After winning the 1932 Nobel in Physiology for arguing that cancer is essentially a mitochondrial disease, Dr. Otto H. Warburg‘s theory later became controversial when evidence came to show that genetic mutations are to blame. Now researchers are putting another curve in the road, as new emerging science is showing that Dr. Warburg may not have been wrong at all.
Boston College press office explains:

In contrast to healthy cells, which generate energy by the oxidative breakdown of a simple acid within the mitochondria, tumors and cancer cells generate energy through the non-oxidative breakdown of glucose, a process called glycolysis. Indeed, glycolysis is the biochemical hallmark of most, if not all, types of cancers. Because of this difference between healthy cells and cancer cells, Warburg argued, cancer should be interpreted as a type of mitochondrial disease.
In the years that followed, Warburg’s theory inspired controversy and debate as researchers instead found that genetic mutations within cells caused malignant transformation and uncontrolled cell growth. Many researchers argued Warburg’s findings really identified the effects, and not the causes, of cancer since no mitochondrial defects could be found that were consistently associated with malignant transformation in cancers.
Boston College biologists and colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine found new evidence to support Warburg’s theory by examining mitochondrial lipids in a diverse group of mouse brain tumors, specifically a complex lipid known as cardiolipin (CL). They reported their findings in the December edition of the Journal of Lipid Research.
Abnormalities in cardiolipin can impair mitochondrial function and energy production. Boston College doctoral student Michael Kiebish and Professors Thomas N. Seyfried and Jeffrey Chuang compared the cardiolipin content in normal mouse brain mitochondria with CL content in several types of brain tumors taken from mice. Bioinformatic models were used to compare the lipid characteristics of the normal and the tumor mitochondria samples. Major abnormalities in cardiolipin content or composition were present in all types of tumors and closely associated with significant reductions in energy-generating activities.
The findings were consistent with the pivotal role of cardiolipin in maintaining the structural integrity of a cell’s inner mitochondrial membrane, responsible for energy production. The results suggest that cardiolipin abnormalities “can underlie the irreversible respiratory injury in tumors and link mitochondrial lipid defects to the Warburg theory of cancer,” according to the co-authors.

Press release: Nearly a century later, new findings support Warburg theory of cancer …
Image: These three-dimensional illustrations show the relationship of cardiolipin abnormalities to electron transport chain activities in the cells of mouse brain tumors studied by researchers from Boston College and Washington University School of Medicine. The graphs show the position of the tumors in relation to their host strain in three enzyme complexes. Credit: The Journal of Lipid Research

A team of Italian and Swiss scientists have shown that carbon nanotubes can be used as biocompatible amplifiers to boost signal processing abilities of neurons.
From the press statement isssued by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne:

Research done by scientists in Italy and Switzerland has shown that carbon nanotubes may be the ideal “smart” brain material. Their results, published December 21 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, are a promising step forward in the search to find ways to “bypass” faulty brain wiring.
The research shows that carbon nanotubes, which, like neurons, are highly electrically conductive, form extremely tight contacts with neuronal cell membranes. Unlike the metal electrodes that are currently used in research and clinical applications, the nanotubes can create shortcuts between the distal and proximal compartments of the neuron, resulting in enhanced neuronal excitability.
The study was conducted in the Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry at EPFL in Switzerland and led by Michele Giugliano (now an assistant professor at the University of Antwerp), University of Trieste professor Laura Ballerini and Maurizio Prato, also from the University of Trieste. “This result is extremely relevant for the emerging field of neuro-engineering and neuroprosthetics,” explains Giugliano, who hypothesizes that the nanotubes could be used as a new building block of novel “electrical bypass” systems for treating traumatic injury of the central nervous system. Carbon nano-electrodes could also be used to replace metal parts in clinical applications such as deep brain stimulation for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease or severe depression. And they show promise as a whole new class of “smart” materials for use in a wide range of potential neuroprosthetic applications.
Henry Markram, head of the Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry and an author on the paper, adds: “There are three fundamental obstacles to developing reliable neuroprosthetics: 1) stable interfacing of electromechanical devices with neural tissue, 2) understanding how to stimulate the neural tissue, and 3) understanding what signals to record from the neurons in order for the device to make an automatic and appropriate decision to stimulate. The new carbon nanotube-based interface technology discovered together with state of the art simulations of brain-machine interfaces is the key to developing all types of neuroprosthetics — sight, sound, smell, motion, vetoing epileptic attacks, spinal bypasses, as well as repairing and even enhancing cognitive functions.”

Press release: New”smart” materials for the brain…
Study abstract: Carbon nanotubes might improve neuronal performance by favouring electrical shortcuts
Image credit: Wellcome images: Carbon nanotubes…