Heidelberg University

Oncofetal cell states: cell plasticity drives invasion in premetastatic colorectal tumors

In a recent publication in Nature , Buissant des Amorie et al. provide evidence that an oncofetal cell state which is associated with advanced disease, chemoresistance and metastatic competence emerges already in early-stage T1 colorectal cancer (CRC). Intriguingly, oncofetal cel...

Impact of CPAP and ventilator system resistance on respiratory effort in healthy volunteers

Abstract Introduction Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is widely used for the treatment of acute and chronic respiratory failure and inspiratory support pressure (ΔP insp ) can be added to achieve non-invasive ventilation (NIV). We performed a physiological study to det...

Gene Expression of TGF-β1 , Matrix Metalloproteinases, and Collagen in Keloid Patients and Their Growth Patterns in 2D and 3D Cell Cultures: An In Vitro Study

Background/Aim: Keloids result from abnormal wound healing and are characterized by excess fibroblast activity, extracellular matrix (ECM) accumulation, and elevated collagen types. The contemporary research often relies on 2D cell cultures, which do not fully replicate keloid pa...

Pediatric intensive care follow-up in Germany is rarely established and highly heterogeneous: a nationwide survey of 20 PICUs

BACKGROUND: Survival after pediatric critical illness has improved substantially, but many survivors and their families experience long-term physical, neurocognitive, psychological and social sequelae, summarized as post-intensive care syndrome in pediatrics and in families. Stru...

Patient-reported outcomes after lateral unicompartmental and total knee arthroplasty: a propensity score-matched cohort study

Abstract Introduction Comparative evidence on patient-reported outcomes (PROs) after lateral unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) and total knee arthroplasty (TKA) remains limited. We compared PROs between cohorts matched for demographic characteristics and baseline knee func...

Sea surface warming suppresses primary sea spray aerosol number production

Abstract. Sea spray aerosol (SSA) influences climate through direct and indirect interactions with radiation. However, the magnitudes of these interactions remain poorly constrained, in part due to a lack of understanding of the influences of sea surface temperature (SST) on SSA...

Barriers & coverage outcomes of inactivated polio vaccine & oral polio vaccine in humanitarian settings: a scoping review

Polio is targeted for global eradication by 2029. Immunization campaigns face significant challenges in humanitarian emergencies due to instability, population displacement, and health infrastructure collapse. The two primary vaccines used, Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) and Ora...

miR-155-5p drives coordinated tumor and macrophage reprogramming across multiple cancer entities

Abstract Background T cell-based immunotherapies have improved cancer treatment, however their efficacy is frequently limited by tumor-intrinsic resistance mechanisms and by the immune suppressive tumor microenvironment, counteracting tumor specific immune responses through impai...

A targetable dependency on nonsense-mediated decay for cellular homeostasis and immune control in small cell lung cancer

Abstract Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is one of the most aggressive malignancies, characterized by rapid metastatic dissemination and poor overall survival. Despite harboring excessive alterations, expectedly resulting in immunogenic neoantigens, patients with SCLC remain largel...

Towards A Universal Analytical Model of Population III Star Formation: A Bridge Between Cosmological Scales and Protostars

Abstract We construct an analytical model of Population III star formation that connects the cosmological radiation background to sub-AU protostellar disk fragmentation, a dynamic range inaccessible to any single simulation. Our approach is based on combining separate models of t...

Disruption of sphingolipid metabolism promotes tau seeding through endolysosomal membrane rigidification and rupture

Endolysosomal dysfunction is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and related tauopathies, yet underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. This study investigates the role of sphingolipid metabolism in maintaining endolysosomal membrane integrity and its impact on tau aggregatio...

Logrolling affects the relative performance of majority and unanimity rule

Abstract We consider a committee facing binary decisions on a number of proposals. If members vote sincerely and payoffs are symmetrically distributed, we show analytically that simple majority rule is the best q-majority rule in an aggregate or expected payoff sense. We argue th...

OncoRAG: graph-based retrieval enabling clinical phenotyping from oncology notes using local mid-size language models

Abstract Oncology notes contain the richest clinical detail, yet they remain largely inaccessible at scale because extracting structured phenotypes requires either substantial language model infrastructure, curated training data, or cloud computing under regulatory constraints. W...

Observation of critical scaling in the Bose gas universality class

Critical exponents characterize the divergent scaling of thermodynamic quantities near phase transitions and allow for the classification of physical systems into universality classes. While quantum gases thermalizing by interparticle interactions fall into the XY model universal...

DVE-1 is a telomere-binding protein and links the NuRD complex to telomere regulation in C. elegans

Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences at the ends of linear chromosomes bound by specialized proteins. In our previous quantitative proteomics screen for telomere-binding proteins of Caenorhabditis elegans , we identified DVE-1, a homolog of mammalian SATB proteins and a transcr...

Beyond benchmarking: an expert-guided consensus approach to spatially aware clustering

Spatial omics technologies have revolutionized the study of tissue architecture and cellular heterogeneity by integrating molecular profiles with spatial localization. In spatially resolved transcriptomics, delineating higher-order anatomical structures is critical for understand...

Clinical and neurobiological correlates of tardive dyskinesia in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and mood disorders

Abstract Tardive dyskinesia (TD) is a persistent sensorimotor syndrome associated with antipsychotic exposure in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) and mood disorders (MOD), yet its neurobiological basis remains poorly understood. We investigated whether TD represents a disti...

Effectiveness of an interactive music tablet intervention to reduce procedural anxiety in children: a randomized controlled trial

Abstract Procedural anxiety in children is common and associated with maladaptive behavior, reduced cooperation, and increased perioperative stress. Although music-based interventions show promise, few are designed for routine clinical care. We evaluated an interactive tablet-bas...

Estimating differing causal roles of glutamate and GABA genes on brain and behavior in autism

Abstract The excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance theory suggests that excitatory and inhibitory alterations underlies autism characteristics. However, genetic underpinnings of this imbalance and its impact on brain function and behavior remains unclear. We explored causal links...

Daratumumab, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone in transplant-ineligible newly diagnosed multiple myeloma: MAIA final survival analysis

Abstract In previous analyses of MAIA, daratumumab plus lenalidomide/dexamethasone (D-Rd) significantly improved progression-free survival and overall survival (OS) versus lenalidomide/dexamethasone (Rd) in transplant-ineligible newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (NDMM). We report...