’s driving this so we can help prevent it,” said Rubin, who is also the newly elected Chair of the International Organization for the study of IBD (IOIBD), which supported the new study.

Drawing on a century of data

The team drew on a century’s worth of data about IBD compiled by GIVES21. They analyzed new diagnoses per year and total people living with IBD, and found that it is unfolding in four distinct, predictable stages:

1. Emergence: Currently seen in low-income countries, with both new and total cases remaining low.
2. Acceleration in Incidence: Marked by a rapid rise in new diagnoses as regions industrialize and lifestyles shift, though total cases remain limited.
3. Compounding Prevalence: With incidence stabilizing, prevalence soars—driven by low mortality and accumulating cases in younger populations.
4. Prevalence Equilibrium: Projected in several high-income regions by 2045, where new diagnoses balance disease related deaths, plateauing overall prevalence.

As a chronic inflammatory condition that is driven by immune system responses, IBD has been linked to so-called Western diets that are high in processed foods, animal products, and sugar while also low in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. People in industrializing economies tend to adopt more elements of this diet, but that alone doesn’t tell the full story; IBD is increasing in India, for example, which has a high proportion of people who are vegetarian.

Rubin said other factors may be contributing as well. Growing evidence points to the implications of how food is prepared and stored, as more researchers explore the effects of emulsifiers and microplastics in food on IBD. He also emphasizes that it’s important to remember that IBD is really dozens of distinct different conditions caused by myriad genetic and environmental factors.

“By understanding where you’re studying the disease, what you’re looking at, and which people are developing IBD, you can get different ideas of what might be driving it, which will help us separate out these different types of IBD and find the right ways to treat them,” Rubin said.

Applying lessons on a local scale

As Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at UChicago, Rubin hopes to bring some of these same insights home on a smaller scale. He and his colleagues are planning to launch their own epidemiological study in Chicago to understand how different socioeconomic factors and access to care affect the largely Black and Latino patient populations on the south and southwest sides of the city who often have more severe versions of the disease.

“Even though we have one of the largest IBD centers in the world, there’s a clear disparity in diagnosis and access to expert care just a mile from here,” he said. “Taking something like this at a global level and getting down to the microcosm of the South Side of Chicago is incredibly important to find better ways to diagnose, treat, and eventually prevent IBD our own patients.”

Academics found that some children in need of a kidney transplant are facing inequalities in their care.

Black children are less likely to be put on the transplant waiting list, as are those from more deprived backgrounds, researchers from the University of Bristol found.

There are currently 137 children aged 17 and under on the kidney transplant waiting list in the UK.

Researchers set out to examine whether inequalities exist in access to kidney transplantation among children in the UK by analysing the UK Renal Registry and NHS Blood and Transplant data between 1996 and 2020.

They found that girls were 12% less likely to be put on a transplant waiting list compared to boys.

Children from the poorest backgrounds were 33% less likely to be put on the waiting list compared to those from the wealthiest.

And black children were 19% less likely to be put on the waiting list compared to their white peers.

Once children are on the waiting list, the disparities related to gender and income appeared to reduce, but disadvantages for black children persisted.

“We were particularly struck by how early these disparities appear in the transplant process,” said Dr Alice James, lead author of the study.

“It’s not just about who gets a transplant, but who even gets considered in the first place.

“Those from black ethnic backgrounds face systemic disadvantages even after being placed on the waitlist, including fewer living donor opportunities.”

When looking at kidney transplants given by a living donor within two years of being on the waiting list, the odds of getting a transplant are lower among those from poorer backgrounds and children of black or Asian ethnicity, according to the study, which has been presented to the ESOT (European Society for Organ Transplantation) Congress 2025.

Dr James added: “It is notable – and particularly disquieting – that such disparities are evident even in a paediatric population within a universal healthcare system like the NHS.

“The persistent disadvantage faced by children from black ethnic backgrounds even after wait-listing is especially striking, suggesting systemic or cultural barriers that extend beyond access alone.”

On gender inequalities seen in the study, she added: “The gender disparity in wait-listing, with girls being less likely to be wait-listed, may reflect implicit gender biases in clinical decision-making, differences in parental advocacy, or variation in disease presentation and severity between sexes.

“There may also be social factors influencing clinicians’ assumptions about transplant suitability or family engagement in the transplantation process.

“While evidence is limited in paediatric populations, adult studies suggest that women are often perceived as less suitable candidates due to comorbidities or psychosocial factors— perceptions that may inadvertently extend to female children.”

Fiona Loud, policy director at Kidney Care UK, said: “This research is shocking and it’s not good enough to see such heartbreaking inequalities so early in life.

“There are around 1,000 children receiving kidney replacement therapy via either dialysis or transplant in the UK.

“This is a relatively small number which should mean we have a real opportunity to change this and make sure we improve things for the future for children and young people.

“But right now it is very hard for families whose children have kidney failure.

“More work needs to be done to explore local barriers and raise awareness of the value and importance of living kidney donation through personalised and community education programmes.”

Professor Derek Manas, medical director for organ and tissue donation at NHS Blood and Transplant, which is responsible for allocating organs to people on the list, said: “These results will help hospital clinical teams across the UK to further understand and mitigate this issue.

“NHS Blood and Transplant does not decide which individual patients are added to the transplant waiting list, but we do manage how organs are allocated to patients and the research found that once patients are on the waiting list, they had equitable access to donations, irrespective of ethnicity or deprivation.

“The transplant community has come a long way in ensuring equity once listed but this study confirms we all have more to do.

“Kidneys also need to be matched and people from the same ethnicity are more likely to be a match.

“There are currently not enough donors from black and Asian backgrounds and we urge people to show their support for donation on the NHS Organ Donor Register and to tell their families they want to donate.”

An NHS England spokesperson said: “The decision to place somebody on the transplant list should never be affected by their gender, ethnicity or family income and this analysis is a stark reminder that, whilst we have made progress on tackling health inequalities, much remains to be done – and this will be at the heart of the 10 Year Health Plan.

“More widely, we know kidney failure disproportionately impacts people from Black African and Black Caribbean heritage so we would always encourage more donors from these backgrounds to come forward, and we have recently launched a new simple genetic blood test for these groups to help reduce the risk of kidney failure.”

A new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology has found that MDMA’s mood-enhancing effects may be partly driven by changes in brain systems related to serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin—neurochemical pathways that are involved in emotional and social behavior. The results support the growing interest in MDMA as a possible treatment for mental health conditions.

MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, is a synthetic stimulant with both energizing and hallucinogenic properties. In recent years, researchers have been exploring whether MDMA can be used in controlled therapeutic settings to help people with conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder or social anxiety. Its ability to reduce fear and increase feelings of connection makes it especially promising for patients who struggle with interpersonal difficulties. However, scientists still know relatively little about how MDMA produces these effects in the brain, or how these effects vary depending on dosage.

To explore these questions, researchers from the Medical University of Lublin and the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Poland tested the effects of MDMA on 3-week-old zebrafish. This developmental stage is roughly equivalent to adolescence in humans and represents a time when social behaviors are emerging and brain systems involved in emotion are still developing.

Zebrafish are small freshwater fish native to South Asia that have become widely used in biomedical research. They develop rapidly, are transparent in early stages, and share a high degree of genetic and physiological similarity with humans. Because their brains contain many of the same neurotransmitter systems as mammals, and their behavior can be easily observed and quantified, zebrafish are especially valuable for studying brain development, drug effects, and psychiatric disorders.

The researchers were particularly interested in how MDMA influences anxiety and sociability, and whether these effects could be linked to oxytocin—a hormone involved in social bonding and emotional regulation.

The scientists conducted several behavioral tests to assess anxiety and social behavior in the zebrafish. One test measured how closely the fish stuck to the edges of a new environment—a behavior known as thigmotaxis, which is often used as an indicator of anxiety in animals. Another test evaluated how much time the fish spent in a light versus dark area, since zebrafish tend to avoid darkness when they feel safe. Finally, a social preference test measured whether the fish were more likely to spend time near familiar conspecifics, or members of their species.

The zebrafish were divided into groups and exposed to various concentrations of MDMA. They were also treated with either an oxytocin receptor agonist, which mimics the effects of oxytocin, or an antagonist, which blocks those effects. For comparison, some fish were given diazepam, a known anti-anxiety medication. After behavioral testing, the researchers examined the expression of several genes in the fish’s brains, looking at those related to serotonin signaling, oxytocin, and vasopressin. They also analyzed how MDMA affected specific intracellular pathways involved in mood and behavior, such as AKT and ERK1/2 signaling.

The researchers found that MDMA had a dose-dependent effect on anxiety. At very low doses, it appeared to increase anxiety-like behavior. But at moderate doses, particularly 2.5 micromolar, MDMA reduced signs of anxiety. Fish at this dose spent more time in the center of a new environment and were quicker to explore dark areas—both behaviors associated with lower anxiety. However, at higher doses, MDMA began to reduce locomotion and showed signs of possible toxicity, suggesting that the therapeutic range is narrow.

In terms of social behavior, the lowest dose of MDMA (0.5 micromolar) increased the time fish spent near their peers, suggesting enhanced sociability. Interestingly, this prosocial effect was most noticeable at doses that increased anxiety, indicating a complex relationship between emotional and social responses. The oxytocin receptor agonist also promoted social interaction and showed anti-anxiety effects, but only under certain conditions.

In contrast, the antagonist had no noticeable effect on behavior, which may indicate that blocking the oxytocin system is not enough on its own to alter emotional or social responses in zebrafish.

On the molecular level, MDMA exposure led to reduced expression of genes involved in serotonin signaling, including two types of serotonin receptors and the serotonin transporter. These changes may reflect the compound’s action on serotonin release, which is known to be one of MDMA’s main effects in the brain.

At the same time, MDMA increased the expression of genes for oxytocin receptors and reduced the expression of vasopressin receptor genes. While MDMA did not appear to increase actual oxytocin levels in the brain, the changes in receptor expression suggest that it may make brain regions more sensitive to oxytocin’s effects.

The researchers also found that different doses of MDMA affected specific signaling pathways in the brain. At the lowest tested dose, MDMA reduced activation of the AKT pathway, which has been linked to social behavior in other animals. The oxytocin agonist, on the other hand, increased activity in the ERK1/2 pathway, which is known to be involved in anxiety regulation. These findings suggest that different aspects of MDMA’s effects—its influence on anxiety versus social behavior—may be driven by distinct biological mechanisms.

As with any study, there are caveats to consider. Most importantly, the study was conducted in zebrafish, whose brains are simpler than those of mammals and lack some structures found in humans. Although zebrafish share many of the same neurotransmitter systems and genetic pathways, findings in fish may not always translate directly to human biology. Additionally, the study only looked at the short-term effects of MDMA, and more work is needed to understand how repeated or long-term exposure might influence behavior or brain function.

Future research could build on these findings by examining how MDMA affects brain circuits at different developmental stages or by testing how the compound interacts with stress. The researchers also suggested that genetic tools such as CRISPR could be used to further investigate the role of specific receptors in mediating MDMA’s effects. As scientists work toward better treatments for conditions like social anxiety and post-traumatic stress, studies like this one offer a window into how compounds like MDMA could be used not just as recreational drugs, but as tools for healing.

The study, “Exploring the impact of MDMA and oxytocin ligands on anxiety and social responses: A comprehensive behavioural and molecular study in the zebrafish model,” was authored by Monika Maciag, Olga Doszyn, Artur Wnorowski, Justyna Zmorzynska, and Barbara Budzynska.

Prolonged emergency department (ED) length of stays and boarding times for older adults significantly increased between 2017 and 2024, highlighting systemic challenges for hospitals across the US, according to a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine.¹

The researchers noted that extended ED stays in older adults are associated with a higher risk of adverse events, such as mortality and delirium, as well as treatment delays, worse patient experiences, and loss of privacy. To improve care for this population, CMS implemented the Age-Friendly Hospital Measure in January 2025.²

This policy requires hospitals to limit total ED length of stay to under 8 hours and ensure admission to occur within 3 hours of the decision to admit. However, national data on these measures have been lacking.¹ To address this gap, the researchers conducted a cross-sectional study to establish national benchmarks.

Using the Epic Cosmos health records database, which includes data from 1633 hospitals, 295 million patients, and 78 million admissions, they analyzed ED encounters from January 2017 to December 2024.³ They focused on 2 key metrics for patients aged 65 and older, namely the proportion with an ED length of stay over 8 hours and the proportion of admitted patients waiting more than 3 hours from bed request to admission.¹

In 2017, 12% of 4,564,359 ED encounters involved a length of stay over 8 hours. By 2024, this rose to 20% of 12,392,737 encounters. The largest increase occurred in academic hospitals, where prolonged stays grew from 22% of 1,787,179 encounters in 2017 to 36% of 4,311,417 encounters in 2024.

During the same period, boarding times over 3 hours increased from 22% of 1,787,179 encounters in 2017 to 36% of 4,311,417 encounters in 2024. Again, the largest increase was seen in academic hospitals, where boarding rose from 31% in 2017 to 45% in 2024.

Trend analyses showed small annual increases in both measures from 2017 to 2020 (length of stay, 1.1% [95% CI, 0.6-1.6]; boarding, 2.8% [95% CI, 1.5-4.0]), followed by sharper rises from 2020 to 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic (length of stay, 4.2% [95% CI, 1.7-6.7]; boarding, 6.1% [95% CI, 2.5-9.8]). In contrast, from 2022 to 2024, both trends slightly declined (length of stay, –1.7% [95% CI, –2.3 to –1.1]; boarding, –3.2% [95% CI, –4.5 to –1.9]).

Although further investigation is needed, the researchers suggested the increases may be driven by growing patient complexity, increased demand, and ongoing staffing and resource shortages.

Lastly, they acknowledged the study’s limitations, one being that Epic overrepresents larger and academic hospitals. Also, not all hospitals that use Epic contribute to Cosmos. Despite this, the researchers expressed confidence in their findings and emphasized the need to address the declining ED experience for older US adults.

“Worsening ED LOSs [lengths of stay] and boarding contribute to ED crowding, reflect systemic health care dysfunction, and, most importantly, harm individual patients,” the authors concluded. “Addressing these trends is critical to safeguarding both the health of older adults and the health systems caring for them.”

References

1. Haimovich AD, Berry SD, Landon BE. Prolonged emergency department stays for older US adults. JAMA Intern Med. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.2006
2. FY 2025 hospital inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) and long-term care hospital prospective payment system (LTCH PPS) proposed rule—CMS-1808-P fact sheet. CMS. April 10, 2024. Accessed June 30, 2025. https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/fy-2025-hospital-inpatient-prospective-payment-system-ipps-and-long-term-care-hospital-prospective
3. Fast facts on US hospitals, 2024. American Hospital Association. 2024. Accessed June 30, 2025. https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2024/01/fast-facts-on-us-hospitals-2024-20240112.pdf

Zucchini, a versatile and delicious summer squash, has quickly risen to the top of shopping lists for eaters everywhere. Whether spiralized into zoodles or baked into bread, zucchini is a nutrient-packed vegetable that offers numerous benefits—from heart health to eye health to digestion. But what actually happens to your body when you make zucchini a regular part of your diet? Whether you’re a zucchini lover or new to this vibrant green squash, keep reading to discover why this veggie deserves a permanent spot in your diet. 

Why We Love Zucchini

May Keep Your Digestive System Regular

Zucchini is loaded with dietary fiber, especially in its skin, making it great for promoting healthy digestion. Fiber adds bulk to stool, which can improve bowel regularity and support overall gut health. “Zucchini’s fiber and water content can help soften stool and prevent constipation, while also feeding beneficial gut bacteria,” says Samantha DeVito, M.S., RD.

Supports Hydration

By including zucchini in your meals, you not only enjoy its delicious taste but also help your body meet its daily hydration needs in a natural and refreshing way. “Zucchini is about 95% water,” says Amanda Godman, M.S., RD, CDN. “This delicious vegetable can actually help prevent dehydration. It’s a great choice especially in the warmer summer months (zucchini is actually a summer squash)!” Proper hydration is essential for maintaining energy levels, regulating body temperature, and supporting various bodily functions. 

Delivers Antioxidants

Zucchini is rich in antioxidants, which help protect your cells from damage caused by harmful free radicals. Free radicals occur through natural bodily processes but can also be compounded by exposure to smoke, pollution or an unhealthy diet. When free radicals build up, they can lead to oxidative stress—a process linked to chronic diseases. “You’ll also benefit from its antioxidants, like vitamin C and beta carotene, which help reduce inflammation and support immune health,” says Lisa Young, Ph.D., RDN. Including antioxidant-rich foods like zucchini in your diet may help strengthen your body’s defenses against conditions such as heart disease and certain cancers.

Promotes Heart Health

This humble vegetable is a heart-healthy choice due to its potassium content and low sodium levels. Potassium helps regulate blood pressure by counteracting the effects of sodium. “Zucchini is a heart-healthy powerhouse, rich in potassium and fiber, making it an excellent choice for supporting cardiovascular health,” says Toby Amidor, M.S., RD.

Supports Eye Health

The antioxidants in zucchini aren’t just good for your internal organs; they also benefit your eyes. “One medium zucchini contains 4,160 micrograms of lutein and zeaxanthin, carotenoids essential for eye health. Lutein and zeaxanthin accumulate in the retina, where they exert antioxidant properties to reduce eye damage from age-related macular degeneration,” says Amy Brownstein, M.S., RDN. 

Nutrition Information

Zucchini offers a wide range of essential nutrients that your body needs to thrive. Here’s what you can find in one small raw zucchini (about 100 grams): 

• Calories: 19
• Carbohydrates: 3 grams
• Dietary fiber: 1 gram
• Total sugars: 2.5 grams
• Added sugar: 0 grams
• Protein: 1 gram
• Total fat: 0.3 grams
• Saturated fat: 0 grams
• Cholesterol: 0 mg
• Sodium: 8 mg
• Vitamin C: 18 mg (20% Daily Value)
• Vitamin B6: 0.2 mg (10% DV)
• Potassium: 261 mg (6% DV)

Is Zucchini Safe for Everyone?

While zucchini is considered safe for most people, there are a few precautions to keep in mind. Zucchini is part of the Cucurbitaceae family—a group of vegetables that includes squash, pumpkins and cucumbers. If you have a known allergy to cucurbit vegetables, you should avoid zucchini. Additionally, zucchini contains compounds called cucurbitacins, which can sometimes impart a bitter taste. While rare, consuming overly bitter zucchini can lead to adverse side effects like stomachaches. To avoid this, ensure your zucchini tastes fresh before cooking or eating it.

For individuals on specific medications, such as diuretics or potassium-sparing drugs, it’s a good idea to consult with your health care provider before increasing your zucchini intake, as its potassium content might interact with your treatment.

4 Ways to Enjoy Zucchini

Zucchini can be enjoyed in countless ways. Here are some creative ideas:

• Make zoodles: Up your veggie intake by making spiralized zucchini noodles. You can top them with your favorite marinara or pesto for a delicious pasta-like meal.
• Grill or roast: Brush zucchini slices with olive oil, sprinkle with your favorite herbs, and grill or roast for an easy side dish.
• Bake it into bread or muffins: Add zucchini to your favorite quick bread or muffin recipe for a moist, nutrient-packed treat.
• Try stuffed zucchini boats: Hollow out zucchini halves, fill with a mixture of ground meat, vegetables and cheese, and bake until tender.

Our Expert Take

Zucchini offers several health benefits, from supporting eye health to boosting heart health. Its high water and fiber content can help keep your digestive system regular, while its antioxidants can help protect your cells from oxidative stress. Plus, it’s incredibly easy to incorporate into your diet, whether as a main dish, snack or side.

However, like any food, it’s important to listen to your body. Monitor for any adverse reactions if you’re trying zucchini for the first time, and ultimately enjoy it as part of a balanced, varied diet. With its many benefits and delicious versatility, there’s no reason not to make zucchini a regular addition to your meals.

Newswise — A new paper in Cell Reports Medicine details the development of a nanoparticle-based system that delivers concentrated chemotherapy specifically to cancer cells and not normal cells, potentially allowing clinicians to administer higher, more effective doses of anti-cancer drugs while avoiding some of the well-known toxic side effects.

Glucose metabolism in cancer cells and healthy cells

Cancer cells are extremely difficult to distinguish from healthy cells — this is how they avoid detection by our bodies’ immune systems. It therefore remains a physiological challenge to kill cancer cells without damaging healthy cells in the process. To avoid toxic side effects, clinicians must administer treatments like chemotherapy and immunotherapy agents in limited doses, thereby restricting their effectiveness.

To address this problem, researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center sought to develop a drug delivery method that was released specifically near tumor cells. They achieved this by exploiting a well-known phenomenon called the “Warburg effect,” which involves a difference in the way cancer cells metabolize glucose compared to healthy cells. Instead of fully breaking down glucose to carbon dioxide and water to generate a lot of energy, cancer cells typically break down glucose only part way to a molecule called lactate, generating a smaller amount of energy.

“Depending on the cancer cell type, some solid tumors can accumulate more than 40-fold higher lactate concentration than normal,” said senior author Xiaoyang Wu, PhD, Associate Professor in the Ben May Department of Cancer Research at the University of Chicago. “So, the idea was to take advantage of this dramatic change in a specific metabolite and create a drug delivery system that specifically targets these lactate-rich environments.”

How does nanoparticle drug delivery work?

Wu and his colleagues used nanoparticles — specifically, microscopic silica particles with pores into which a variety of cancer drugs can be loaded. These particles, small enough to be injected into the bloodstream, have been used to improve drug delivery for decades, but only a few are currently approved for clinical use in cancer treatment.

The novelty of Wu’s nanoparticle is that it’s controlled by a lactate-specific switch. The switch has two parts: first is lactate oxidase, an enzyme that binds and breaks down lactate and produces hydrogen peroxide, and second is a hydrogen peroxide-sensitive molecule that caps the nanoparticle, preventing the drug from being released.

This way, when the nanoparticle is in lactate-poor environments, like healthy tissues in the body, the capping material remains intact, preventing the drug from causing any damage to these tissues. But in a lactate-rich environment like the area within and around a tumor, the lactate oxidase begins breaking down lactate, generating a high enough concentration of hydrogen peroxide to trigger the degradation of the capping material and release of the drug.

“I had been thinking about how to specifically target lactate for a long time, since it is so enriched in tumors,” said Wu. “But lactate itself is not a very reactive chemical, so it was difficult to create a system that chemically responded to lactate. The biggest innovation was designing a switch that translated this cancer-specific signal to a chemically active molecule: hydrogen peroxide.”

Using mice to model two different forms of cancer, Wu and his colleagues tested the nanoparticle’s ability to specifically release its cargo in tumors. As they expected, the drug was specifically released in the lactate-rich tumor environment, and not in healthy tissues. Compared to directly injecting the drug itself into the bloodstream — the typical method of administering chemo drugs — the nanoparticle was able to deliver a 10-fold higher concentration of the drug in the tumor. They also found that this delivery method enhanced outcomes like slowing tumor growth and increased survival relative to direct drug injection.

Another advantage of this method is that lactate concentration is already measured in cancer patients, since it’s a useful biomarker to indicate cancer progression.

“It’s very easy to quantify lactate in human patients using non-invasive imaging methods like MRI,” Wu said. “And since we can accurately quantify lactate in tumors, it would be a very good means of screening patients for clinical trials and predicting how they would respond to the treatment.”

Broad potential applications for lactate-gated nanoparticles

In initial tests of their nanoparticle platform, Wu and his colleagues focused largely on a common drug called doxorubicin, which is a primary therapy for various cancers like breast cancer, sarcoma, lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia. However, they also showed that several other chemotherapy drugs and immunotherapy drugs can be successfully loaded onto the nanoparticles.

“By designing this specific switch that controls drug release based on a well-characterized change in the cancer microenvironment, we hope to improve the safety profile for many drugs and allow an increased dose to be administered in order to more effectively kill cancer cells,” he said.

Cancer is not the only disease associated with increased lactate concentration. Patients with arthritis, for example, may have higher levels of lactate in their joints due to chronic inflammation. Because anti-inflammatory medications also suppress the immune response for the whole body, they can also put the patient at higher risk for infections. The lactate-gated nanoparticle, with its specific targeting of lactate-rich environments, would help avoid this general adverse effect just as it does with toxic cancer drugs.

Toward clinical implementation and future research

Wu co-founded an oncology startup called Alnair Therapeutics through the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to take this research to the next level.

“In the lab, you only need a tiny batch. For clinical trials, though, we need a 10-fold greater amount, because humans are so big! So, scaling up the manufacturing process is our current challenge,” Wu said. “The first goal is to make manufacturing work with Doxil [brand name for doxorubicin], since it’s so well-characterized. But we’re very interested in expanding the platform to other cancer therapy drugs, because high toxicity is a common problem.”

Wu is also interested in further researching the unique aspects of tumor metabolism.

“There are many more unknown differences between cancer cell metabolism and regular cell metabolism,” he said. “My personal interest is to figure out more about what’s changing in tumor cells and what kind of chemical signals we can use to target cancers, maybe not only through drug delivery, but through other approaches as well.”

The study, “Enabling tumor-specific drug delivery by targeting the Warburg effect of cancer,” was published in Cell Reports Medicine in January 2025. Additional authors include Jian Zhang, Tony Pan, Jimmy Lee, Sarah Ann King, Erting Tang, Yifei Hu, Lifeng Chen, Alex Hoover, and Jun Huang at the University of Chicago, Sanja Goldberg at Safra Children’s Hospital, Tel Aviv, Linyong Zhu at East China University of Science & Technology, Shanghai, Oliver S. King at the University of California, Irvine, Orange, CA, and Benjamin Dekel at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv.

This study was supported by National Institutes of Health grants R01OD023700, R21AR080761, R01DA047785, and R01AR78555, the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) Technology Impact Award, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and Israel Cancer Fund for Pediatric Sarcoma Grant, the Rally Foundation Outside the Box Grant, the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center Duckworth Family Commercial Promise Award, the Cancer Immunotherapy Team Science Award, the Pancreatic Cancer SPORE grant, the UCHAP pilot award, and the Ullman Family Team Science Award (to X.W.) and National Institutes of Health New Innovator Award (to J.H.).