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Delivering light therapy using a remotely controlled bioelectronic device implanted above the brain might complement current glioblastoma therapies, reducing cancer recurrence and improving survival.

Current treatment of brain tumour entails open-skull tumour resection and follow-up X-ray radiation or chemotherapy, with surgery-associated risks and side-effects. Here a photothermal approach is presented that relies on wireless near-infrared stimulation for continuous, on-demand treatment of brain tumours in free-moving animals.

Knottin is a cystine knot peptide. Here, the authors develop a knottin-based tracer for positron emission tomography and demonstrate its ability to detect cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis through selective binding to integrin αvβ₆.

Angiogenesis is one of the fundamental processes during tumor growth and disease progression, and is regulated by numerous molecular pathways, including, but not limited to, VEGF, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), endoglin (CD105), integrin α_vβ₃and E-selectin. All these pathways could serve as targets for molecular imaging, as outlined in this Viewpoint.

This paper proposes a framework to assess systemic risks that compound and cascade within and between systems. This emphasizes political economy and transformations, as well as trans-disciplinarity and diverse participation, evidence and methods.

Investigation of heterogametic transitions in sex chromosomes is challenging but fascinating from an evolutionary perspective. Here, Hu et al. have identified a transition from an XY to a ZW system in the genus Salix (willows) where both the Z and W chromosomes have originated from the ancestral Y.

A magnetic wire for the intravascular recovery of labelled circulating tumour cells improves cell capture in anaesthetized pigs by up to two orders of magnitude with respect to a standard blood draw.

A cell-based sensor detects tumors with higher sensitivity than protein and nucleic acid biomarkers.

Nanodiagnostics is a rapidly emerging field that leverages advances in nanobiotechnology to better visualize and diagnose disease. In this Review, we provide an overview of several clinically relevant imaging modalities and discuss how nanodiagnostics are enhancing their use.

Molecular imaging, which can allow the non-invasive monitoring of biological processes in living subjects, has the potential to enhance understanding of disease and drug activity in both preclinical and clinical drug studies, aiding effective translational research. Gambhir and colleagues review the applications of molecular imaging in drug development, and discuss challenges that need to be addressed to optimize its utility.

Optical probes that are activated only in the tumour microenvironment dramatically improve the sensitivity of cancer detection.

The ability to follow the distribution and migration of biologically active cells in living organisms is crucial for the development of cell-based therapies. In this Review, Kircher et al. describe the imaging principles underlying currently available cell-tracking methods and highlight recent examples of their application in animal models and patients.

A ‘smart’ toilet that uses pressure and motion sensors, biometric identification, urinalysis strips, a computer-vision uroflowmeter and machine learning longitudinally tracks biomarkers of health and disease in the user’s urine and stool.

Photoacoustic imaging offers higher spatial resolution than most optical imaging techniques, but contrast agents are needed because many diseases in their early stages do not display a natural photoacoustic contrast. Using single-walled carbon nanotubes conjugated with a peptide as a contrast agent allows the non-invasive photoacoustic imaging of tumours in animals.

Circulating tumour DNA in blood is analysed to identify genomic features that distinguish early-stage lung cancer patients from risk-matched controls, and these are integrated into a machine-learning method for blood-based lung cancer screening.

The authors present the case of a 57-year-old male who was diagnosed with grade IV glioblastoma multiforme and enrolled in a clinical trial of adoptive cellular immunotherapy. The authors used PET imaging technology to image the T cells non-invasively and report the first case using a non-invasive imaging reporter gene/probe technology.

A major challenge of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays is discriminating true signal from non-specific binding. Here the authors present a Single-Molecule Colocalization Assay (SiMCA) which eliminates such effects, enabling reproducible detection of picomolar protein concentrations.

Multimodal nanosensors have been developed to target and respond to hallmarks in the tumour microenvironment and provide both a non-invasive urinary monitoring tool and an on-demand positron emission tomography imaging agent to localize tumour metastasis and assess response to therapy.

Scenarios for mitigation pathways lay the foundation for IPCC reporting and provide guidelines for future climate actions. This Analysis compares all the scenarios included since the Fifth Assessment Report and discusses how the portfolio has evolved over the past decade and the driving factors behind these changes.

Polymer nanoparticles that absorb near-infrared light can be used for photoacoustic imaging with clear advantages over existing contrast agents.

Assessing when cell death occurs following in vivo transplantation of stem cells is challenging. Now, pH-sensitive hydrogel capsules containing arginine-based liposomes are shown to act as magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents, allowing cell death to be monitored within the capsules.

Despite progress in the biosensor field, a platform that allows the sensitive detection of disease-specific proteins in a diverse range of clinical samples such as saliva, serum and urine has proved elusive. Here, Richard Gaster and his colleagues introduce a magnetic nanosensing protein detection platform that offers quantitative multiplex protein detection at attomolar concentrations over a large linear dynamic range and in a range of biological fluids.

The ability to effectively assess tumor margins for brain tumor resection is a crucial factor in determining outcome in patients with brain tumors. Moritz Kircher and colleagues have developed a gold-silica nanoparticle that provides a triple-mode imaging capability of magnetic resonance, photoacoustic and Raman imaging, capitalizing on the complementary strengths of each modality for noninvasively delineating brain tumor margins both preoperatively and intraoperatively. The approach was tested in several mouse models, including one that recapitulates the infiltrating growth pattern of human gliomas.

Tarik Massoud and colleagues offer a new, noninvasive molecular imaging technique based on split reporter complementation for quantifying and imaging protein-protein interactions—cytoplasmic and nuclear—in vivo using positron emission tomography. They use a split reporter system based on the enzyme herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase, an approach designed to significantly improve the sensitivity and dynamic range of imaging protein-protein interactions.

Combining the optical properties of quantum dots with the ability of carbon nanotubes to carry pharmaceutical cargos could prove highly beneficial in the field of drug delivery.

One-bead-one-compound combinatorial peptidomimetic libraries, in conjunction with a high-stringency screening method, are a powerful tool for screening peptide and peptidomimetic ligands for target proteins. Picomolar-affinity peptidomimetics for the integrin α₄β₁ have now been developed and have been successfully used to image α₄β₁-expressing tumors in living mice.

In the European Union, current climate policies improve energy- and carbon- as well as inequality-related aspects of sustainability; future net-zero emissions pathways further improve population health and agricultural productivity, according to an integrated assessment modelling analysis.