🧠 Alzheimer's just got reverse uno'd in mice (not slowed - reversed)

Remember when the best we could hope for with Alzheimer's was "maybe it'll progress slightly slower"? Well, scientists at Case Western just said hold my NAD+ and actually reversed the disease in mice. Full cognitive recovery. Meanwhile, we've got wireless brain implants that beam information through your skull using tiny LEDs, a Chinese space mouse who came home and immediately got pregnant (relatable), skin that glows green to warn you about infections, and researchers finally figuring out why so many IVF embryos fail to implant. Science really said, "new year, new neurological possibilities."

RESEARCH

Every Alzheimer's drug on the market does the same thing: it slows down the inevitable. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University just flipped the script with a compound called P7C3-A20 that achieved complete cognitive recovery in mice with advanced disease.

The secret? Forget amyloid plaques. Turns out Alzheimer's brains are essentially running on empty - NAD+ levels drop by 45% in advanced disease, and NAD+ is the molecule your neurons need for basically everything: energy, DNA repair, staying alive. P7C3-A20 restores that balance by boosting NAMPT, the enzyme that makes NAD+.

Mice with advanced Alzheimer's performed as well as healthy controls on memory and learning tests after treatment. The drug reversed tau phosphorylation, blood-brain barrier damage, neuroinflammation, and restored the brain's ability to make new neurons. It even normalized blood levels of p-tau217, the biomarker doctors now use to diagnose Alzheimer's in humans.

Before you raid the supplement aisle: senior author Dr. Andrew Pieper explicitly warned against over-the-counter NAD+ supplements, which can push levels dangerously high and potentially promote cancer. P7C3-A20 restores balance without overshooting. His company, Glengary Brain Health, is working on human trials, though no timeline yet. And yes, mice aren't humans - as Dr. Pieper noted, efficacy in animal models doesn't guarantee the same results in human patients. But after decades of marginal progress, actual reversal feels like a different universe.

RESEARCH

What if you could restore lost senses without drilling into someone's brain? Northwestern University researchers built a postage-stamp-sized implant that sits under the scalp and beams patterned light directly through the skull to talk to neurons.

The device uses optogenetics - neurons genetically modified to respond to light - and delivers signals via 64 micro-LEDs, each the diameter of a human hair. Red light penetrates tissue well enough to reach the cortex without any skull penetration. It's completely wireless and battery-free, powered by the same near-field communication tech in your phone's tap-to-pay.

In experiments, mice learned to identify specific stimulation patterns among dozens of alternatives and consistently chose the correct reward port. They couldn't tell researchers what they perceived, but their behavior showed they got the message loud and clear.

The potential applications read like science fiction: restoring vision, hearing, and touch sensation for prosthetic limbs, pain control without opioids, and stroke rehabilitation. Unlike Neuralink's electrode-based approach (now in around a dozen human patients), this doesn't penetrate brain tissue. The catch? It requires gene therapy to make neurons light-sensitive, and that's not yet approved for human cortical applications. So we're still in mouse territory, but it's a fundamentally different approach to brain-computer interfaces - less stabbing, more glowing.

NEWS

File this under "questions we needed answered for Mars colonization": can female mammals reproduce after spaceflight? A mouse aboard China's Tiangong space station just answered with a definitive yes.

Four mice (two male, two female) launched on Shenzhou-21 in October 2025 and spent roughly two weeks orbiting 390 kilometers above Earth. One female gave birth to nine healthy pups on December 10th, about 26 days after returning on Shenzhou-21 - six survived, which researchers called a normal survival rate. Mom's nursing normally, pups are developing well.

This marks the first mouse birth following spaceflight and China's first mammalian space biology experiment. (Soviet space dog Strelka technically holds the overall mammal record from 1960, but rodent reproductive systems are far closer to human biology.) Previous studies showed male mice housed on the ISS for 35 days successfully fathered offspring after returning, and frozen embryos developed normally in microgravity, but nobody had tested whether the whole female mouse reproductive system could handle the trip and still function.

The mission had some drama - schedule changes created potential food shortages, and ground teams had to test emergency rations. They settled on soy milk (pumped through an external port) while AI monitored the mice's eating and sleep patterns. Controlled lighting kept their circadian rhythms intact.

For anyone dreaming of permanent lunar bases or Mars colonies, this is genuinely important data. Short-term spaceflight doesn't destroy mammalian female fertility. One small step for the mouse, one moderately reassuring data point for humanity.

RESEARCH

Japanese researchers created a "living sensor display" - essentially a patch of genetically engineered human skin cells that glows green when it detects inflammation. No batteries. No electronics. Just biology doing surveillance.

The system uses human keratinocyte stem cells modified to produce enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) when TNF-α activates the NF-κB pathway. TNF-α binds to receptors, triggers the pathway, and the cells start glowing proportionally to the inflammation level. Peak brightness hits around 17 hours after the trigger, visible right through the skin.

In immunodeficient mice, the patch remained functional for over 200 days - continuously regenerating through normal skin cell turnover. The body essentially maintains it for free. When inflammation subsides, the glow fades. It's reversible, intuitive, and requires zero user input.

Lead researcher Professor Shoji Takeuchi from the University of Tokyo noted that "unlike conventional devices that require power sources or periodic replacement, this system is biologically maintained by the body itself."

The obvious catches: the fluorescent protein might trigger immune reactions in people with normal immune systems, you'd need cells derived from your own body, and there are legitimate concerns about always-visible health indicators with "no off switch." Privacy implications aside, walking around with a biological mood ring for infection seems both incredibly useful and mildly dystopian. Researchers say veterinary applications are more realistic in the near term. Your dog might glow before you do.

RESEARCH

Here's a frustrating reproductive mystery: IVF can create perfect embryos, but roughly half of transfers fail because the embryo simply... doesn't implant. Nobody really understood why, because studying human implantation in real time is basically impossible.

Chinese researchers built a 3D "womb on a chip" that models the exact moment an embryo attaches to the uterine lining. It combines miniature uterine tissue structures (endometrioids) with microfluidic technology that circulates hormones and nutrients through tiny channels. They tested it with roughly 1,000 stem cell-derived embryo mimics and about 50 donated human embryos.

The system successfully replicated all implantation stages: positioning, attachment, and invasion. More importantly, when they used tissue from patients with recurrent implantation failure, the model showed exactly why their embryos weren't sticking. They then screened 1,119 FDA-approved drugs and found that avobenzone (yes, the sunscreen ingredient) boosted implantation rates from 5% to about 25% in those problem cases.

Before anyone gets too excited: this is absolutely not an artificial womb. Collaborator Jun Wu from UT Southwestern was explicit: "I don't think it's anywhere near an artificial womb. That's still science fiction." The system can't sustain development past early stages and lacks blood vessels and immune cells.

But for the millions dealing with unexplained infertility, being able to test why their specific uterine environment might be hostile to embryos - and potentially finding drugs to fix it - is a genuine breakthrough. Simbryo Technologies already offers a commercial version of this assay. The black box of human reproduction just got a little more transparent.

So this week, we learned that Alzheimer's might be a battery problem, brain implants don't necessarily need to touch your brain, space doesn't break mammalian fertility, your skin could become a diagnostic tool, and we're finally figuring out why perfectly good embryos fail to implant. The common thread? Scientists are getting creative about problems everyone assumed were unsolvable.

Did the glowing skin patch make you immediately think about privacy implications? Wondering if your NAD+ levels are tanking as we speak? Want to debate whether sunscreen ingredients belong inside uteruses? Hit reply! We read every email while nervously checking whether our skin is supposed to be glowing.

If this made you feel something (confusion, hope, mild existential dread about the future of reproduction), forward it to someone who still thinks biotech is boring. We're building something here, and apparently so is science.

Keep questioning everything (especially your cellular energy metabolism),

Prateek & Jere

P.S. Someone please tell the avobenzone researchers that "sunscreen fixes infertility" is the wildest headline we've had to write with a straight face.