#chemo

Immunotherapy has emerged in recent years as a new cancer treatment that is gentler than traditional chemotherapy and causes milder side effects in patients. However, conventional dendritic cell (DC) immunotherapy shows inconsistent clinical outcomes, and the cell culture process remains complex and costly. A research team at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) has successfully developed a new silica-based nanostructured biomaterial, nanozigzags (NZs), that can significantly shorten the DC culture time, reduce production costs, and enhance therapeutic efficacy by nearly 70%. The work is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #2 (2025)

Basically, there was an event that happened in the DC comic world called Infinite Crisis, and during this event, the former vice president-executive editor at DC (Dan DiDio) wanted to kill off Dick. And since Dick was going to die, Bludhaven wouldn't be needed anymore, or maybe they wanted to make a bigger impact with Dick's death by destroying it, so they decided to get rid of Dick and Bludhaven in one go. (Note that Dick didn't end up dying because DiDio's plan to kill Dick didn't go through.)

What this looked like is that Slade Wilson (Deathstroke) joined a group called the Society (aka the Secret Society of Super Villains). The Society worked for Alexander Luthor, and Alexander wanted to redivide the universe in order to find a new and perfect earth (go read Infinite Crisis #4 for more details).

The reason I mentioned Slade is because while things were starting to form for this Infinite Crisis event to take place, Slade was involved in Dick's life at this point. Dick was not working as Nightwing during this time, he was working for a mobster named Tommy Tevis as an enforcer because he felt like a huge failure and was full of self-loathing (the events that caused such a mindset within him is a whole other story).

The reason why Slade got involved in Dick's life is because Dick found out Slade was part of the Society, which messed up Dick's plans to join the Society undercover because Slade knew Dick's secret identity. Dick decided to get in contact with Slade to get information from him.

Slade got the message and appeared with his daughter Rose. If you're not aware, Slade has a long history with Dick that goes back to Dick's time with the Titans, so he knows Dick on a deeper level than some of Dick's other adversaries.

When Slade saw that Dick was working for mobsters, and when he listened to Dick's rant of self-loathing, he didn't believe Dick had actually packed up the hero gig and mentality, which meant he wouldn't divulge information he had to Dick. So he basically told Dick, "If you've really given up being a hero then train Rose. Teach her everything you know. Then we'll talk." Basically he wanted proof that Dick was an actual bad guy before divulging information to him.

Dick said okay and started to train Rose. While training with Dick, Rose started to learn things that leaned away from what Slade believed in. Slade didn't want Rose to be against him or to have a reason to leave his side (Rose was his only remaining living child, his two sons were killed previously). That's why when things eventually dissolved between Dick and Slade after Slade tried to use Dick to fool Superman, Dick struck a deal with Slade that he would stay away from Rose if Slade kept his cronies/the Society away from Bludhaven. Dick threatened that if Slade let someone from the Society meddle with Bludhaven, Dick would make sure Rose was poisoned by chronic idealism (thus turning her against Slade).

However, Slade turned on the deal and wanted the Society to target Bludhaven to hurt Dick. The Society then dropped a massive living chemical weapon on Bludhaven called Chemo. Chemo ended up killing 100,068 people in Bludhaven. Dick stayed in Bludhaven to try and help people despite being affected by the radiation, but he eventually collapsed and was rescued by Bruce.

In the aftermath of the Crisis, Captain Atom destroyed Bludhaven, wiping it off the map completely. Bludhaven couldn't be rebuilt because of the radiation poisoning. Dick then had to relocate to New York. Bludhaven has, of course, been restored in the main universe since then.

You can look at my previous post for the comic issues that include Chemo: