Scientists Puzzled by Giant Ancient Life Forms
Scientists are suggesting there may be a brand new type of life — or, at least, that one existed back in the day.
In a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, scientists from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland argue that the massive and mysterious tubelike fossils known as "prototaxites" deserve their own life form classification because, basically, they're too weird to belong to any other.
Since their discovery in the 1800s, prototaxites have long been a head-scratcher and a point of contention for scientists who to this day cannot figure out their nature. Fossils of this bizarre organism, which lived some 400 million years ago, were initially thought to be the remains of rotted trees, complete with the fungi that assisted their decomposition inside them. In 1872, however, a ticked-off Canadian scientist named William Carruthers trashed that concept and suggested, against scientific convention, that the name prototaxites, which translates to "first yew," be changed to "nematophycus," which means "stringy algae."
Fast forward to 2007, and Stanford botanist Kevin Boyce declared, after analyzing the carbon isotypes found within a prototaxites fossil, that the strange monstrosities were some kind of fungus because they seemed to have gotten carbon from other organisms the way fungi do. Now, Edinburgh's Corentin Loron and his team are pouring water on that hypothesis as well — and suggesting, provocatively, that prototaxites don't belong to any other known lineage of organism and thus deserve their own.
To reach that conclusion, Loron and his colleagues analyzed the chemical makeup of Prototaxites taiti, a type of prototaxites found in Scotland that was, unlike its cousins, only a few centimeters tall. Fungi were abundant in the area where p. taiti was found, so the scientists were able to compare the composition of those fossilized fungi to that of the prototaxites fossils.
As they discovered, the cellular composition of p. taiti was vastly different from the fungi that grew alongside it — and indeed, was distinct from all known fungi, extinct or otherwise. Specifically, the prototaxites sample did not contain any chitin, a polymer that makes up fungal cell walls, which to their minds meant that it wasn't a fungus at all. Its anatomy was also "fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi," the researchers wrote in their paper, which added to their contention that prototaxites should be granted their own lineage.
Boyce, the botanist who insisted that prototaxites are a fungus nearly 20 years ago, admitted in an interview with New Scientist about the new research that with the information that's been uncovered in the intervening years, "there is no good place" for the organism in the fungal lineage.
"Maybe it is a fungus," he told the magazine, "but whether a fungus or something else entirely, it represents a novel experiment with complex multicellularity that is now extinct and does not share a multicellular common ancestor with anything alive today."
Notably, scientists still don't know why prototaxites went extinct. This new research provides another clue about this bizarre and long-dead organism — and deepens the mystery, too.
More on weird life: Scientists Modified Genes In Mice to Give Them Traits of Woolly Mammoths, and the Results Are Frankly Adorable
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I attended the world's biggest cancer conference. Doctors gave standing ovations to 2 major breakthroughs.
The biggest cancer conference in the world — ASCO — wrapped up earlier this month in Chicago. Stunning new data suggested exercise, if done the right way, can be a colon cancer treatment. AstraZeneca was a perennial star, with new uses for its drugs in early-stage disease. Recently, I landed on what felt like another planet. Planet cancer research. Technically, this planet was within the city of Chicago, inside the biggest convention center in North America, McCormick Place, which straddles two sides of a highway. It was filled to the brim with premier cancer experts from around the world. At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, 44,000 doctors, drugmakers, scientists, and patients, gathered both in person and online, spent four days collecting, sharing, and debating the best ways to prevent, treat, and attack cancer. There were two big announcements that rose above the rest and brought attendees to their feet, cheering and clapping in appreciation. Doctors were buzzing afterwards, with a few telling me they were inspired to think about new ways to treat their cancer patients. Both breakthroughs pave the way towards a smarter, more targeted future for treating and preventing all kinds of cancer. There was one talk at ASCO this year that stunned, invigorated, and even angered some doctors. A team of Canadian scientists showed that a methodically-prescribed exercise routine, performed consistently three to four times per week, could outperform ongoing chemotherapy treatments for patients who'd had colon cancer and gone through initial treatment. "This is so new and different and really incredible," Dr. Paul Oberstein, a medical oncologist specializing in gastrointestinal cancers at NYU Langone, told Business Insider. Doctors routinely recommend exercise to their cancer patients, but there hasn't been a rigorous scientific trial studying the effects. Until now. The researchers, from Queens University in Ontario, studied nearly 900 colon cancer patients in a gold-standard randomized trial. Each patient's cancer had been removed, and they'd gone through chemotherapy. The goal of the exercise program was to prevent high-risk stage 2 and stage 3 colon cancer from coming back, and to keep the patients alive. Half of the patients, a control group, were given the same exercise advice that cancer patients often hear from their doctors. The other half were written an exercise prescription. They were given a trainer or physical therapist who designed a personalized exercise regimen that each patient liked, and that they were likely to stick with for the three-year study. Some kayaked, others biked or swam, but most of the patients (median age of 61) embarked on just a few more walks each week — 45 to 60 minutes at a brisk pace. After three years of prescribed, sustained exercise, patients saw results that were just as good as — in some cases better than — disease-free survival rates for the chemotherapy drugs that are typically used to treat cancer in this same context, to prevent recurrence. Oxaliplatin is a common colon cancer chemotherapy drug which costs $3,000 to $6,000 per treatment — cheap in the context of cancer care. The drug delivers an overall 10-year survival boost of 5%. The exercise program? 7% survival boost after eight years. Patients who were just given the fitness advice had significantly more cancer recurrence, and more deaths than the exercise group. "For every 16 patients exercising, exercise prevented one case of cancer," Chris Booth, a medical oncologist and the lead researcher of the study, said while presenting his results at ASCO. "For every 14 people that were on the exercise program, exercise prevented one person from dying." Doctors attending ASCO were stunned. After Booth's presentation, a surge of excitement simmered through the crowd of oncologists. A standing ovation began slowly, then swelled to thunderous and enthusiastic sustained applause. Some of the attendees wondered if this strategy could ever work for their own patients. Could they ever really be motivated to make this kind of change? For Booth, the study provides a powerful lesson. "Knowledge alone is likely to be insufficient to allow most people to make meaningful and sustained change," Booth said. Exercise needs to be treated like a drug, he said. A prescription needs to be filled out, a trainer allotted, and a schedule adhered to. Oberstein, the NYU Langone oncologist, told Business Insider that the panel had a profound impact on him. He's already talking internally about how his cancer center could implement this kind of program, perhaps with grants from major cancer philanthropy groups or patient support groups who would be willing to pay for tools like wearable trackers and virtual trainer sessions. "It's a lot easier to get a drug that costs $200,000 a year," Oberstein said. "Than to get insurance or someone to pay for a trainer to help someone do exercise." The other big insight in cancer treatment that shone through at ASCO was in immunotherapy. Doctors and drugmakers are starting to use these drugs to harness the immune system against earlier-stage cancers, with promising results. The star of the show was drugmaker AstraZeneca, which had an impressive slate of top-level plenary talks geared toward using drugs earlier on for breast, gastric, and lung cancer survival. The biggest splash I saw was from AstraZeneca's drug Imfinzi (durvalumab), which trains a patient's body to attack a protein in their cancer. Imfinzi's already routinely used in some late-stage, recurrent and metastatic cancers (in the treatment of solid lung and liver tumors, for example), but it hasn't been a go-to treatment for earlier-stage cancers. In results from the company's late-stage phase-3 "Matterhorn" trial presented at the conference, Imfinzi, taken with chemo after surgery, boosted gastric cancer patients' two-year survival rates from 70% (without the immunotherapy) to nearly 76% — a significant jump. The news — just one of AstraZeneca's big wins at the conference — highlights a growing trend in cancer treatment. Increasingly, drugmakers are pursuing early immune therapy treatments. These treatments can either complement — or even, in rare cases, completely replace — radiation and chemotherapy. The goal is to minimize the lifelong side effects of toxic cancer treatment (like lifelong organ damage and fertility issues) while also improving treatment outcomes. In April, doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering published results showing a monoclonal antibody treatment that's typically reserved for advanced-stage mismatch repair-deficient rectal tumors can completely replace chemo in earlier stages of disease. "What was amazing, and is still amazing, is that all the patients in the rectal group had a complete response to just immunotherapy," Dr. Andrea Cercek, a medical oncologist at MSK, told BI during ASCO. "Everyone's organs were completely preserved — very minimal toxicity." AstraZeneca senior vice president Mohit Manrao, head of the company's US oncology program, told BI that he envisions immunotherapy treatment as a great complement to traditional cancer treatment. Old-school treatments like chemotherapy and radiation go after cancer directly, aiming to kill cancer cells, while the newer drugs "engage the immune system to do better work." "We cannot just keep treating metastatic cancer patients," Manrao told BI. "We've got to ensure, yes, we serve them, but we need to start getting into early disease where the possibility to cure is really, really high." Read the original article on Business Insider

Business Insider
13 hours ago
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I attended the world's biggest cancer conference. Doctors gave standing ovations to 2 major breakthroughs.
The biggest cancer conference in the world — ASCO — wrapped up earlier this month in Chicago. Stunning new data suggested exercise, if done the right way, can be a colon cancer treatment. AstraZeneca was a perennial star, with new uses for its drugs in early-stage disease. Recently, I landed on what felt like another planet. Planet cancer research. Technically, this planet was within the city of Chicago, inside the biggest convention center in North America, McCormick Place, which straddles two sides of a highway. It was filled to the brim with premier cancer experts from around the world. At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, 44,000 doctors, drugmakers, scientists, and patients, gathered both in person and online, spent four days collecting, sharing, and debating the best ways to prevent, treat, and attack cancer. There were two big announcements that rose above the rest and brought attendees to their feet, cheering and clapping in appreciation. Doctors were buzzing afterwards, with a few telling me they were inspired to think about new ways to treat their cancer patients. Both breakthroughs pave the way towards a smarter, more targeted future for treating and preventing all kinds of cancer. 1. Exercise outperformed expensive chemo in a groundbreaking trial There was one talk at ASCO this year that stunned, invigorated, and even angered some doctors. A team of Canadian scientists showed that a methodically-prescribed exercise routine, performed consistently three to four times per week, could outperform ongoing chemotherapy treatments for patients who'd had colon cancer and gone through initial treatment. "This is so new and different and really incredible," Dr. Paul Oberstein, a medical oncologist specializing in gastrointestinal cancers at NYU Langone, told Business Insider at the conference. Doctors routinely recommend exercise to their cancer patients, but there hasn't been a rigorous scientific trial studying the effects. Until now. The researchers, from Queens University in Ontario, studied nearly 900 colon cancer patients in a gold-standard randomized trial. Each patient's cancer had been removed, and they'd gone through chemotherapy. The goal of the exercise program was to prevent high-risk stage 2 and stage 3 colon cancer from coming back, and to keep the patients alive. Half of the patients, a control group, were given the same exercise advice that cancer patients often hear from their doctors. The other half were written an exercise prescription. They were given a trainer or physical therapist who designed a personalized exercise regimen that each patient liked, and that they were likely to stick with for the three-year study. Some kayaked, others biked or swam, but most of the patients (median age of 61) embarked on just a few more walks each week — 45 to 60 minutes at a brisk pace. After three years of prescribed, sustained exercise, patients saw results that were just as good as — in some cases better than — disease-free survival rates for the chemotherapy drugs that are typically used to treat cancer in this same context, to prevent recurrence. Oxaliplatin is a common colon cancer chemotherapy drug which costs $3,000 to $6,000 per treatment — cheap in the context of cancer care. The drug delivers an overall 10-year survival boost of 5%. The exercise program? 7% survival boost after eight years. Patients who were just given the fitness advice had significantly more cancer recurrence, and more deaths than the exercise group. "For every 16 patients exercising, exercise prevented one case of cancer," Chris Booth, a medical oncologist and the lead researcher of the study, said while presenting his results at ASCO. "For every 14 people that were on the exercise program, exercise prevented one person from dying." Doctors attending ASCO were stunned. After Booth's presentation, a surge of excitement simmered through the crowd of oncologists. A standing ovation began slowly, then swelled to thunderous and enthusiastic sustained applause. Some of the attendees wondered if this strategy could ever work for their own patients. Could they ever really be motivated to make this kind of change? For Booth, the study provides a powerful lesson. "Knowledge alone is likely to be insufficient to allow most people to make meaningful and sustained change," Booth said. Exercise needs to be treated like a drug, he said. A prescription needs to be filled out, a trainer allotted, and a schedule adhered to. Oberstein, the NYU Langone oncologist, told Business Insider that the panel had a profound impact on him. He's already talking internally about how his cancer center could implement this kind of program, perhaps with grants from major cancer philanthropy groups or patient support groups who would be willing to pay for tools like wearable trackers and virtual trainer sessions. "It's a lot easier to get a drug that costs $200,000 a year," Oberstein said. "Than to get insurance or someone to pay for a trainer to help someone do exercise." 2. AstraZeneca's new immunotherapy drug stole the show The other big insight in cancer treatment that shone through at ASCO was in immunotherapy. Doctors and drugmakers are starting to use these drugs to harness the immune system against earlier-stage cancers, with promising results. The star of the show was drugmaker AstraZeneca, which had an impressive slate of top-level plenary talks geared toward using drugs earlier on for breast, gastric, and lung cancer survival. The biggest splash I saw was from AstraZeneca's drug Imfinzi (durvalumab), which trains a patient's body to attack a protein in their cancer. Imfinzi's already routinely used in some late-stage, recurrent and metastatic cancers (in the treatment of solid lung and liver tumors, for example), but it hasn't been a go-to treatment for earlier-stage cancers. In results from the company's late-stage phase-3 "Matterhorn" trial presented at the conference, Imfinzi, taken with chemo after surgery, boosted gastric cancer patients' two-year survival rates from 70% (without the immunotherapy) to nearly 76% — a significant jump. The news — just one of AstraZeneca's big wins at the conference — highlights a growing trend in cancer treatment. Increasingly, drugmakers are pursuing early immune therapy treatments. These treatments can either complement — or even, in rare cases, completely replace — radiation and chemotherapy. The goal is to minimize the lifelong side effects of toxic cancer treatment (like lifelong organ damage and fertility issues) while also improving treatment outcomes. In April, doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering published results showing a monoclonal antibody treatment that's typically reserved for advanced-stage mismatch repair-deficient rectal tumors can completely replace chemo in earlier stages of disease. "What was amazing, and is still amazing, is that all the patients in the rectal group had a complete response to just immunotherapy," Dr. Andrea Cercek, a medical oncologist at MSK, told BI during ASCO. "Everyone's organs were completely preserved — very minimal toxicity." AstraZeneca senior vice president Mohit Manrao, head of the company's US oncology program, told BI that he envisions immunotherapy treatment as a great complement to traditional cancer treatment. Old-school treatments like chemotherapy and radiation go after cancer directly, aiming to kill cancer cells, while the newer drugs "engage the immune system to do better work." "We cannot just keep treating metastatic cancer patients," Manrao told BI. "We've got to ensure, yes, we serve them, but we need to start getting into early disease where the possibility to cure is really, really high."
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FILAMENT HEALTH ANNOUNCES AUTHORIZATION OF PHASE 2 CLINICAL TRIAL STUDYING BOTANICAL PSILOCYBIN FOR PROLONGED GRIEF DISORDER
The clinical trial at Linkoping University will study Filament's botanical psilocybin drug candidate, PEX010 VANCOUVER, BC, June 11, 2025 /CNW/ - Filament Health Corp. (OTC: FLHLF) ("Filament" or the "Company"), a clinical‐stage natural psychedelic drug development company, today announced that the Swedish Ethical Review Authority and the Swedish Medical Products Agency have authorized a double-blind phase 2 clinical trial studying its botanical psilocybin drug candidate, PEX010, at Linkoping University. The trial will be the first to study the effects of psilocybin in the treatment of prolonged grief disorder. "In an aging society where people may outlive their family members by decades, it is crucial to develop treatment options for those with prolonged grief disorder," said Dr. Rebecca Böhme, Associate Professor at the Linkoping Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience. "This trial will assess whether psilocybin can improve adaptation to the loss experience. We are grateful to Filament Health for facilitating this research." People with prolonged grief disorder are at a 20 percent increased mortality risk. Previous psychological research suggests that the loss of a close person affects self-identity, an aspect of the higher cognitive self. Psilocybin is suggested to cause a transient shift from reliance on prior experiences towards current sensations. The clinical trial at Linkoping University will utilize this shift combined with a self-touch intervention to support re-learning about the bodily self in a trial population of 120 individuals. "We're pleased to provide PEX010 to Linkoping University for this much-needed area of research," said Benjamin Lightburn, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Filament Health. "This will be the ninth European clinical trial to study our drug candidate, positioning Filament as the region's leading supplier of GMP psilocybin." The trial at Linkoping University is expected to begin dosing in Q3 2025. PEX010 is authorized for investigation in 52 clinical trials worldwide for 14 mental health indications. ABOUT FILAMENT HEALTH (OTC:FLHLF)Filament Health is a clinical-stage natural psychedelic drug development company. We believe that safe, standardized, naturally-derived psychedelic medicines can improve the lives of many, and our mission is to see them in the hands of everyone who needs them as soon as possible. Filament's platform of proprietary intellectual property enables the discovery, development, and delivery of natural psychedelic medicines for clinical development. We are paving the way with the first-ever natural psychedelic drug candidates. Learn more at and on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATIONCertain statements and information contained in this press release and the documents referred to herein may constitute "forward‐looking statements" and "forward‐looking information," respectively, under Canadian securities legislation. Generally, forward‐looking information can be identified by the use of forward‐looking terminology such as, "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "may", "will", "should", "believe", "intends", "forecast", "plans", "guidance" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward‐looking statements or information. The forward‐looking statements are not historical facts, but reflect the current expectations of management of Filament regarding future results or events and are based on information currently available to them. Certain material factors and assumptions were applied in providing these forward‐looking statements. Forward‐looking statements regarding the Company are based on the Company's estimates and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements of Filament to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward‐looking statements or forward‐looking information, including the timing and results of clinical trials, the ability of the parties to receive, in a timely manner and on satisfactory terms, the necessary regulatory, court and shareholders approvals; the ability of the parties to satisfy, in a timely manner, the other conditions to the completion of the proposed business combination; other expectations and assumptions concerning the transactions contemplated in the proposed business combination; the available funds of the parties and the anticipated use of such funds; the availability of financing opportunities; legal and regulatory risks inherent in the psychedelic drug development industry; risks associated with economic conditions, dependence on management and currency risk; risks relating to U.S. regulatory landscape; risks relating to anti-money laundering laws and regulation; other governmental and environmental regulation; public opinion and perception of the psychedelic drug development industry; risks related to the economy generally; risk of litigation; conflicts of interest; risks relating to certain remedies being limited and the difficulty of enforcement of judgments and effect service outside of Canada; and risks related to future acquisitions or dispositions. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward‐ looking statements and forward‐looking information. Filament will not update any forward‐looking statements or forward‐looking information that are incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws. SOURCE Filament Health Corp. View original content to download multimedia: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data