The COVID vaccine is out -- and no one needs it more than the elderly. But vaccines don't work as well in older people. A group at Oxford is trying to address this by adding a simple (but nasty-smelling) naturally-occurring chemical that makes damaged cells eat themselves.
autophagy
The fight against cancer has been one tough war. Perhaps the most difficult battle has been finding drugs that selectively kill cancer cells while sparing the rest. A research group at Washington University Medical School has come up with a very clever approach — starving the cancer cells.
Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi was honored for discovering autophagy, which is a type of programmed cell death. Some cells in multicellular organisms, like animals and plants, choose to self-destruct for the greater benefit of the organism. This can occur for a variety of reasons.