As we age, our hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells (HSCs) become less able to produce new red and white blood cells and other vital blood components—contributing to chronic inflammation and accelerating the onset of blood cancers and degenerative diseases. Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute-designated Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center (MECCC) have found that failing HSC function can be prevented or even reversed by reducing iron levels in these adult stem cells. The findings published March 7 in the print edition of the journal Cell Stem Cell. https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(24)00041-9

A new PET radiotracer can differentiate diseased tissues from healthy tissues based on fructose metabolism, according to new research published in the March issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Fructose metabolism—or fructolysis—is indicative of a variety of diseases, and by noninvasively mapping fructolysis physicians can more accurately detect diseases and treat them earlier. With this new fructose-based imaging dye, researchers compared 4FDF to the clinical standard for glucose mapping, FDG, in a mouse model. Like FDG, 4FDF accumulated in tumor tissue, but unlike FDG, it did not accumulate in healthy brain or healthy heart, two organs with very high FDG uptake. When inflammation was induced in the brain and heart, both organs showed strong 4FDF signals. Bone uptake was minimized with 4FDF, further supporting the need for specific mapping of tissues that have undergone the glucose-to-fructose fuel switch that… 

A research team led by Tomoya Nakazawa of Hamamatsu Photonics (Japan) recently developed a novel methodology to estimate BGLs from NIR measurements. Their work, which could revolutionize noninvasive blood glucose monitoring, was published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics. The core contribution of this study is a new blood glucose level index that the research team derived from basic NIR formulas. Their approach begins with the extraction of oxyhemoglobin (HbO2) and deoxyhemoglobin (Hb) signals from NIR measurements. Through the analysis of massive amounts of data on NIR measurements, the researchers realized that the phase delay (asynchronicity) between the low-frequency and oscillating components of HbO2 and Hb signals is closely related to the degree of oxygen consumption during each cardiac cycle, thereby serving as a gauge for metabolism. “This phase delay-based metabolic index, which has not been reported by other researchers,…