The most common first diagnosis of Alport syndrome in Japan is during the universal age-3 urine screening. In 60% of these children, the disease had already progressed far enough to qualify for treatment. Therefore, universal early-age urinalysis may be an apt means for both better prognoses and reduced costs of medical care.

Every year as the announcement of the Nobel Prize approaches, expectations for potential candidates rise. SAGAWA Masato, the inventor of the world’s strongest permanent magnet, the neodymium magnet, has been often mentioned. His invention is used in a wide range of products, including smartphones, air conditioners and electric vehicles, and is considered a key breakthrough for today’s IT society. How did the idea come about? What drove his research? In January 2025, we talked with Sagawa on the occasion of a lecture at his alma mater, Kobe University.

A new method of taking microscopic images of a live mouse’s retina through the eye allows to record the reaction of brain cells to disease and treatment. The Kobe University development is more easily applicable than previous methods and promises to advance research on and treatment of vision-related diseases.

A new metal–organic framework (MOF), APF-80, enables the crystalline sponge method to capture and analyze nucleophilic compounds. Alkaloids, a diverse group of biologically active compounds, usually damage MOF crystals and resist study. By incorporating multiple structural motifs, these guests are encapsulated inside APF-80, which allows high-quality crystallographic data collection. This development opens new possibilities for structural analysis, advancing drug development and biochemistry.

As use of wearable devices such as augmented reality (AR) glasses has slowly but steadily increased, so too has the desire to control these devices in an easy and convenient way. Ring controllers worn on the finger already exist, but usually have some drawbacks in their size, weight or power consumption. Researchers including those at the University of Tokyo developed picoRing, an ultralow-power, ring-based wireless mouse to solve this problem. It uses a novel method to communicate with devices giving it an incredibly long use period between charges.

An international research team revealed how we could use Germanium-Tin (GeSn) in highly efficient semiconductors – which could benefit a plethora of everyday technologies.

Researchers from The University of Osaka have developed a polymeric adhesion system by introducing reversible bonds at the adhesion interface based on the formation and dissociation of host–guest complexes. The adhesive can be decomposed on demand using temperature or chemicals and reused multiple times. Visualization of the interface using neutrons revealed the mechanism underlying repeatable sticking and peeling. This technology can be used for sustainable material applications.

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a new structure determination method using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy which shows how different parts of complex molecular machinery like enzymes move while they help catalyze reactions. Focusing on an enzyme in yeast, they demonstrated how contrasts in atomic scale motions impact their function. The method promises unprecedented access to the mechanisms by which biomolecules work, and how they relate to illnesses.

In a study now published in Nature Plants, Dr. Yihong Feng (Specially Appointed Assistant Professor) and Professor Takashi Ueda at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Japan, together with their collaborators, demonstrated in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana the existence of a retrograde trafficking pathway that retrieves the membrane protein VAMP727 from the vacuolar membrane back to endosomes. The team further identified the molecular machinery responsible for this pathway.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented several challenges, leaving the specific impact of class closures on student performance unclear. To address this, researchers examined the effect of pre-pandemic class closures due to influenza outbreaks on students’ test scores in Japan. They found that class closures adversely affected the math scores of elementary school boys from low-income households, likely due to lost instructional time and unhealthy behaviors. Fortunately, high-quality teachers could help students recover from the learning loss.