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The tour included visits to CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center), Greentown Labs, LabCentral, The Engine, MassRobotics, and Harvard Innovation Labs - each playing a vital role in supporting technology startups and scientific enterprise.

The delegates met with entrepreneurs, investors, and research leaders to understand how these organisations facilitate the transition from cutting-edge research to commercial success. They observed how dedicated innovation hubs provide early-stage companies with access to lab space, venture funding, and corporate partnerships, creating an environment where ideas can rapidly develop into high-growth businesses.

The visit highlighted the impact of physical infrastructure in driving innovation. The Engine, for example, supports startups developing breakthrough technologies by offering 200,000 square feet of lab space, funding, and specialised resources. Greentown Labs, the largest climate tech incubator in North America, and LabCentral, a shared lab facility for biotech startups, provide entrepreneurs with critical resources and networks to scale their businesses.

These hubs foster dense, high-energy ecosystems where startups, researchers, and investors work in close proximity. Co-location with major research institutions and established tech companies further accelerates innovation by facilitating knowledge exchange and collaboration.

Cambridge, UK, is already a leading centre for research and innovation. However, the visit reinforced the need for investment in dedicated innovation infrastructure alongside the existing world-class science to scale up commercial success. Boston’s innovation growth has been underpinned by over $1.5bn in state funding over the past 15 years, ensuring startups have access to space, funding, and industry connections.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, said: "Kendall Square demonstrates what is possible when world-class research, investment, and entrepreneurial ambition come together in a concentrated ecosystem.

"Cambridge, UK, has all the ingredients to be a global leader in science-driven enterprise, but we must ensure our innovation infrastructure matches our research excellence. This visit reinforced the urgency of scaling up our support for deep-tech and life sciences startups to drive economic growth and tackle global challenges."
 

A delegation of university representatives and innovation leaders from Cambridge, UK, recently visited Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to examine one of the world’s most successful innovation hubs.

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Yes

Today sees the launch of the POrtal for Patient and Public Engagement in Dementia Research (POPPED) website, where anyone can give their feedback on dementia research projects.

Dementia affects 50 million people worldwide and 1 million people in the UK. Current treatments are limited, but research has led to some significant recent advances. For example, the first drugs which slow down the disease are now licensed in the UK and potential dementia blood tests are being trialled.

Scientists are also turning to existing drugs to see if they may be repurposed to treat dementia. As the safety profile of these drugs is already known, the move to clinical trials can be accelerated significantly. Researchers want to ask members of the public which drugs they would like to see prioritised for these clinical trials.

Dr Ben Underwood, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, said: “One thing that always improves research into medical conditions is the involvement of people with experience of them – in many respects, you are the experts, rather than us.

“As dementia is common, almost everyone has some experience of it, either through family, friends, work or meeting people with dementia in general life. It’s a problem across society and we want a wide range of opinions for the best way to tackle it.”

Dr Underwood has teamed up with Linda Pointon, a Programme Manager at the Department of Psychiatry, to create a website where everyone can give their feedback on dementia research projects. Linda herself has experience of caring for her mother-in-law, who had frontotemporal dementia and passed away in 2020.

Linda said: “We’re launching our website because we want as many people as possible to share their views and help us guide the direction of our research. It’s a great opportunity for all of us who have been affected by dementia, either directly or caring for a friend or relative, to help researchers understand what aspects of these potential treatments are important and meaningful, both in terms of benefits and side-effects.”

The information collected by the POPPED team will be used to help inform AD-SMART, a trial to be led by Imperial College London, which will test several existing drugs alongside a placebo to quickly determine if any can slow early Alzheimer’s progression.

Dr Underwood added: “Instead of asking a few people what might be helpful, our website gives us the opportunity to ask thousands of people. The more people who use it, the more powerful it will be, so I’d encourage everyone to visit the site and tell us what they think. We can use it to work together to beat dementia, a condition whose effects I see in my clinic every day.”

Cambridge researchers are seeking the views of people with lived experience of dementia – patients and their friends and families – on which existing drugs should be repurposed for clinical trials to see whether they can slow or halt the progress of dementia.

One thing that always improves research into medical conditions is the involvement of people with experience of them – in many ways, they are the experts, not usBen UnderwoodToa55 (Getty Images)Elderly woman putting pills into pill box for the week - stock photo

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Yes

Using advanced analysis based on full genome sequences, researchers from the University of Cambridge have found evidence that modern humans are the result of a genetic mixing event between two ancient populations that diverged around 1.5 million years ago. About 300,000 years ago, these groups came back together, with one group contributing 80% of the genetic makeup of modern humans and the other contributing 20%.

For the last two decades, the prevailing view in human evolutionary genetics has been that Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, and descended from a single lineage. However, these latest results, reported in the journal Nature Genetics, suggest a more complex story.

“The question of where we come from is one that has fascinated humans for centuries,” said first author Dr Trevor Cousins from Cambridge’s Department of Genetics. “For a long time, it’s been assumed that we evolved from a single continuous ancestral lineage, but the exact details of our origins are uncertain.”

“Our research shows clear signs that our evolutionary origins are more complex, involving different groups that developed separately for more than a million years, then came back to form the modern human species,” said co-author Professor Richard Durbin, also from the Department of Genetics.

While earlier research has already shown that Neanderthals and Denisovans – two now-extinct human relatives – interbred with Homo sapiens around 50,000 years ago, this new research suggests that long before those interactions – around 300,000 years ago – a much more substantial genetic mixing took place. Unlike Neanderthal DNA, which makes up roughly 2% of the genome of non-African modern humans, this ancient mixing event contributed as much as 10 times that amount and is found in all modern humans.

The team’s method relied on analysing modern human DNA, rather than extracting genetic material from ancient bones, and enabled them to infer the presence of ancestral populations that may have otherwise left no physical trace. The data used in the study is from the 1000 Genomes Project, a global initiative that sequenced DNA from populations across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

The team developed a computational algorithm called cobraa that models how ancient human populations split apart and later merged back together. They tested the algorithm using simulated data and applied it to real human genetic data from the 1000 Genomes Project.

While the researchers were able to identify these two ancestral populations, they also identified some striking changes that happened after the two populations initially broke apart.

“Immediately after the two ancestral populations split, we see a severe bottleneck in one of them—suggesting it shrank to a very small size before slowly growing over a period of one million years,” said co-author Professor Aylwyn Scally, also from the Department of Genetics. “This population would later contribute about 80% of the genetic material of modern humans, and also seems to have been the ancestral population from which Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged.”

The study also found that genes inherited from the second population were often located away from regions of the genome linked to gene functions, suggesting that they may have been less compatible with the majority genetic background. This hints at a process known as purifying selection, where natural selection removes harmful mutations over time.

“However, some of the genes from the population which contributed a minority of our genetic material, particularly those related to brain function and neural processing, may have played a crucial role in human evolution,” said Cousins.

Beyond human ancestry, the researchers say their method could help to transform how scientists study the evolution of other species. In addition to their analysis of human evolutionary history, they applied the cobraa model to genetic data from bats, dolphins, chimpanzees, and gorillas, finding evidence of ancestral population structure in some but not all of these.

“What’s becoming clear is that the idea of species evolving in clean, distinct lineages is too simplistic,” said Cousins. “Interbreeding and genetic exchange have likely played a major role in the emergence of new species repeatedly across the animal kingdom.”

So who were our mysterious human ancestors? Fossil evidence suggests that species such as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis lived both in Africa and other regions during this period, making them potential candidates for these ancestral populations, although more research (and perhaps more evidence) will be needed to identify which genetic ancestors corresponded to which fossil group.

Looking ahead, the team hopes to refine their model to account for more gradual genetic exchanges between populations, rather than sharp splits and reunions. They also plan to explore how their findings relate to other discoveries in anthropology, such as fossil evidence from Africa that suggests early humans may have been far more diverse than previously thought.

“The fact that we can reconstruct events from hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago just by looking at DNA today is astonishing,” said Scally. “And it tells us that our history is far richer and more complex than we imagined.”

The research was supported by Wellcome. Aylwyn Scally is a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Trevor Cousins is a member of Darwin College, Cambridge.

 

Reference:
Trevor Cousins, Aylwyn Scally & Richard Durbin. ‘A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans.’ Nature Genetics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41588-025-02117-1

Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the globe.

Our history is far richer and more complex than we imaginedAylwyn ScallyJose A. Bernat Bacete via Getty ImagesPlaster reconstructions of the skulls of human ancestors

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Yes

The South West of England has one of the country’s lowest levels of student progression into higher education. One of the key objectives of the visit was to engage with pupils and teachers in an area that is conspicuously under-represented in applications and admissions to Cambridge.

First stop was Colyton Grammar School, in east Devon, where Professor Prentice talked to school leaders about the barriers encountered by students from the region wishing to attend university. Joining her were representatives from Downing College, which has a particular connection to the area.They were also joined by Mike Nicholson, the University’s Director of Recruitment, Admissions and Participation, and Tom Levinson, Head of Widening Participation and Collaborative Outreach.

The University of Cambridge and Downing College have partnered with the University of Bristol and the Sutton Trust to support the Colyton Foundation Your Future Story – a programme that aims to support high attaining students from under-resourced backgrounds in the South West to pursue higher education opportunities.

In the evening, the Vice-Chancellor attended a reception in Bristol which was attended by nearly 50 Cambridge alumni, including one who matriculated in 1949. 

The following day the Vice-Chancellor travelled to North Somerset for a visit to Priory Community School, part of an Academy Trust in Worle, near Weston-super-Mare. Mike Nicholson led a school assembly for year 11 students. Later that morning, Xanthe Robertson, Access and Recruitment Officer of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, led assemblies for 1,500 students in Years 7 through to 10. 

The Vice-Chancellor and colleagues were interviewed by members of a student news team named after the journalist Jill Dando, who grew up in Worle. The visitors noted that among the school’s notable alumni was Stephen Jenkins, current Professor of Physical & Computational Surface Chemistry at Cambridge.

The next stop was Weston College, a further and higher education College in Weston-super-Mare that provides education and vocational training to students from the age of 14 through to adulthood. There the group met Sixth Form students to hear about their aspirations.

The final leg of the journey took the Cambridge delegation to St Bede’s Catholic and Sixth Form College in Bristol. The school is part of the HE+ network, through which the University of Cambridge and Colleges work together with schools FE establishments across the country to encourage applications from talented students.

Reflecting on her visit, the Vice-Chancellor said: “Travelling to the South West allowed me to learn more about the region and to understand some of the barriers to aspiration and attainment that prevent bright students from pursuing higher education. The students we met were impressive. Their teachers’ commitment to supporting their educational journey is outstanding. I hope that the outreach partnerships between the University, the Colleges and local schools will help us attract talented students to Cambridge, and will more generally encourage them to consider going to university.”

This visit to the South West followed the Vice-Chancellor’s trip to Rochdale, Manchester and Liverpool a year ago and her visit to Peterborough in the autumn of 2024.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, has led a delegation to Devon, North Somerset and Bristol. It was the first time a serving Cambridge Vice-Chancellor had travelled to the region in an official capacity to engage with local schools and alumni.

The students we met were impressive Professor Deborah Prentice

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Yes

The visit provided the Minister with an opportunity to meet with senior academics to discuss the success of EU funding streams and collaboration with EU institutions, and how this has enabled decisive breakthroughs at Cambridge. 

Professor Erwin Reisner, Professor of Energy and Sustainability, greeted the Minister at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and demonstrated a history of the Chemistry Department’s scientific breakthroughs, before welcoming him to the Reisner Laboratory. During their tour of the Laboratory, Mr Thomas-Symonds also met with Professor Reisner’s team of researchers, some of whom are in receipt of funding from the EU’s prestigious Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship programme.  

Professor Reisner, who has a successful history of securing ERC and Horizon funding awards, then introduced his own work, which focuses on the development of concepts to make fuels, chemicals and plastics from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.  

Mr Thomas-Symonds also received an insight into their research through a series of demonstrations. PhD student Beverly Low supervised him in the Lab’s glovebox, preparing a sample for the solar reforming of biomass waste. Her colleague Andrea Rogolino showed how the team use sunlight to produce hydrogen from biomass waste. 

Professor Erwin Reisner said: “The Minister showed great talent in the lab - he handled a glovebox very well and prepared a sample to produce hydrogen from biomass using solar energy. The visit provided us an opportunity to emphasise the importance of a close alliance with our friends and colleagues in Europe.”

After his tour of the Reisner Lab, the Minister attended a roundtable discussion with Cambridge ERC grant-holders and University leaders. He was joined by academics from across disciplines and heard from those in receipt of funding from variety of EU funding streams.  

The Minister spoke to Professor Chiara Ciccarelli (Professor of Physics), Professor Erwin Reisner (Professor of Energy and Sustainability), Professor Marcos Martinón-Torres (Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science) and Professor David Fairen-Jimenez (Professor of Molecular Engineering and co-founder of successful Cambridge spinouts).  

The roundtable was Chaired by leading Professor of EU Law, Professor Catherine Barnard, and joined by the University’s Director of Research Services, Dr Andrew Jackson. 

Following his visit to the Department of Chemistry, the Minister delivered The Mackenzie-Stuart Lecture, at the University’s Centre for European Legal Studies. 

Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, the Paymaster General and Minister with responsibility for EU relations, visited Cambridge on Thursday 13 March.  

Photo credit: Nick Saffell / Cambridge University

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YesLicence type: Attribution

“Many thousands of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing are missing out on school in India,” said Dr Abhimanyu Sharma, from Cambridge’s Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics, the study’s author. “This has a huge impact on their wellbeing and life chances.”

“One of the main reasons for this very high dropout rate is that their schools do not offer education in sign language.”

Dr Sharma’s study, published today in Language Policy, explains that sign language continues to be ‘shunned’ in most Indian schools because it is still stigmatised as a visible marker of deafness. But, he argues, the alternative preferred by many schools, ‘oralism’ harms the school attainment of deaf students.

“Outside of India, ‘oralism’ is widely criticised but the majority of schools in India continue to use it,” Dr Sharma says. “Gesturing is not sign language, sign language is a language in its own right and these children need it.”

“When I was in primary school in Patna, one of my fellow students was deaf. Sign language was not taught in our school and it was very difficult for him. I would like to support the charities, teachers and policymakers in India who are working hard to improve education for such students today.”

Dr Sharma acknowledges that the Indian Government has taken important steps to make education more inclusive and welcomes measures such as the establishment of the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre in 2015. But, he argues, far more work is needed to ensure that DHH students receive the education which they need and to which they are legally entitled.

Sharma calls for constitutional recognition for Indian Sign Language (ISL) as well as recognition of ISL users as a linguistic minority. Being added to India’s de facto list of official languages would direct more Government financial support to Indian Sign Language.

“Central and state governments need to open more schools and higher education institutes for deaf and hard-of-hearing students,” Sharma also argues.

“In the whole of India, there are only 387 schools for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. The Government urgently needs to open many more specialist schools to support the actual number of deaf and hard-of-hearing children, which has been underestimated.”

He points out that deaf and hard-of-hearing people were undercounted in India’s last census because of the use of problematic terminology. The 2011 census reported around 5 million deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the country but in 2016, the National Association of the Deaf estimated that the true figure was closer to 18 million people.

Sharma also highlights the need for more higher education institutions for these students as there are very few special colleges for them, such as the St. Louis Institute for Deaf and Blind (Chennai, Tamil Nadu). He also calls for an increase in the number of interpreter training programs available across Indian universities.

Dr Sharma advises central and state governments to conduct regular impact assessments of new policy measures to ensure that they are improving inclusion for deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

He also calls on the government to invest in research to support more targeted approaches to teaching and learning for DHH students, and to support public awareness campaigns to tackle biases and negative social attitudes towards deafness.

Dr Sharma’s study examines developments in Indian legislation and policy relating to DHH people since the 1950s. He highlights the fact that parliamentary debates in the Upper House about DHH people declined from 17 in the 1950s, to just 7 in the 1990s, before rising to 96 in the 2010s.

India’s language policy requires pupils to learn three languages at the secondary stage of schooling. Given the problematic nature of the three-language formula for deaf students, the 1995 Persons with Disabilities Act rescinds this requirement for these learners and decrees that they should learn only one language.

The drawback of the 1995 Act, however, is that it does not mention the use of sign language and does not specify how language learning for such learners will be realised. Dr Sharma recognises that the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 brought significant improvements but highlights the gap between decrees and implementation. The 2016 Act decrees that the Government and local authorities shall take measures to train and employ teachers who are qualified in sign language and to promote the use of sign language.

“In practice, India does not have enough teachers trained to support deaf and hard-of-hearing students, but I am positive that the country can achieve this,” Dr Sharma said.

References

A. Sharma, ‘India’s language policy for deaf and hard-of-hearing people’, Language Policy (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s10993-025-09729-7

For the % of India’s deaf and hard-of-hearing children out-of-school in 2014, see National Sample Survey of Estimation of Out-of-School Children in the Age 6–13, Social and Rural Research Institute 2014

Around one in five (over 19%) of India’s deaf and hard-of-hearing children were out-of-school in 2014, according to a survey conducted for the Indian Government. A new study calls on the Government to address this ongoing educational crisis by recognising Indian Sign Language as an official language; rejecting ‘oralism’, the belief that deaf people can and should communicate exclusively by lipreading and speech; and opening more schools and higher education institutes for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students.

India does not have enough teachers trained to support deaf and hard-of-hearing studentsAbhimanyu SharmaYogendra Singh via UnsplashFemale students in an Indian classroom. Photo: Yogendra Singh via Unsplash

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YesLicence type: Attribution

The technique – known as deep brain stimulation – is to be trialled at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, and King’s College Hospital, London. The team behind the Brain-PACER: Brain Pacemaker Addiction Control to End Relapse study is currently recruiting individuals with severe alcohol or opioid addiction who are interested in taking part.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical procedure that delivers ongoing stimulation to the brain. DBS acts as a brain pacemaker to normalise abnormal brain activity. It is well-tolerated, effective and widely used for neurological disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Although there have been several proof-of-concept studies that suggest DBS is effective in addictions, Brain-PACER – a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, Kings College London and the University of Oxford – is the first major, multicentre study to use DBS to treat craving and relapse in severe addiction.

Chief Investigator Professor Valerie Voon, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, said: “While many people who experience alcohol or drug addiction can, with the right support, control their impulses, for some people, their addiction is so severe that no treatments are effective. Their addiction is hugely harmful to their health and wellbeing, to their relationships and their everyday lives.

“Initial evidence suggests that deep brain stimulation may be able to help these individuals manage their conditions. We’ve seen how effective it can be for other neurological disorders from Parkinson’s to OCD to depression. We want to see if it can also transform the lives of people with intractable alcohol and opioid addiction.”

The primary aim of the Brain-PACER study is to assess the effects of DBS to treat alcohol and opioid addiction in a randomised controlled trial study. Its mission is twofold: to develop effective treatments for addiction and to understand the brain mechanisms that drive addiction disorders.

DBS is a neurosurgical treatment that involves implanting a slender electrode in the brain and a pacemaker under general anaesthesia. These electrodes deliver electrical impulses to modulate neural activity, which can help alleviate symptoms of various neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Keyoumars Ashkan, Professor of Neurosurgery at King’s College Hospital and the lead surgeon for the study, said: “Deep brain stimulation is a powerful surgical technique that can transform lives. It will be a major leap forward if we can show efficacy in this very difficult disease with huge burden to the patients and society.”

During surgery, thin electrodes are carefully placed in precise locations of the brain. These locations are chosen based on the condition being treated. For addiction, the electrodes are placed in areas involved in reward, motivation, and decision-making.

Harry Bulstrode, Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, said: "We see first-hand how deep brain stimulation surgery can be life-changing for patients with movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor. Thanks to this trial, I am now hopeful that we can help patients and their families – who have often struggled for years – by targeting the parts of the brain linked to addiction."

Dr David Okai, Visiting Senior Lecturer from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, added: “DBS is safe, reversible and adjustable, so it offers a flexible option for managing chronic conditions. We hope it will offer a lifeline to help improve the quality of life for patients whose treatment until now has been unsuccessful.”

Details on the trial, including criteria for participation and how to sign up, can be found on the Brain-PACER website.

The research is supported by the Medical Research Council, UK Research & Innovation.

People suffering from severe alcohol and opioid addiction are to be offered a revolutionary new technique involving planting electrodes in the brain to modulate brain activity and cravings and improve self-control.

We’ve seen how effective deep brain stimulation can be for neurological disorders from Parkinson’s to OCD to depression. We want to see if it can also transform the lives of people with intractable alcohol and opioid addictionValerie VoonShamir R, Noecker A and McIntyre CGraphic demonstrating deep brain stimulation

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YesLicence type: Attribution

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology, have created an organic semiconductor that forces electrons to move in a spiral pattern, which could improve the efficiency of OLED displays in television and smartphone screens, or power next-generation computing technologies such as spintronics and quantum computing.

The semiconductor they developed emits circularly polarised light—meaning the light carries information about the ‘handedness’ of electrons. The internal structure of most inorganic semiconductors, like silicon, is symmetrical, meaning electrons move through them without any preferred direction.

However, in nature, molecules often have a chiral (left- or right-handed) structure: like human hands, chiral molecules are mirror images of one another. Chirality plays an important role in biological processes like DNA formation, but it is a difficult phenomenon to harness and control in electronics.

But by using molecular design tricks inspired by nature, the researchers created a chiral semiconductor by nudging stacks of semiconducting molecules to form ordered right-handed or left-handed spiral columns. Their results are reported in the journal Science.

One promising application for chiral semiconductors is in display technology. Current displays often waste a significant amount of energy due to the way screens filter light. The chiral semiconductor developed by the researchers naturally emits light in a way that could reduce these losses, making screens brighter and more energy-efficient.

“When I started working with organic semiconductors, many people doubted their potential, but now they dominate display technology,” said Professor Sir Richard Friend from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who co-led the research. “Unlike rigid inorganic semiconductors, molecular materials offer incredible flexibility—allowing us to design entirely new structures, like chiral LEDs. It’s like working with a Lego set with every kind of shape you can imagine, rather than just rectangular bricks.”

The semiconductor is based on a material called triazatruxene (TAT) that self-assembles into a helical stack, allowing electrons to spiral along its structure, like the thread of a screw.

“When excited by blue or ultraviolet light, self-assembled TAT emits bright green light with strong circular polarisation—an effect that has been difficult to achieve in semiconductors until now,” said co-first author Marco Preuss, from the Eindhoven University of Technology. “The structure of TAT allows electrons to move efficiently while affecting how light is emitted.”

By modifying OLED fabrication techniques, the researchers successfully incorporated TAT into working circularly polarised OLEDs (CP-OLEDs). These devices showed record-breaking efficiency, brightness, and polarisation levels, making them the best of their kind.

“We’ve essentially reworked the standard recipe for making OLEDs like we have in our smartphones, allowing us to trap a chiral structure within a stable, non-crystallising matrix,” said co-first author Rituparno Chowdhury, from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “This provides a practical way to create circularly polarised LEDs, something that has long eluded the field.”

The work is part of a decades-long collaboration between Friend’s research group and the group of Professor Bert Meijer from the Eindhoven University of Technology. “This is a real breakthrough in making a chiral semiconductor,” said Meijer. “By carefully designing the molecular structure, we’ve coupled the chirality of the structure to the motion of the electrons and that’s never been done at this level before.”

The chiral semiconductors represent a step forward in the world of organic semiconductors, which now support an industry worth over $60 billion. Beyond displays, this development also has implications for quantum computing and spintronics—a field of research that uses the spin, or inherent angular momentum, of electrons to store and process information, potentially leading to faster and more secure computing systems.

The research was supported in part by the European Union’s Marie Curie Training Network and the European Research Council. Richard Friend is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Rituparno Chowdhury is a member of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
 

Reference:
Rituparno Chowdhury, Marco D. Preuss et al. ‘Circularly polarized electroluminescence from chiral supramolecular semiconductor thin films.’ Science (2025). DOI:10.1126/science.adt3011

Researchers have advanced a decades-old challenge in the field of organic semiconductors, opening new possibilities for the future of electronics.

It’s like working with a Lego set with every kind of shape you can imagine, rather than just rectangular bricksRichard FriendSamarpita Sen, Rituparno ChowdhuryConfocal microscopy image of a chiral semiconductor

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Yes

Using real world data from 1,600 patients, available through a database created for speeding up research and innovation, the team also found that its reliability differs significantly in winter compared to autumn.

Asthma is a common lung condition that can cause wheezing and shortness of breath, occasionally severe. Around 6.5% of people over six years old in the UK are affected by the condition. Treatments include the use of inhalers or nebulisers to carry medication into the lungs.

The majority of asthma attacks occur at nighttime or early in the morning. Although this may in part be due to cooler nighttime air and exposure to dust mites and allergens, it also suggests that circadian rhythms – our ‘body clocks’ – likely play a role.

Researchers at the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Heart and Lung Research Institute, a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (RPH), wanted to explore whether these circadian rhythms may also have an impact on our ability to diagnose asthma, using routinely performed clinical testing.

Typically, people with suspected asthma will be offered a spirometry test, which involves taking a deep breath in, then breathing out hard and fast for as long as possible into a tube to assess lung function. They will then be administered the drug salbutamol via an inhaler or nebuliser, and shortly afterwards retake the spirometry test.

Salbutamol works by opening up the airways, so a positive test result – that is, a difference in readings between the initial and follow-up spirometry tests – means that the airways must have been narrower or obstructed to begin with, suggesting that the patient could have asthma.

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) has recently set up the Electronic Patient Record Research and Innovation (ERIN) database so that researchers can access patient data in a secure environment to help in their research and speed up improvements in patient care.

Using this resource, the Cambridge team analysed data from 1,600 patients referred to CUH between 2016 and 2023, adjusted for factors such as age, sex, body mass index (BMI), smoking history, and the severity of the initial impairment in lung function.

In findings published today in Thorax, the researchers found that starting at 8.30am, with every hour that passed during the working day, the chances of a positive response to the test – in other words, the patient’s lungs responding to treatment, suggesting that they could have asthma – decreased by 8%.

Dr Ben Knox-Brown, Lead Research Respiratory Physiologist at RPH, said: “Given what we know about how the risk of an asthma attack changes between night and day, we expected to find a difference in how people responded to the lung function test, but even so, we were surprised by the size of the effect.

“This has potentially important implications. Doing the test in the morning would give a more reliable representation of a patient's response to the medication than doing it in the afternoon, which is important when confirming a diagnosis such as asthma.”

The researchers also discovered that individuals were 33% less likely to have a positive result if tested during autumn when compared to those tested during winter.

Dr Akhilesh Jha, a Medical Research Council Clinician Scientist at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant in Respiratory Medicine at CUH, said that there may be a combination of factors behind this difference.

“Our bodies have natural rhythms – our body clocks,” Jha said. “Throughout the day, the levels of different hormones in our bodies go up and down and our immune systems perform differently, for example. Any of these factors might affect how people respond to the lung function test.

“The idea that the time of day, or the season of the year, affects our health and how we respond to treatments is something we’re seeing increasing evidence of. We know, for example, that people respond differently to vaccinations depending on whether they’re administered in the morning or afternoon. The findings of our study further support this idea and may need to be taken into account when interpreting the results of these commonly performed tests.”

Reference
Knox-Brown, B et al. The effect of time of day and seasonal variation on bronchodilator responsiveness: The SPIRO-TIMETRY study. Thorax; 12 March 2025; DOI: 10.1136/thorax-2024-222773

A lung function test used to help diagnose asthma works better in the morning, becoming less reliable throughout the day, Cambridge researchers have found.

Throughout the day, the levels of different hormones in our bodies go up and down and our immune systems perform differently. Any of these factors might affect how people respond to the lung function testAkhilesh JhaKoldunov (Getty Images)Man testing breathing function by spirometry - stock photo

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Yes

Too Hot to Think Straight, Too Cold to Panic, a new report from Cambridge Judge Business School, BCG and the University of Cambridge’s climaTraces Lab argues that failing to invest comes with significant economic consequences. 

Allowing global warming to reach 3°C by 2100 could reduce cumulative economic output by 15% to 34%. Alternatively, investing 1% to 2% in mitigation and adaptation would limit warming to 2°C, reducing economic damages to 2% to 4%. This net cost of inaction is equivalent to 11% to 27% of cumulative GDP—equivalent to three times global health care spending, or eight times the amount needed to lift the world above the global poverty line by 2100.

“Research on climate change impacts across all regions and sectors is expanding rapidly,” said Kamiar Mohaddes, an Associate Professor in Economics and Policy at Cambridge Judge Business School and Director of the climaTRACES Lab.

Read: The compelling economic case

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) offer a strong case for investing in climate mitigation and adaptation to avoid damage to the global economy. 

Research on climate change impacts across all regions and sectors is expanding rapidlyKamiar MohaddesFront page of report

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Yes

25 new spinouts were formed in 2023-24, taking Cambridge Enterprise’s total portfolio to 174 companies. In the same period, it has helped with the submission of more than 450 patent applications and more than 750 approvals for commercial and research licences.  

New initiatives designed to further boost the number of high-potential spinouts emerging from the University, include the Technology Investment Fund (TIF) which during its first nine months has invested more than £2 million across 20 projects.

Founders at the University of Cambridge, a Cambridge Enterprise programme to support University entrepreneurs, launched two new initiatives START 1.0 and SYNC in 2023-24. START 1.0 is an accelerator programme for very early-stage founders. Its first cohort included 11 companies, working to address global challenges ranging from climate change to healthcare with seven securing further funding within six months. SYNC is a new co-founder matching programme that will support, accelerate and scale new founders and companies from the University.

Dr Jim Glasheen, Chief Executive, Cambridge Enterprise, said: “Cambridge Enterprise remains committed to ensuring the innovations that spring from the University achieve their broader positive impact on society, and to our vital role in activating and enhancing the globally recognised Cambridge innovation ecosystem.”

Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation, added: “Cambridge Enterprise is crucial in translating the University’s research into positive social and economic change. From the full spectrum of innovation services that it provides for the University to its critical role in enabling transformational impact from University research, Cambridge Enterprise sets the standard for university innovation.”

Reflecting on the success of Cambridge Enterprise's innovation activities, its Chair, Ajay Chowdhury, said: “Cambridge Enterprise is in an incredibly strong position, with consultancy and research tools revenues at an all-time high, new initiatives to accelerate innovation and spinout formation, record levels of venture investment and great achievements for our portfolio companies.”

In partnership with the University and Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge Enterprise leads Innovate Cambridge, an inclusive, ambitious innovation roadmap for Cambridge to encourage collaboration and action to help Cambridge realise its potential as a globally leading cluster. In October 2024, a ten-year plan for the city and region was unveiled at the Innovate Cambridge Summit, attended by over 400 leaders.

Read Cambridge Enterprise's Annual Review 2024

In its 2024 Annual Review, Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s innovation arm, reports significant growth across a wide range of activities supporting the translation of University research into societal benefit and helping Cambridge realise its potential as a globally leading cluster.

Cambridge Enterprise is crucial in translating the University’s research into positive social and economic change.Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation, University of CambridgeUniversity building

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Yes

The men’s match saw Cambridge open the scoring with a fifth-minute penalty from George Bland (King’s), but Oxford responded with two tries, both converted, to establish a 21-6 lead. Despite the early setback, Cambridge rallied before halftime with tries from Matt Riddington (St Edmund’s) and Alex Christey (St John’s), both converted by Bland, to narrow the gap to 21-18.

Oxford extended their lead early in the second half but Cambridge refused to relent. A try from Ryan Santos (Jesus), followed by a decisive score from Luke John (Emmanuel), turned the tide in Cambridge’s favour. Bland’s conversion and a late penalty sealed a dramatic 35-28 victory, marking the Light Blues’ third consecutive Varsity Match win. 

The women’s match proved to be a tougher challenge and despite a valiant defensive effort, the Light Blues were unable to contain a strong Oxford side. The Dark Blues scored two early tries and added a third before halftime to give Oxford a 15-0 lead.

Cambridge showed renewed determination in the second half, with Zoe Wright (Clare) scoring a try after a quick tap penalty. Phoebe Jackson’s (Jesus) conversion brought the score to 15-7, but Oxford crossed the line twice more to secure a 27-7 victory for the Dark Blues. While the women’s team didn’t go home with the trophy their relentless tackling and commitment to the game earned them praise.

Congratulations to all four teams who competed on the day, their Coaches and everyone working behind the scenes. It was a day that demonstrated the spirit and determination that define University sports and The Varsity Matches.

Varsity women's match

Cambridge men’s team:

Bland; Santos, John, Riddington, Andrew; Bottomley, Holdroyd; Collins, Gompels, Edwards, Beaumont, Kantolinna, Hughes, Christey, Tosa. 

Replacements: Petty (Collins, 40), Hide (Holdroyd, 55), Allinson (Bottomley, 55), Jones (Beaumont, 55), Day (Santos, 77). Not used: Du Roy, Addai, Evans.

Cambridge women’s team: 

Smith; Embil, Yau, Jackson, Chaoui; McGregor, Glazier; Jones, Warner, Heathfield, Harding, Wright, Millar, Martin, Brown.

Replacements: Haspel (McGregor, 31). Latimer (Harding, 40), Crozier (Martin, 40), Lord (Chaoui, 40), Ubom (Jones, 41), Weatherhogg (Heathfield, 71), Newton-Ingham (Smith, 74), Chadirchi (Warner, 79).

Cambridge University experienced a day of two halves at The Varsity Matches on Saturday 8 March, with the men’s team securing a thrilling 35-28 victory over Oxford University’s Dark Blues while the women’s side fell to a 27-7 defeat in a hard-fought contest at Saracens’ StoneX Stadium.

 

CURUFC

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YesLicence type: Attribution

Researchers studying British Labrador retrievers have identified multiple genes associated with canine obesity and shown that these genes are also associated with obesity in humans.  

The dog gene found to be most strongly associated with obesity in Labradors is called DENND1B. Humans also carry the DENND1B gene, and the researchers found that this gene is also linked with obesity in people.  

DENND1B was found to directly affect a brain pathway responsible for regulating the energy balance in the body, called the leptin melanocortin pathway.  

An additional four genes associated with canine obesity, but which exert a smaller effect than DENND1B, were also mapped directly onto human genes. 

“These genes are not immediately obvious targets for weight-loss drugs, because they control other key biological processes in the body that should not be interfered with.

But the results emphasise the importance of fundamental brain pathways in controlling appetite and body weight,” said Alyce McClellan in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, and joint first author of the report.  

“We found that dogs at high genetic risk of obesity were more interested in food,” said Natalie Wallis in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, and joint first author of the report.  

She added: “We measured how much dogs pestered their owners for food and whether they were fussy eaters. Dogs at high genetic risk of obesity showed signs of having higher appetite, as has also been shown for people at high genetic risk of obesity.”  

The study found that owners who strictly controlled their dogs’ diet and exercise managed to prevent even those with high genetic risk from becoming obese - but much more attention and effort was required.  

Similarly, people at high genetic risk of developing obesity will not necessarily become obese, if they follow a strict diet and exercise regime - but they are more prone to weight gain. 

As with human obesity, no single gene determined whether the dogs were prone to obesity; the net effect of multiple genetic variants determined whether dogs were at high or low risk. 

The results are published today in the journal 'Science'. 

“Studying the dogs showed us something really powerful: owners of slim dogs are not morally superior. The same is true of slim people. If you have a high genetic risk of obesity, then when there’s lots of food available you’re prone to overeating and gaining weight unless you put a huge effort into not doing so,” said Dr Eleanor Raffan, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience who led the study. 

She added: “By studying dogs we could measure their desire for food separately to the control owners exerted over their dog’s diet and exercise. In human studies, it’s harder to study how genetically driven appetite requires greater willpower to remain slim, as both are affecting the one person.” 

The current human obesity epidemic is mirrored by an obesity epidemic in dogs. About 40-60% of pet dogs are overweight or obese, which can lead to a range of health problems. 

Dogs are a good model for studying human obesity: they develop obesity through similar environmental influences as humans, and because dogs within any given breed have a high degree of genetic similarity, their genes can be more easily linked to disease. 

To get their results, the researchers recruited owners with pet dogs in which they measured body fat, scored ‘greediness’, and took a saliva sample for DNA. Then they analysed the genetics of each dog. By comparing the obesity status of the dog to its DNA, they could identify the genes linked to canine obesity. 
Dogs carrying the genetic variant most associated with obesity, DENND1B, had around 8% more body fat than those without it.  

The researchers then examined whether the genes they identified were relevant to human obesity. They looked at both large population-based studies, and at cohorts of patients with severe, early onset obesity where single genetic changes are suspected to cause the weight gain.  

The researchers say owners can keep their dogs distracted from constant hunger by spreading out each daily food ration, for example by using puzzle feeders or scattering the food around the garden so it takes longer to eat, or by choosing a more satisfying nutrient composition for their pets. 

Raffan said: “This work shows how similar dogs are to humans genetically. Studying the dogs meant we had reason to focus on this particular gene, which has led to a big advance in understanding how our own brain controls our eating behaviour and energy use.”  

The research was funded by Wellcome, the BBSRC, Dogs Trust, Morris Animal Foundation, MRC, France Genomique consortium, European Genomic Institute for Diabetes, French National Center for Precision Diabetic Medicine, Royal Society, NIHR, Botnar Foundation, Bernard Wolfe Health Neuroscience Endowment, Leducq Fondation, Kennel Club Charitable Trust. 

Reference 
Wallis, N.J. et al: ‘Canine genome-wide association study identifies DENND1B as an obesity gene in dogs and humans.’ Science, March 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.ads2145  
 

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered genes linked to obesity in both Labradors and humans. They say the effects can be over-ridden with a strict diet and exercise regime.

Dogs at high genetic risk of obesity showed signs of having higher appetite, as has also been shown for people at high genetic risk of obesity.Natalie WallisJames Barker on UnsplashLabrador licking nose

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YesLicence type: Attribution-Noncommerical

In the battle against climate disinformation, native advertising is a fierce foe. A study published in the journal npj Climate Action by researchers from Boston University (BU) and the University of Cambridge, evaluates two promising tools to fight misleading native advertising campaigns put forth by big oil companies.

Many major news organisations now offer corporations the opportunity to pay for articles that mimic in tone and format the publication’s regular reported content. These ‘native advertisements’ are designed to camouflage seamlessly into their surroundings, containing only subtle disclosure messages often overlooked or misunderstood by readers. Fossil fuel companies are spending tens of millions of dollars to shape public perceptions of the climate crisis.

“Because these ads appear on reputable, trusted news platforms, and are formatted like reported pieces, they often come across to readers as genuine journalism,” said lead author Michelle Amazeen from BU’s College of Communication. “Research has shown native ads are really effective at swaying readers’ opinions.”

The study is the first to investigate how two mitigation strategies — disclosures and inoculations — may reduce climate misperceptions caused by exposure to native advertising from the fossil fuel industry. The authors found that when participants were shown a real native ad from ExxonMobil, disclosure messages helped them recognise advertising, while inoculations helped reduce their susceptibility to misleading claims.

“As fossil fuel companies invest in disguising their advertisements, this study furthers our understanding of how to help readers recognise when commercial content is masquerading as news and spreading climate misperceptions,” said co-author Benjamin Sovacool, also from BU.

“Our study showed that communication-led climate action is possible and scalable by countering covert greenwashing campaigns, such as native advertising, at the source,” said co-author Dr Ramit Debnath from Cambridge’s Department of Architecture. “The insights we’ve gained from this work will help us design better interventions for climate misinformation.”

The research builds on a growing body of work assessing how people recognise and respond to covert misinformation campaigns. By better understanding these processes, the researchers hope that they can prevent misinformation from taking root and changing people’s beliefs and actions on important issues like climate change.

‘The Future of Energy’ ad

Starting in 2018, readers of The New York Times website encountered what appeared to be an article, titled “The Future of Energy,” describing efforts by oil and gas giant ExxonMobil to invest in algae-based biofuels. Because it appeared beneath the Times’ masthead, in the outlet’s typical formatting and font, many readers likely missed the small banner at the top of the page mentioning that it was an ad sponsored by ExxonMobil.

The ad, part of a $5-million-dollar campaign, neglected to mention the company’s staggering carbon footprint. It also omitted key context, The Intercept reported, like that the stated goal for algae-based biofuel production would represent only 0.2% of the company’s overall refinery capacity. In a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Massachusetts cited the ad as evidence of the company’s “false and misleading” communications, with several states pursuing similar cases.

Putting two interventions to the test

The researchers examined how more than a thousand participants responded to “The Future of Energy” ad in a simulated social media feed.

Before viewing the ad, participants saw one, both, or neither of the following intervention messages:

An inoculation message designed to psychologically ‘inoculate’ readers from future influence by broadly warning them of potential exposures to misleading paid content. In this study, the inoculation message was a fictitious social media post from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminding people to be wary of online misinformation.

A disclosure message with a simple line of text appearing on a post. In this study, the text “Paid Post by ExxonMobil” accompanied the piece. Studies have shown that more often than not, when native ads are shared on social media, this disclosure disappears.

Bolstering psychological resilience to native ads

The team found that the ad improved opinions of ExxonMobil’s sustainability across the study’s many participants, regardless of which messages they saw, but that the interventions helped to reduce this effect. Some of the key findings include:

The presence of a disclosure more than doubled the likelihood that a participant recognised the content as an ad. However, the participants who had seen a disclosure and those who had not were equally likely to agree with the statement “companies like ExxonMobil are investing heavily in becoming more environmentally friendly.”

Inoculation messages were much more effective than disclosures at protecting people’s existing beliefs on climate change, decreasing the likelihood that participants would agree with misleading claims presented in the ad.

“Disclosures helped people recognise advertising. However, they didn’t help them recognise that the material was biased and misleading,” said Amazeen. “Inoculation messaging provides general education that can be used to fill in that gap and help people resist its persuasive effects. Increasing general awareness about misinformation strategies used by self-interested actors, combined with clearer labels on sponsored content, will help people distinguish native ads from reported content.”

Reference:
Michelle A. Amazeen et al. ‘The “Future of Energy”? Building resilience to ExxonMobil’s disinformation through disclosures and inoculation.’ npj climate action (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44168-025-00209-6

Adapted from a Boston University story.

A sneaky form of advertising favoured by oil giants influences public opinion with climate action misperceptions, but researchers are studying potential solutions.

rob dobi vai Getty ImagesFueling the Fire of Misinformation - stock photo

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Yes

The pledge, made in February 2020 by the UK’s nine leading game shooting and rural organisations, aimed to benefit wildlife and the environment and ensure a market for the healthiest game meat food products. 

But a Cambridge team, working with the University of the Highlands and Islands, has consistently shown that lead shot was not being phased out quickly enough to achieve a complete voluntary transition to non-toxic ammunition by 2025. In a final study, published today in the journal Conservation Evidence, the team concludes that the intended transition has failed.

The team has closely monitored the impact of the pledge every year since its introduction, recruiting expert volunteers to buy whole pheasants from butchers, game dealers and supermarkets across Britain and recover embedded shotgun pellets for analysis. 

In 2025, the study - called SHOT-SWITCH - found that of 171 pheasants found to contain shot, 99% had been killed with lead ammunition. 

This year, for the first time, the team also analysed shotgun pellets found in red grouse carcasses shot in the 2024/25 shooting season and on sale through butchers’ shops and online retailers. In all 78 grouse carcasses from which any shot was recovered, the shot was lead. 

“Many members of the shooting community had hoped that the voluntary pledge away from lead ammunition would avert the need for regulation. But the voluntary route has now been tested - with efforts made by many people - and it has not been successful,” said Professor Rhys Green in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and lead author of the report.

Eating game meat killed using lead shot will expose people unnecessarily to additional dietary lead. Lead is toxic to humans even in very small concentrations; the development of the nervous system in young and unborn children is especially sensitive to its effects. As a result, many food safety agencies now advise that young children and pregnant women should avoid, or minimise, eating game meat from animals killed using lead ammunition.

Discarded shot from hunting also poisons and kills many tens of thousands of the UK’s wild birds each year.

Despite proposing the voluntary change, many shooting organisations and some individual shooters do not support proposed regulatory restrictions on lead ammunition.

Green said: “Private individuals pay a lot of money to shoot pheasants on some private estates - and people don’t like to change their habits. It’s a bit like wearing car seatbelts, or not smoking in pubs. Despite the good reasons for doing these things, some people were strongly against using regulation to achieve those changes, which are now widely accepted as beneficial. The parallel with shooting game with lead shotgun ammunition is striking.” 

Danish shooters now say that the legal ban on lead introduced in Denmark around 30 years ago was justified. They say it has not reduced the practicality or popularity of their sport, and has increased its acceptability to wider society.

“Although a few large UK estates have managed to enforce non-lead ammunition on pheasant shoots, some have had to be quite draconian in order to do it, with the estate gamekeepers insisting on loading the guns for the shooters,” added Green.

In the 2020/21 and 2021/22 shooting seasons, over 99% of the pheasants studied were shot using lead ammunition. This figure dropped slightly to 94% in 2022/23 and 93% in 2023/24, with the remaining pheasants killed by ammunition made of steel or a metal called bismuth, before rising to 99% again in 2024/25.

Retail pressure

The researchers also checked up on a pledge made by Waitrose in 2019 to stop selling game killed with lead ammunition. 

They found that the retailer had been largely let down by suppliers, and that some of their shooters continued to shoot using lead despite making assurances to the contrary. As a result, Waitrose did not sell oven-ready pheasants at all between 2021 and 2023. It sold pheasants again in January 2024 and the 2024/25 season, but the researchers showed that the majority had been killed using lead shot.

In 2022 the National Game Dealers Association (NGDA), which buys game and sells it to the public and food retailers, also announced it would no longer sell game of any kind that had been shot using lead ammunition. But this pledge has since been withdrawn. The researchers bought 2024/25 season pheasants from three NGDA member businesses and found that all had been shot with lead ammunition.

Inside influence 

The researchers also analysed all articles relating to the voluntary transition published in the magazine of the UK’s largest shooting organisation, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. They found that articles near the beginning of the five-year pledge communicated clear, frequent and positive messages about the effectiveness and practicality of non-lead shotgun ammunition.

But by 2023, mentions of the transition and encouragement to follow it had dropped dramatically. 

The upshot

At the request of the Defra Secretary of State, the UK Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has assessed the risks to the environment and human health posed by lead in shot and bullets. Its report, published in December 2024, proposes that the UK Government bans the use of lead shot and large calibre bullets for game shooting because of the risks they pose to the environment and health. This recommendation is currently under review by Defra ministers, with a response due in March 2025.

Steel shotgun pellets are a practical alternative to lead and can be used in the vast majority of shotguns, as can other safe lead-free alternatives. But the results of this study indicate UK hunters remain unwilling to make the switch voluntarily.

Since 2010, UK governments have preferred voluntary controls over regulation in many areas of environment and food policy and have suggested that regulation be used only as a last resort.

“Shooting organisations did a lot of questionnaire surveys when the pledge was introduced in 2020, and the results suggested many shooters thought the time had come to switch away from lead ammunition. Those responses stand in contrast to what we’ve actually measured for both pheasant and grouse,” said study co-author Dr Mark Taggart at the University of the Highlands and Islands.

Toxic lead

A previous study led by Green and colleagues found that pheasants killed by lead shot contained many fragments of lead too small to detect by eye or touch, and too distant from the shot to be removed without throwing away a large proportion of otherwise useable meat. This means that eating pheasant killed using lead shot is likely to expose consumers to raised levels of lead in their diet, even if the meat is carefully prepared to remove whole shotgun pellets and the most damaged tissue.

Lead has been banned from use in paint and petrol for decades. It is toxic to humans when absorbed by the body and there is no known safe level of exposure. Lead accumulates in the body over time and can cause long-term harm, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease and kidney disease in adults. Lead is known to lower IQ in young children and affect the neurological development of unborn babies.

The studies were part-funded by the RSPB, Waitrose & Partners, and an anonymous donor. They were supported by a group of unpaid volunteers, who are co-authors of the reports.
 

References

Green, R.E. et al: ‘The proportion of common pheasants shot using lead shotgun ammunition in Britain has barely changed despite five years of voluntary efforts to switch from lead to non-lead ammunition.’ March 2025, Conservation Evidence. DOI: 10.52201/CEJ22/EXYS6184

Green, R.E. et al.: ‘Sampling of red grouse carcasses in Britain indicates no progress during an intended five-year voluntary transition from lead to non-lead shotgun ammunition.’ February 2025, Conservation Evidence. DOI: 10.52201/CEJ22/YYWM1722
 

A voluntary pledge made by UK shooting organisations in 2020 to replace lead shot with non-toxic alternatives by 2025 has failed, analysis by Cambridge researchers finds.

The voluntary route has now been tested - with efforts made by many people - and it has not been successful.Rhys GreenAndy Hay, RSPBAdult pheasant

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YesLicence type: Attribution-Noncommerical

They say that discovering the mechanism will support ongoing clinical trials, and could lead to the targeted use of aspirin to prevent the spread of susceptible types of cancer, and to the development of more effective drugs to prevent cancer metastasis. 

The scientists caution that, in some people, aspirin can have serious side-effects and clinical trials are underway to determine how to use it safely and effectively to prevent cancer spread, so people should consult their doctor before starting to take it.

Studies of people with cancer have previously observed that those taking daily low-dose aspirin have a reduction in the spread of some cancers, such as breast, bowel, and prostate cancers, leading to ongoing clinical trials. However, until now it wasn’t known exactly how aspirin could prevent metastases.

Professor Rahul Roychoudhuri in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, who led the work, said: “Despite advances in cancer treatment, many patients with early stage cancers receive treatments, such as surgical removal of the tumour, which have the potential to be curative, but later relapse due to the eventual growth of micrometastases – cancer cells that have seeded other parts of the body but remain in a latent state. 

“Most immunotherapies are developed to treat patients with established metastatic cancer, but when cancer first spreads there’s a unique therapeutic window of opportunity when cancer cells are particularly vulnerable to immune attack. We hope that therapies that target this window of vulnerability will have tremendous scope in preventing recurrence in patients with early cancer at risk of recurrence.”

The study is published today in the journal 'Nature'.  

The scientists say their discovery of how aspirin reduces cancer metastasis was serendipitous. They were investigating the process of metastasis, because, while cancer starts out in one location, 90% of cancer deaths occur when cancer spreads to other parts of the body.

The scientists wanted to better understand how the immune system responds to metastasis, because when individual cancer cells break away from their originating tumour and spread to another part of the body they are particularly vulnerable to immune attack. The immune system can recognise and kill these lone cancer cells more effectively than cancer cells within larger originating tumours, which have often developed an environment that suppresses the immune system. 

The researchers previously screened 810 genes in mice and found 15 that had an effect on cancer metastasis. In particular, they found that mice lacking a gene which produces a protein called ARHGEF1 had less metastasis of various primary cancers to the lungs and liver. 

The researchers determined that ARHGEF1 suppresses a type of immune cell called a T cell, which can recognise and kill metastatic cancer cells. 

To develop treatments to take advantage of this discovery, they needed to find a way for drugs to target it. The scientists traced signals in the cell to determine that ARHGEF1 is switched on when T cells are exposed to a clotting factor called thromboxane A2 (TXA2).

This was an unexpected revelation for the scientists, because TXA2 is already well-known and linked to how aspirin works. 

TXA2 is produced by platelets - a cell in the blood stream that helps blood clot, preventing wounds from bleeding, but occasionally causing heart attacks and strokes. Aspirin reduces the production of TXA2, leading to the anti-clotting effects, which underlies its ability to prevent heart attacks and strokes. 

This new research found that aspirin prevents cancers from spreading by decreasing TXA2 and releasing T cells from suppression. They used a mouse model of melanoma to show that in mice given aspirin, the frequency of metastases was reduced compared to control mice, and this was dependent on releasing T cells from suppression by TXA2.

Dr Jie Yang in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, first author of the report, said: “It was a Eureka moment when we found TXA2 was the molecular signal that activates this suppressive effect on T cells. Before this, we had not been aware of the implication of our findings in understanding the anti-metastatic activity of aspirin. It was an entirely unexpected finding which sent us down quite a different path of enquiry than we had anticipated.” 

“Aspirin, or other drugs that could target this pathway, have the potential to be less expensive than antibody-based therapies, and therefore more accessible globally.”

In the future, the researchers plan to help the translation of their work into potential clinical practice by collaborating with Professor Ruth Langley, of the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at University College London, who is leading the Add-Aspirin clinical trial, to find out if aspirin can stop or delay early stage cancers from coming back. 

Professor Langley, who was not involved in this study, commented: “This is an important discovery. It will enable us to interpret the results of ongoing clinical trials and work out who is most likely to benefit from aspirin after a cancer diagnosis.” 

“In a small proportion of people, aspirin can cause serious side-effects, including bleeding or stomach ulcers. Therefore, it is important to understand which people with cancer are likely to benefit.”

The research was principally funded by the Medical Research Council, with additional funding from the Wellcome Trust and European Research Council. 

The Add-Aspirin clinical trial is funded by Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council and the Tata Memorial Foundation of India. 

Reference: J. Yang, et al: “Aspirin prevents metastasis by limiting platelet TXA2 suppression of T cell immunity.” Nature, March 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08626-7

Adapted from a press release by the Medical Research Council.

Scientists have uncovered the mechanism behind how aspirin could reduce the metastasis of some cancers by stimulating the immune system.

Aspirin has the potential to be less expensive than antibody-based therapies, and therefore more accessible globally.Jie YangTetra Images on Getty

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YesLicence type: Attribution-Noncommerical

More than 160 students from across the region met at the Hancock Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to hear more about the application process and what it’s like to study for a degree at either Cambridge or Oxford.

Presentations focused on the unique elements of a Cambridge and Oxford education, the importance of super-curricular study to university applications, advice on writing personal statements, admissions tests and interview guidance.

Cambridge and Oxford Universities used to jointly host an annual regional conference for would-be applicants but these were disbanded during the Covid pandemic.

This latest roadshow was the brainchild of Elaine Effard, who is Corpus Christi’s North East Access and Outreach Coordinator (based in South Shields) and Richard Petty, Senior Access Officer for North-East England at Oxford.

“We are all passionate about working with students in the North-East of England to make sure that they’re best equipped to make competitive applications to Oxford, Cambridge and other higher education providers. We also strongly believe that increased North-East representation at Oxbridge is a fundamental good,” said Elaine. 

outreach1920.jpg

Students attending were full of appreciation for the event.

One said: “I enjoyed hearing the experiences of the students as it gave me a good insight as to what different aspects of the university are like, such as workload, finance and community.”

Another added: “It gave an in-depth view on super-curricular activities that I wouldn’t have accessed otherwise, and a range of options for super curricular activities.”

The other two Cambridge Colleges present were Jesus and King’s, both of whom, like Corpus, have connections with the North-East. Oxford was represented by the Oxford for North East team of colleges, which are Christ Church, Trinity, and St Anne’s. 

Corpus Christi is one of three Cambridge Colleges with school liaison officers based in the region they aim to attract more applications from. Both Queens' and Selwyn Colleges have staff based in Bradford.

Three Cambridge Colleges have teamed up to co-host an outreach event in the North-East of England with the aim of encouraging more applications from students in the area. They were joined by colleagues from Oxford. 

We are all passionate about working with students in the North-East of EnglandElaine EffardOutreach officers on steps of museum

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Yes

A study involving over 3,000 participants – both patients and clinicians – found that these misdiagnoses (sometimes termed “in your head” by patients) were often associated with long term impacts on patients’ physical health and wellbeing and damaged trust in healthcare services.

The researchers are calling for greater awareness among clinicians of the symptoms of such diseases, which they recognise can be difficult to diagnose, and for more support for patients.

Autoimmune rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and vasculitis are chronic inflammatory disorders that affect the immune system and can damage organs and tissues throughout the body. They can be very difficult to diagnose as people report a wide range of different symptoms, many of which can be invisible, such as extreme fatigue and depression.

Dr Melanie Sloan from the University of Cambridge led a study exploring patient-reported experiences from two large groups, each of over 1,500 patients, and in-depth interviews with 67 patients and 50 clinicians. The results are published today in Rheumatology.

Patients who reported that their autoimmune disease was misdiagnosed as psychosomatic or a mental health condition were more likely to experience higher levels of depression and anxiety, and lower mental wellbeing. For example, one patient with multiple autoimmune diseases said: “One doctor told me I was making myself feel pain and I still can’t forget those words. Telling me I’m doing it to myself has made me very anxious and depressed.”

More than 80% said it had damaged their self-worth and 72% of patients reported that the misdiagnosis still upset them, often even decades later. Misdiagnosed patients also reported lower levels of satisfaction with every aspect of medical care and were more likely to distrust doctors, downplay their symptoms, and avoid healthcare services. As one patient reported, it “has damaged my trust and courage in telling doctors very much. I even stopped taking my immunosuppressive medicine because of those words”.

Following these types of misdiagnoses, patients often then blamed themselves for their condition, as one individual described: “I don’t deserve help because this is a disease I’ve brought on myself. You go back to those initial diagnosis, you’ve always got their voices in your head, saying you’re doing this to yourself. You just can’t ever shake that. I’ve tried so hard.”

One patient described the traumatising response their doctor’s judgement had on them: “When a rheumatologist dismissed me I was already suicidal, this just threw me over the edge. Thankfully I am terrible at killing myself, it’s so much more challenging than you think. But the dreadful dismissiveness of doctors when you have a bizarre collection of symptoms is traumatizing and you start to believe them, that it’s all in your head.”

Dr Melanie Sloan, from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, said: “Although many doctors were intending to be reassuring in suggesting a psychosomatic or psychiatric cause for initially unexplainable symptoms, these types of misdiagnoses can create a multitude of negative feelings and impacts on lives, self-worth and care. These appear to rarely be resolved even after the correct diagnoses. We must do better at helping these patients heal, and in educating clinicians to consider autoimmunity at an earlier stage.”      

Clinicians highlighted how hard it was to diagnose autoimmune rheumatic diseases and that there was a high risk of misdiagnosis. Some doctors said they hadn’t really thought about the long-term problems for patients, but others talked about the problems in regaining trust, as one GP from England highlighted: “They lose trust in anything that anyone says…you are trying to convince them that something is OK, and they will say yes but a doctor before said that and was wrong.”

However, there was evidence that this trust can be rebuilt. One patient described having been “badly gaslit by a clinician”, but that when they told the clinician this, “She was shocked and had no idea … She was great. Took it on the chin. Listened and heard. Apologised profusely…For me, the scar of the original encounter was transformed into something much more positive.”

Mike Bosley, autoimmune patient and co-author on the study, said: “We need more clinicians to understand how a misdiagnosis of this sort can result in long-standing mental and emotional harm and in a disastrous loss of trust in doctors. Everyone needs to appreciate that autoimmune conditions can present in these unusual ways, that listening carefully to patients is key to avoiding the long-lasting harm that a mental health or psychosomatic misdiagnosis can cause.”

The study authors recommend several measures for improving support for patients with autoimmune rheumatological diseases. These are likely to apply for many other groups of patients with chronic diseases that are often misunderstood and initially misdiagnosed.

They propose that clinicians should talk about previous misdiagnoses with patients, discuss and empathise with their patients as to the effects on them, and offer targeted support to reduce the long-term negative impacts. Health services should ensure greater access to psychologists and talking therapies for patients reporting previous misdiagnoses, which may reduce the long-term impact on wellbeing, healthcare behaviours, and patient-doctor relationships. Education may reduce misdiagnoses by encouraging clinicians to consider systemic autoimmunity when they assess patients with multiple, seemingly unconnected, physical and mental health symptoms.

Professor Felix Naughton, from the Lifespan Health Research Centre at the University of East Anglia, said: “Diagnosing autoimmune rheumatic diseases can be challenging, but with better awareness among clinicians of how they present, we can hopefully reduce the risk of misdiagnoses. And while there will unfortunately inevitably still be patients whose condition is not correctly diagnosed, with the correct support in place, we may be able to lessen the impact on them.”

The research was funded by LUPUS UK and The Lupus Trust.

Reference
Sloan, M, et al. “I still can’t forget those words”: mixed methods study of the persisting impacts of psychosomatic and psychiatric misdiagnoses. Rheumatology; 3 Mar 2025; DOI: 10.1093/rheumatology/keaf115

A ‘chasm of misunderstanding and miscommunication’ is often experienced between clinicians and patients, leading to autoimmune diseases such as lupus and vasculitis being wrongly diagnosed as psychiatric or psychosomatic conditions, with a profound and lasting impact on patients, researchers have found.

These types of misdiagnoses can create a multitude of negative feelings and impacts on lives, self-worth and careMel SloanAnnie SprattA person laying in a bed under a blanket

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YesLicence type: Public Domain

Rare earth elements are vital components in many everyday and high-tech devices, from smartphones and lightbulbs to clean energy solutions like wind turbines and electric vehicles.

With the global shift towards low-carbon energy sources, the demand for rare earths is soaring. While there are rare earth deposits around the world, China dominates the global supply chain, accounting for 70% of rare earth ore extraction and 90% of rare earth ore processing. The UK and EU currently have no domestic source or refining capabilities, leading to concerns over the security of supplies.

“These are critical raw materials; critical both because we need them in almost every gadget and technology, but also because the supply chain is so precarious,” said Professor Sally Gibson from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

US President Trump’s recent statements about accessing rare earth deposits in Greenland and Ukraine have once again highlighted the need for countries to find new ways to secure these vital minerals.

“We really need to identify rare earth deposits which have a security of supply,” said Gibson, who currently holds a £1-million project to investigate how rare earth element deposits form, research that could help guide efforts to pinpoint new, economically viable sources.

Rare earth deposits are typically associated with a type of igneous rock called carbonatite. Packed full of calcium, these rocks are unlike other magmas because their chemistry is rich in CO2 and rare earth elements.

Gibson has been studying carbonatites for around 30 years. “Carbonatites have long been seen as geological curiosities, things that no one was that interested in in terms of big-picture science,” she said.

But that outlook has changed in recent years, she added, as the need for rare earths has come to the fore. “How these rocks form is becoming an increasingly important question.”

It’s a question that many geoscientists are asking, but what makes Gibson’s project unique is that, rather than focusing on how individual localities or ‘provinces’ of rare earth deposits form, she is zooming out and examining their global distribution.

Gibson and her colleagues are also looking deeper into Earth’s interior for clues that might explain the surface expression of carbonatites. Project co-lead, Professor Sergei Lebedev, also from Cambridge Earth Sciences, is a geophysicist who uses earthquake waves to ‘see’ into the Earth’s interior, similar to how sonar pings can pick out features on the seabed.

“By combining the geophysical and geochemical evidence, we are learning more about both the deep dynamics and evolution of the Earth’s continents, and the generation of carbonatites and the associated mineral resources,” Lebedev said.

The REE-LITH project was inspired by Gibson and Lebedev’s hunch that differences in the properties of Earth’s lithosphere – the outermost layers of our planet’s structure – might play a guiding role in where carbonatites form, and perhaps their level of rare earth element enrichment.

“We know that lithospheric thickness matters for other special igneous rocks that host diamonds,” said Gibson. “Typically, diamond-hosting ‘kimberlite’ rocks only occur in areas where the lithosphere is particularly thick. I thought it was time we tested if there was a similar relationship for carbonatites.”

Mapping Rare Earths

Over the last year, the team, which includes postdoctoral researchers Siyuan Sui and Emilie Bowman from Cambridge, have been building their new map, drawing on a bank of data on carbonatites and related rare earth deposits and combining this with information about the lithosphere.

As part of this mission, Sui has been using new seismic data extracted from earthquakes to create computer-generated images of the lithosphere, its thickness and other properties. Alongside this, Bowman has been running statistical analyses of geochemical data on magmas to test their relationship to associated rare earth deposits. 

When the researchers started to plot occurrences of carbonatites on a map of lithosphere thickness, they quickly saw a pattern.

“We can already tell that carbonatites occur in specific areas, limited to the steep margins that border Earth’s thickest and oldest lithosphere,” said Gibson. “These regions are typically found in the cores of our planet’s major continents.”

Gibson said that while the resolution of their map is increasing, and they can narrow down the regions where carbonatites should occur, they now need to establish why only certain carbonatites generate economically important rare earths. “Having some kind of model that could predict the most likely locations for rare earth deposits is really the ultimate goal for many geologists,” she said.

Collaboration will be key to unlocking that mystery, Gibson said. Her project brings together researchers from across Cambridge Earth Sciences, drawing on the extensive bank of seismic data collected by geophysicists at the Bullard Laboratory and the Department’s expertise in igneous petrology and geochemistry. The team also includes collaborators at the Universities of St Andrews and Exeter.

“Without that multidisciplinary approach, we wouldn’t have been able to pick out these global-scaled patterns in carbonatite occurrence,” she said.

Cambridge geoscientists are developing an atlas that could lead to a more complete understanding of how viable rare earth element deposits form and help locate more secure sources, by mapping the global distribution of critical metals deposits within unusual igneous rocks.

These are critical raw materials; critical both because we need them in almost every gadget and technology, but also because the supply chain is so precariousSally GibsonCambridge Earth SciencesProfessor Sally Gibson (centre) and colleagues

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Yes

These are some of the questions being addressed by a new initiative launched today at the University of Cambridge, which seeks to address the urgent challenge of managing the risks of future engineered pandemics.

The Engineered Pandemics Risk Management Programme aims to understand the social and biological factors that might drive an engineered pandemic and to make a major contribution to building the UK’s capability for managing these risks. It will build a network of experts from academia, government, and industry to tackle the problem.

Increased security threats from state and non-state actors, combined with increased urbanisation and global mobility, means the threat of deliberate pathogen release must be taken seriously as must other intertwined aspects of pandemic risk such as mis- and disinformation, the erosion of trust in a number of institutions and an increasingly volatile geopolitical context. Further potential risks are posed by recent developments in gene-editing tools and artificial intelligence, which have rapidly advanced technological capability that may make it easier to engineer potential pandemic pathogens.

Professor Clare Bryant from the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge said: “There is a great opportunity to take a joined-up approach to managing the risks posed by engineered pandemics. We need experts and agencies across the spectrum to work together to develop a better understanding of who or what might drive such events and what their likely impact would be. And we need evidence-informed policies and networks in place that would help us respond to – or better still, prevent – such an eventuality.”

• The aims of the Engineered Pandemics Risk Management Programme are:
• To develop the conceptual underpinnings for the risk management of engineered pandemics based on interdisciplinary research
• To support the capability of the UK’s engineered pandemic risk policy and practice, including building and maintaining networks that connect government, academia and industry.
• To strengthen the international networks that will support this work globally

There are four main strands of work:

Social determinants of engineered pandemic threat

This strand will look at the actors who have the potential to engineer harmful pathogens, either deliberately or accidentally. It will ask questions such as: What could motivate bioterrorism in the coming decades? Who might the relevant actors be? What are the kinds of engineered pandemic that someone might want to create?

Dr Rob Doubleday, Executive Director of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge, said: “The common narrative is that there’s a wide range of potential actors out there who want to create bioweapons but don’t yet have the technical means. But in fact, there’s been very little work to really understand who these people might be, and their relationship to emerging technology. To explore these questions, we need a broad network including social scientists, biosecurity researchers, criminologists, experts in geopolitics and counterterrorism.”

The strand will also look at the governance of scientific research in areas that may facilitate an engineered pandemic, whether unwittingly or maliciously, aiming to deliver a policy framework that enables freedom of intellectual research while managing real and apparent risk in infectious disease research.

Professor Bryant said: “As scientists, we’re largely responsible for policing our own work and ensuring integrity, trustworthiness and transparency, and for considering the consequences of new knowledge and how it might be used. But with the rapid progress of genomic technologies and AI, self-regulation becomes more difficult to manage. We need to find governance frameworks that balance essential scientific progress with its potential misapplication.”

Biological determinants of engineered pandemic threat

Recognising that the most likely cause of an engineered pandemic would be the deliberate release of a naturally-occurring pathogen – viral or bacterial, for example – rather than a man-made pathogen, this strand aims to understand what might make a particular pathogen infectious and how our immune systems respond to infection. This knowledge will allow researchers to screen currently available drugs to prevent or treat infection and to design vaccines quickly should a pandemic occur.

Modelling threats and risk management of engineered pandemics

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted practical problems of dealing with pandemic infections, from the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) to ensuring a sufficient supply of vaccine doses and availability of key medications. Modelling the potential requirements of a pandemic, how they could be delivered, how ventilation systems could be modified, what biosafety measures could be taken, for example, are all key challenges for managing any form of pandemic. This strand will address how existing modelling approaches would need to be adapted for a range of plausible engineered pandemics.

Policy innovation challenges

Working with the policy community, the Cambridge team will co-create research that directly addresses policy needs and involves policy makers. It will support policy makers in experimenting with more joined-up approaches through testing, learning and adapting solutions developed in partnership.

The Engineered Pandemics Risk Management Programme is supported by a £5.25 million donation to the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. The team intends it to form a central component of a future Pandemic Risk Management Centre, for which it is now fundraising.

Professor Joanna Page, Director of CRASSH, said: “Cambridge has strengths across a broad range of disciplines – from genetics and immunology to mathematical modelling to existential risk and policy engagement – that can make a much-needed initiative such as this a success.”

To find out more, visit the Engineered Pandemic Risk Management website.

Covid-19 showed us how vulnerable the world is to pandemics – but what if the next pandemic were somehow engineered? How would the world respond – and could we stop it happening in the first place?

There is a great opportunity to take a joined-up approach to managing the risks posed by engineered pandemicsClare BryantMartin SanchezIllustration showing global pandemic spread

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YesLicence type: Public Domain