Sunday, April 26, 2026 — Edition No. 72 — The Cornmill Intelligencer

← Past Editions · Edition No. 72 · Sunday, April 26, 2026

Today’s outlook: Bricks, breakthroughs and a bumper bank holiday

News Glasgow

168 new homes for NHS staff to rise beside Glasgow Royal Infirmary

Plans for purpose-built key worker flats on a long-vacant Wishart Street site promise an affordable, walk-to-work base for nurses, porters and hospital staff — in what backers call a “historic first” for Scotland.

By Helen Cooper

For a nurse coming off a twelve-hour shift at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the dream is simple: a warm bed, a hot shower, and a walk home that doesn't involve two buses and a small fortune in rent.

A new plan lodged with Glasgow City Council could turn that dream into bricks and mortar. Developers want to build 168 studio flats for NHS key workers on a long-empty brownfield site at Wishart Street, just a short walk from the Royal Infirmary's front doors and tucked alongside the Glasgow Necropolis.

If approved, it would be the first purpose-built housing scheme in Scotland designed specifically for hospital staff — a milestone the developers have called a "historic first".

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Health Medical Breakthroughs

Scientists block one of the world's most common viruses — and it could change life for transplant patients

A team at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center has created human-like antibodies that stop Epstein-Barr virus from getting into immune cells. For the millions living with EBV-linked illnesses, it's the biggest step forward in years.

By Damien Day

Almost everyone reading this is carrying it. The Epstein-Barr virus, or EBV, quietly infects about 95% of adults worldwide, usually arriving as a mild illness in childhood or as glandular fever in teenagers. Most of us never know it is there.

But EBV does not always stay quiet. It is now firmly linked to multiple sclerosis, several types of cancer — including some lymphomas and nasopharyngeal carcinoma — and a range of long-term conditions. After decades of trying, scientists have struggled to find a way to block it.

That may be about to change. Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle have developed human-like antibodies that prevent EBV from latching onto and entering human immune cells. It is the first time this has been achieved in a way that could realistically lead to a treatment.

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News Glasgow

Glasgow's gridlock is costing bus passengers 1.2 million hours a year — and now there's a price tag

A University of Glasgow study puts a £24 million price on the city's congestion. A Clyde-spanning laser demo hints at the smarter solutions to come.

Science

Tiny lipid 'discs' expose hidden weak spots in HIV and Ebola, raising hopes for next-generation vaccines

A breakthrough nanodisc platform from Scripps Research lets scientists see deadly viruses as they really are — and antibodies are spotting cracks in the armour

By Helen Cooper

For decades, HIV and Ebola have shrugged off humanity's best attempts to design vaccines against them. Now a team at Scripps Research in California thinks it has found a way to catch the viruses with their guard down — by studying them on tiny lipid “discs” that mimic the real thing.

The platform, described this month in Nature Communications, has already revealed hidden weak spots on both viruses. Scientists hope it will speed the design of vaccines for two of the world's most stubborn pathogens.

Viruses break into human cells using proteins that stud their outer surface. Those proteins are what vaccines train the immune system to recognise. The problem is that, in the lab, scientists usually have to chop off the bits of the protein that normally sit anchored in the virus's oily outer membrane — the equivalent of trying to learn how a door works after sawing off the hinges.

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Health

Peacekeeper cells: the new therapy that could spare bone marrow transplant patients a deadly complication

A first-of-its-kind regulatory T cell treatment is inching towards FDA approval — and could rewrite the rules for transplant medicine

By Damien Day

Imagine surviving leukaemia only to have your new bone marrow turn on you like a mutinous houseguest. That, in brutal shorthand, is graft-versus-host disease — the cruel twist that haunts thousands of bone marrow transplant patients every year.

Now a new kind of cell therapy, built around the immune system's own "peacekeepers", may finally be ready to change that story.

The treatment is called Orca-T, and it's on the cusp of becoming the first regulatory T cell therapy ever approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The agency is currently reviewing its application, with a fresh decision deadline of 6 July 2026, after a routine paperwork extension earlier this spring.

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What's On Glasgow

WestFest 2026: Glasgow's biggest free party rolls back into the West End

Four weeks, 60-plus venues, around 300 events — and most of them won't cost you a penny

By Helen Cooper

If you've ever wandered up Byres Road on a sunny June afternoon and found yourself swept into a samba band, a poetry reading or a pop-up ceilidh, you already know what's coming. WestFest — Glasgow's much-loved West End Festival — is back, and 2026 looks set to be the biggest one yet.

The festival runs from 1 to 28 June, with around 300 events across more than 60 venues, stretching from Kelvingrove to the Botanics and from the Mitchell to Kelvin Hall. The vast majority are free.

Things kick off a little early this year, with an opening Street Party on Ashton Lane and Vinicombe Street over the weekend of 30–31 May. Organised by the Ashton Lane Traders Association, it's a family-friendly affair with food, music and a generally giddy West End atmosphere — the kind of day that reminds you why people put up with the rain the rest of the year.

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What's On Glasgow

Five Years of Funk: How Scotland's House & Disco Festival Came of Age at SWG3

From a scrappy one-room party to a glitter-bombed Glasgow institution — inside the fifth-anniversary blowout

By Damien Day

When Dimitri From Paris dropped the needle at SWG3 on Easter Sunday, the Galvanizers room erupted in a single, sequinned roar. Five years on from its scrappy debut, the Scottish House & Disco Festival has grown up — and Glasgow danced until midnight to prove it.

The fifth-anniversary edition took over SWG3's industrial sprawl on Sunday 5 April, running from 2pm to midnight with an 18+ crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder across the venue's cavernous spaces.

Topping the bill was disco royalty Dimitri From Paris, the French selector whose remixes of Chic and Sister Sledge are gospel on any self-respecting dancefloor. He was joined by Good Times legend Norman Jay MBE, Glasgow's own edit master Al Kent, and a deep bench of contemporary heat: Natasha Kitty Katt, Austin Ato, Michael Gray and Melvo Baptiste.

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What's On Glasgow

Yardworks at 10: Glasgow's biggest street art party returns to SWG3

Two days of live murals, 120 artists, DJs and free family fun on the Clyde — everything you need to know about the May Bank Holiday spectacular

By Damien Day

Pull on your brightest trainers, Glasgow — Yardworks is back, and the city's most colourful weekend of the year is shaping up to be the biggest yet.

The festival returns to SWG3 on Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 May 2026 for a special 10th anniversary edition, with more than 120 artists from around the world descending on the Eastvale Place yard to turn bare walls into two days of live, large-scale spectacle.

If you've never been, picture this: a stretch of freshly-painted black wall at breakfast, a fully-realised mural by teatime, and the faint hiss of spray cans soundtracking the whole thing. SWG3's industrial yard becomes a working canvas, and you wander between the artists as they build up layer after layer in front of you.

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