Faith leaders offer untapped key to hypertension crisis, research shows

University of York

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A new study has shown that faith leaders would be willing to partner on hypertension screenings and education, despite challenges of past health collaborations.

Researchers at the University of York, in a first-of-its-kind qualitative study in Lagos, Nigeria, interviewed eight faith leaders across six religious traditions to examine their perspectives on hypertension and the potential role of place-of-worship networks in tackling the condition.

Hypertension is a disorder of the heart and blood vessels, and is a major driver of cardiovascular disease and premature death. It impacts adults all around the world, but in Nigeria approximately one in three adults have the condition which is considered a growing health challenge in the country.

The study, published in Frontiers in Public Health, found that religious leaders demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the social drivers behind high blood pressure, pointing directly to poverty, chronic stress, inadequate public infrastructure and systemic governance failures.

Dr Abayomi Sanusi, lead author of the study, from the University of York's Department of Health Sciences, said: “Our previous work has shown that promoting health through faith institutions holds unrealised potential to support and supplement healthcare systems.  This latest study shows that rather than viewing cardiovascular issues purely through a spiritual lens, faith leaders offer a sharp critique of current health system deficiencies. 

“In our interviews, they also expressed a strong willingness to open their doors to routine screening, health education and medical referral programmes.”

Faith leaders, however, stressed that interventions from researchers, government, and non-government organisations (NGOs) on previous public health collaborations have frequently been one-sided.

Leaders reported that past initiatives often acted in an "extractive" manner, taking access, trust and resources from local congregations without leaving behind sustainable health infrastructure or giving back to the communities served.

Professor Su Golder, from the University of York’s Department of Health Sciences, said: “It is evident that faith leaders are already acting as sophisticated diagnosticians of health system failure, yet they remain structurally excluded from official state and national hypertension strategies.

“Unfortunately, this is due to a failure to recognise religious authority as a legitimate public health asset.”

To effectively curb hypertension in Lagos, the study concludes that health authorities must move beyond using faith institutions as convenient “access points” to the community. Instead, policymakers must build genuine, reciprocal partnerships that treat religious figures as equal stakeholders.

The study sets out solutions for researchers, practitioners, funders and government officials. Health interventions must be co-designed with faith networks, and models of care tested so that key health resources are drawn from and remain within the community.

Crucially, faith institutions should be embedded into long-term national health policies, but researchers say this requires commitment from all partners from the outset and a genuine understanding of how effective faith leaders can be in supporting and promoting healthy lives.

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Journal

Frontiers in Public Health

 

Staphylococcus aureus is highly resistant and virulent in milk

INRAE - National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment

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Staphylococcus aureus grown in milk

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Credit: INRAE - Micalis

Staphylococcus aureus is frequently found in human and veterinary infections. It is named for the golden-yellow pigment it produces, which contributes to its virulence and protects it against oxidative stress. Its ability to withstand antibiotic treatment makes it a major clinical challenge. To better understand the factors underlying this resistance, the scientists investigated the growth of the bacterium in two environments relevant to infection: milk and serum1. Produced by the mammary glands, milk provides a stable, nutrient-rich environment in which S. aureus can thrive and cause mastitis (infections of the mammary glands). Serum is the environment in which S. aureus develops during infection.

 

Milk: an ideal environment for Staphylococcus aureus

 

Staphylococcus aureus has very different properties depending on whether it grows in milk or serum. The scientists found, in particular, that the lipid composition of its membrane changes. When grown in milk, S. aureus incorporates milk lipids into its membrane instead of producing its own. As a result, it develops an envelope that is about three times thicker than that of bacteria grown in serum or laboratory culture media. Milk lipids also stimulate pigment production, making S. aureus more virulent and more resistant to oxidative stress. The scientists also tested the various types of antibiotics used to treat mastitis. When grown in milk, S. aureus becomes much more robust and resistant to the different antibiotics tested. This can be explained by the fact that the antibiotics target the envelope2 of S. aureus, which is thicker when the bacterium has grown in milk, or cause oxidative stress, against which it is better protected thanks to its higher pigment production.

 

These findings suggest a unique relationship between milk lipids and the severity of Staphylococcus aureus infections. The bacterium's remarkable robustness in milk may indicate a need to adapt antibiotic treatment protocols for the treatment of mastitis when milk is abundant, particularly in humans and domestic animals. Research is underway to develop combination therapies that combine an antibiotic with a molecule that prevents the bacterium from incorporating lipids from its environment.

 

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[1]Serum is the liquid component of blood after the cells and clotting proteins have been removed.

[2]The envelope comprises the bacterial membrane and cell wall.

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Journal

Communications Biology

DOI

10.1038/s42003-026-10771-2

Article Title

Biotope-dependent Resistance to Reactive Oxygen Species, Antibiotic Tolerance, and Virulence of Staphylococcus aureus

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2026

 

Federal Investment launches national facility dedicated to advancing non-animal drug development tools

The National Center to Accelerate Cures opens in Baltimore, backed by $3 million in congressionally directed funding secured by Sens. Van Hollen and Alsobrooks

Critical Path Institute (C-Path)

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BALTIMORE; TUCSON, Ariz.; and WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2026 — The National Center to Accelerate Cures (NCAC) today announced its official launch as a national initiative dedicated to advancing New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) toward regulatory acceptance. The Center is funded by $3 million in congressionally directed funding secured by U.S. Senators (Maryland) Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks and is housed at Blackbird BioHub in Baltimore.

NCAC is a partnership among three nonprofit organizations: Blackbird Laboratories, Critical Path Institute® (C-Path) and the Arrowpoint Labs Foundation. Together, they give NAMs developers a national resource, a place where promising novel drug development tools can generate the regulatory-grade evidence packages the FDA requires before formally accepting them. 

Bringing a new drug to market costs roughly $2.6 billion and often takes more than a decade. Over 90% of drugs that enter clinical trials never reach patients, in part because current translational tools, mainly animal models, do not always predict human biological outcomes accurately. American biomedical research also depends on imported research primates concentrated in a small number of source countries, a supply that has proven fragile to both export policy and enforcement action. 

Congress took a landmark step toward addressing this issue in 2022 by authorizing NAMs, including chips lined with living human cells, computational models and other human-biology-based tools, as part of the drug development pathway. But most NAMs developers lack the dedicated infrastructure, regulatory expertise and resources to generate the validation data the FDA requires before formally accepting any new drug development tool. NCAC will serve as a critical next step towards addressing these gaps. 

NCAC brings together three organizations whose combined capabilities address every dimension of the problem. Critical Path Institute, which has guided more drug development tool qualifications through the FDA than any other organization in the world, provides the regulatory science expertise and FDA relationships that developers need to navigate the qualification process. Blackbird Laboratories, a nonprofit venture studio with deep ties to the region's venture-backed biotech community, will provide connections that help developers move their tools toward the drug companies who will adopt them and will house NCAC in its incubator facility, Blackbird BioHub. The Arrowpoint Labs Foundation provides operational expertise, program management, federal strategy and the data platform that makes NCAC's work scalable over time.

Because all three founding partners are nonprofits, NCAC functions as a neutral, precompetitive platform for collaboration between the FDA, industry and tool developers.

“Far too many American families have experienced the distress and pain that comes with a life-changing medical diagnosis, from cancer to chronic diseases,” said Senator Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “That’s why we must keep working to invest in the cures that will make these diagnoses a thing of the past. As Maryland leads the way in much of this research, we fought to secure this federal investment to continue to advance innovative tools that can help bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.”

"Ensuring our foods, drugs and medications are well-tested before they come to the market is absolutely critical,” said Senator Alsobrooks. “But we know this process is costly and can take years. The National Center to Accelerate Cures is working for us to have more treatments, developed faster and at a lower cost, right here in Baltimore. I am proud to have partnered with Senator Van Hollen to secure $3 million for this investment."

"NCAC strongly aligns with Blackbird Laboratories' mission to foster industry transformation by leveraging Maryland's unique life sciences assets and bringing together the companies, technologies and talent needed to advance drug development,” said Blackbird Laboratories CEO Matt Tremblay, Ph.D. “Through our portfolio of therapeutics companies and broader innovation ecosystem, Blackbird is uniquely positioned to catalyze meaningful connections between NCAC and first-in-class drug developers. We see NCAC as an important bridge between the innovators developing new technologies and the companies that can put those technologies to work — creating opportunities to engage with, validate and ultimately adopt the next generation of tools for drug development."

"NCAC represents exactly the kind of collaborative infrastructure the drug development ecosystem needs to turn scientific innovation into regulatory science progress,” said C-Path CEO Klaus Romero, M.D., M.S., FCP. “Importantly, a national effort like this will succeed through the unique triangulation of Blackbird Laboratories, C-Path and the Arrowpoint Labs Foundation. NCAC connects an innovation ecosystem where promising technologies can be developed and advanced with the regulatory science expertise needed to generate evidence and pathways toward FDA endorsement and the operational, data and infrastructure required to scale those solutions nationally. This partnership is what makes NCAC uniquely powerful. Together, we can help move NAMs from promising science to trusted drug development tools — making development more predictive, reducing unnecessary repetitions and failures, and ultimately accelerating better therapies to patients." 

"Congress authorized the use of non-animal methods in 2022, but authorization is not the same as capacity,” said Arrowpoint Labs Foundation CEO Abi Kulshreshtha, Ph.D. “The developers building these tools are often small companies and academic labs and generating the evidence the FDA requires takes infrastructure that does not currently exist in a form they can access. NCAC is being built to close that gap as durable national infrastructure."

In its first year of operations, NCAC will support regulatory submissions of its first new approach methodologies in high-priority drug development areas, publish a shared terminology framework that establishes common language across developers, regulators and industry, and release an open data standard that will bring greater consistency to how NAMs data is submitted for regulatory review. 

Patients ultimately see the greatest direct payoff from this effort. Better predictive tools mean fewer late-stage failures, and late-stage failure is exactly where the cost of drug development concentrates. Securing regulatory acceptance for each new NAM directly lowers that financial hurdle. Accelerating regulatory acceptance drives a pipeline of more treatments, developed faster, at lower cost and with less dependence on foreign supply chains.

For more information, please visit acceleratecures.org.

About Blackbird Laboratories
Blackbird Laboratories is a nonprofit life sciences venture studio located in Baltimore, Maryland, founded with a $100 million philanthropic gift from The Bisciotti Family Foundation. Blackbird partners with academic institutions, including Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, to translate research breakthroughs into life-changing therapies, and operates Blackbird BioHub, a 35,000 square foot research incubator facility on Baltimore Peninsula.

About the Critical Path Institute
Founded in 2005, as a public-private partnership in response to the FDA’s Critical Path Initiative, C-Path’s mission is to lead collaborations that advance better treatments for people worldwide. Globally recognized as a pioneer in accelerating drug development, C-Path has established numerous international consortia, programs and initiatives that currently include more than 1,600 scientists and representatives from government and regulatory agencies, academia, patient organizations, disease foundations and pharmaceutical and biotech companies. With dedicated team members located throughout the world, C-Path’s global headquarters is located in Tucson, Arizona and C-Path’s Europe subsidiary is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. For more information, visit c-path.org. 

About the Arrowpoint Labs Foundation
The Arrowpoint Labs Foundation drives the development of infrastructure for technology and innovation tied directly to American regional economic growth and competitiveness, specializing in innovation ecosystem strategy and research commercialization.

For more information, please visit https://arrowpointfoundation.org/.

 

New research reveals why modern display colors can look different to different people

Model accounts for individual differences in color vision; could aid in developing displays with more consistent colors across viewers

Optica

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 Researchers developed a new computational model that accounts for individual differences in human color vision. The image shows the model’s simulations of color differences between observers viewing a Rec. 2020 capable display calibrated for the CIE 2006 2° standard observer. The upper left and lower right quadrants show the original color. The upper right quadrants show the color as seen by an observer with shifted sensitivity to red light. The lower left quadrants show the color as seen by a person with a shifted sensitivity to green light.

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Credit: Andy Rider and Andrew Stockman, Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London.

WASHINGTON — A new computational model that accounts for individual differences in human color vision is helping reveal why the colors of today’s displays sometimes appear different to different people. The new information could help guide the development of displays that deliver a more consistent viewing experience across a wider range of color vision.

Displays – whether a television or the screen of a smartphone – use a combination of red, green and blue primary emissions to create a wide range of colors. Although the colors on most older displays tended to look similar to most viewers, some modern displays use narrowband sources for primary colors, yielding a larger color gamut and a wider range of colors but also introducing greater variability among viewers.

“The people who produce films and TV shows want their work to look the same whatever device it is being viewed on, which is complicated by differences in people’s color vision and outdated calibration methods,” said Andy Rider from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London. “Our model takes into account individual variability in color vision and can be used to determine how best to adjust the three primary colors of a specific display to provide the best viewing experience for as many people as possible.”  

In a new report in the Optica Publishing Group journal Optics Express, the researchers used their model to analyze 16 displays including televisions, professional monitors used in film production, and cinema projectors, finding that some displays exhibit much larger color discrepancies than others.

“Although this research focused on displays, the modeling approach can also be used to examine similar color discrepancies such as those from energy-efficient LED lighting compared to traditional incandescent lightbulbs or in other color applications where dyes and pigments change how objects reflect or absorb light,” said Rider.

 

Capturing individual differences in color vision

Recent years have seen a push to produce TVs and cinema projectors with a greater color range and more vivid colors. However, because of individual differences in human color vision, these wide-gamut displays produce frequent color mismatches between different types of displays even when calibrated to appear identical.

“Producing consistent images also requires good display calibration, but most calibration devices use color standards developed about a hundred years ago that don’t align with normal color vision,” said Rider. “This can make modern displays look wrong even when they have been calibrated to look the same. We wanted to better understand how and when color reproduction might go wrong, and how to fix it.”

To help solve this problem, the researchers developed a model of human color vision that captures differences in color perception. For example, they modeled deuteranomaly, a common form of red-green color vision deficiency that affects about 1 in 20 men, by shifting the wavelengths detected by the eye’s cone cells, which are responsible for color vision. They also modeled age-related and person-to-person differences in the eye’s lens by varying the amount of short-wavelength light the lens filters before reaching the retina.

 

A realistic view of modern displays

“We combined our realistic model of human color vision with displays that are usually calibrated and analyzed in a more engineering-based framework,” said Rider. “These calibrations are usually done using devices like photometers and colorimeters that measure light output and poorly simulate its effect on human vision. Our model helps improve these simulations.”

It also showed that the spectrum of the blue primary light strongly influences how displays are seen by people of different ages, while the spectra of the red and green primaries affect people with different kinds of red-green color vision deficiency. Thus, changing the spectrum of the primary lights could help reduce the mismatches seen by different observers.

The researchers note that their work is based on a physiological model of color vision that draws on their own research but the model predictions haven’t been verified with real human observers. In the future, they plan to validate the predictions and use what they’ve learned to guide the development of displays that produce a wide gamut of vivid colors with better color consistency. It might be possible, for example, to use more than three primary light sources in a display, which would allow finer adjustments to produce accurate colors for a wider range of people.

The image shows the model’s simulations of color differences between observers viewing a Rec. 2020 capable display calibrated for the CIE 2006 2° standard observer. The lower left and upper right quadrants show the original color. The upper left quadrants show the color as seen by an observer with no pigmentation. The lower right quadrants show the color as seen by a person with lens pigmentation equal to the average 65 year old

Credit

Andy Rider and Andrew Stockman, Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London.

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Journal

Optics Express

DOI

10.1364/OE.613255

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

People

 

Steering wheel communicates for better semi-autonomous driving performance

Unlike driver-assist systems that correct steering without warning, this haptic wheel leads to improved driving, trust and teamwork between the human and automation

University of Michigan

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Photos of device  //  Video showing device in action 

 

 

Key takeaways

• A sense of fighting for control of the steering wheel, as well as overwhelming visual and auditory warnings, leads some drivers to turn off semi-autonomous features.

• A steering wheel that forewarns of autonomous maneuvers and enables drivers to negotiate plans improves driving performance and trust.

• The steering wheel was developed at University of Michigan Engineering with funding from the Toyota Research Institute.

 

A specialized steering wheel, enabling negotiation between drivers and an autonomous driving simulation, improved driving performance and trust between driver and autonomous vehicle features, researchers from University of Michigan Engineering and the Toyota Research Institute have found.

 

Typically, drivers of semi-autonomous vehicles receive information through multiple beeps and flashing warning screens, and have to wrestle with the steering wheel when they disagree with the computer's decision. This often creates confusion, increases stress, and could cause drivers to turn off potentially helpful systems. 

 

"To improve driver communication with automation, we added two haptic zones onto a steering wheel at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock that can expand or contract to express the intention of the automated system," said Hannah Báez, a robotics Ph.D. student and first author of the study in Human Factors.

 

"Drivers could agree or disagree with the automated system by squeezing the haptic zones, which allowed them to negotiate with the system before a given action to resolve any conflict."

 

The Toyota Research Institute funded the work.

 

Negotiating through the steering wheel

 

The research team put drivers into a simulation where they navigated an upcoming turn. The driver and automation might agree or disagree on the turn direction, and the simulation could also add sudden obstacles in either situation.

 

As the driver approached the turn, the semi-autonomous system inflated the left or right haptic portion of the steering wheel to indicate the direction it planned on turning. If the driver did not agree, they could squeeze that part of the wheel to indicate disagreement and negotiate the new turn direction. If an obstacle appeared in the driver’s planned path, the steering wheel would also pulse on the side of the obstacle to alert the driver.

 

Compared with no information or one-way displays of intention, the two-way system showed a clear improvement.

 

"We found that drivers drove better when negotiating with the automated system through haptic feedback," said Brent Gillespie, U-M professor of robotics and senior author of the study. "Drivers displayed smoother, more accurate driving paths, fought less with automation and used less braking with more confidence in their maneuvers."

 

The negotiation interface also reduced driver workload, with participants reporting significantly lower effort, frustration and physical demand. 

 

Boosting trust in autonomous systems

 

Another important finding: after the automated driving system made a mistake, such as missed obstacles or false warnings, the negotiation interface recovered a driver’s trust in the system much faster than those using traditional one-way communication. The researchers believe this is because the driver and system act more as a team with better communication, transparency in decisions and adjusting to feedback, instead of each separately taking turns behind the wheel. 

 

While the negotiation system improved trust recovery, the team noted that some drivers became overly trusting after successful negotiations, highlighting the need for further study of trust with such a system.

 

While one-way information is the current norm for communication with autonomous vehicles, this research demonstrates the potential benefits of allowing driver and automation to fully communicate intent, agreement and action in a two-way dialogue.

 

Additional authors of the study include Haochi Pan and Nadine Sarter of the University of Michigan and Jean Costa and John Gideon of the Toyota Research Institute.

 

The technology is covered by U.S. patent US12227190B2, applied for with the assistance of U-M Innovation Partnerships, and the team is seeking partners to bring the technology to market. 

 

Study: Haptic shared planning and control: enabling coordination of future actions in human-autonomous vehicle teams through a haptic negotiation interface (DOI: 10.1177/00187208261483656)

 

Written by Dan Newman, U-M Robotics