Although the World Health Organization ended its global health emergency on Zika last November, the virus could still make a comeback as temperatures get warmer and mosquito season ramps up.
Transparent biosensors embedded into contact lenses could soon allow doctors and patients to monitor blood glucose levels and a host of other telltale signs of disease without invasive tests. Scientists say the bio-sensing lenses, based on technology that led to the development of smartphones with more vivid displays, also could potentially be used to track drug use or serve as an early detection system for cancer and other serious medical conditions.
Brain signals that should help tell us we are full after eating appear to be dulled in obese children, according to preliminary results of a new study being presented Monday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Two doctors in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have been awarded Immuno-Oncology Innovative Research Grants (IRG) by Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C). Michael Farwell, MD, an assistant professor of Radiology, and Gregory L. Beatty, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Hematology Oncology, and are two of just 10 researchers to receive these grants.
A new study finds that a noninvasive electromagnetic brain stimulation technique helps obese people lose weight, partly by changing the composition of their intestinal bacteria—the so-called gut microbiota. Results of the technique, called deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS), will be presented Sunday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
University of Iowa researchers have documented in continuous, real time how melanoma cells form tumors. The team report the process is similar to that of breast cancer cells and have successfully screened for two antibodies that stopped tumor formation in both cancers. Results published in the journal PLOS One.
Like almost all light-sensitive living beings, human beings follow biological rhythms set on a period of about 24 hours. The circadian clock (from Latin “circa” and “dies”, which means “about a day”) therefore describes the internal system that allows us to anticipate the changes of day and night by regulating nearly all the aspects of our physiology and behaviour.
A new imaging test may provide the ability to identify ovarian cancer patients who are candidates for an emerging treatment that targets a key enzyme cancer cells need to survive.
In the second half of the 20th century, the mass use of fertilizer was part of an agricultural boom called the “green revolution” that was largely credited with averting a global food crisis.
On the list of dreaded medical tests, a prostate biopsy probably ranks fairly high. The common procedure requires sticking a needle into the prostate gland to remove tissue for assessment. Thousands of men who undergo the uncomfortable procedure, prompted by a positive PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test, ultimately don’t require cancer treatment.
Most medicines can’t get through the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a highly selective membrane that separates the circulatory system from the fluid bathing the brain. Certain peptides in animal venoms, however, can navigate across it to inflict damage. Now, researchers are capitalizing on venomous sneak attacks by developing a strategy based on a bee-venom peptide, apamin, to deliver medications to the brain.
Antibiotics save lives every day, but there is a downside to their ubiquity. High doses can kill healthy cells along with infection-causing bacteria, while also spurring the creation of “superbugs” that no longer respond to known antibiotics. Now, researchers may have found a natural way to cut down on antibiotic use without sacrificing health: a maple syrup extract that dramatically increases the potency of these medicines.
Bisphenol S (BPS), a substitute for the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in the plastic industry, shows the potential for increasing the aggressiveness of breast cancer through its behavior as an endocrine-disrupting chemical, a new study finds. The results, which tested BPS in human breast cancer cells, will be presented Saturday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Ten images and two videos by University of Wisconsin–Madison students, faculty and staff have been named winners of the university's 2017 Cool Science Image Contest.
The Kevin Rudi Foundation will host its third annual Superhero 5K Fun Run to raise money for sarcoma research at The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Blind tadpoles were able to process visual information from eyes grafted onto their tails after being treated with a small molecule neurotransmitter drug that augmented innervation, integration, and function of the transplanted organs. The work, which used a pharmacological reagent already approved for use in humans, provides a potential road map for promoting innervation – the supply of nerves to a body part – in regenerative medicine.
Using a newly developed method researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) have been able to shed light on the complexity of genome reorganization occurring during the first hours after fertilization in the single-cell mammalian embryo. Their findings have recently been published in the journal Nature. The team of researchers (from three continents) have discovered that the egg and sperm genomes that co-exist in the single-cell embryo or zygote have a unique structure compared to other interphase cells. Understanding this specialized chromatin “ground state” has the potential to provide insights into the yet mysterious process of epigenetic reprogramming to totipotency, the ability to give rise to all cell types.
Researchers from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore at the National University of Singapore have described, for the first time, the ordered arrangement of myosin-II filaments in actin cables of non-muscle cells.
A fluorescent probe developed by Michigan Tech chemist Haiying Liu lights up the enzyme beta-galactosidase in a cell culture. The glowing probe-enzyme combination could make tumors fluoresce, allowing surgeons to cut away cancer while leaving healthy tissue intact.
The chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, appears to aid the survival of inflammatory breast cancer cells, revealing a potential mechanism for how the disease grows, according to a study led by researchers in the Department of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine and the Duke Cancer Institute.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic have identified an interaction among proteins that allows cancer cells to grow and metastasize. They say the discovery may play a role in developing a better understanding of how tumors grow in a variety of malignancies, including breast, prostate, pancreatic, colon, lung and skin cancers.
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have developed a breakthrough technique to harvest cells directly from urine, and grow them into durable, clinically relevant stem cells to study Down syndrome.
Being ‘lovesick’ takes on a whole new meaning in a new theory which answers the unsolved fundamental question: why do we have sex?
In experiments with a protein called Ephexin5 that appears to be elevated in the brain cells of Alzheimer's disease patients and mouse models of the disease, Johns Hopkins researchers say removing it prevents animals from developing Alzheimer's characteristic memory losses. In a report on the studies, published online March 27 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, the researchers say the findings could eventually advance development of drugs that target Ephexin5 to prevent or treat symptoms of the disorder.
With a more accurate understanding of the characteristics and function of the receptor MRGRPX2, University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers were also able to create chemical probe that will allow them study the receptor more precisely.
Scientists partially re-insulated ravaged nerves in mouse models of multiple sclerosis (MS) and restored limb mobility by treating the animals with a small non-coding RNA called a microRNA. In a study published online March 27 in Developmental Cell, researchers report that treatment with a microRNA called miR-219 restarted production of a substance called myelin that is critical to normal function of the central nervous system.
In a new study, scientists find that the growth factor TGF-beta may play a role in the formation of secondary cataract, suggesting a direction for research into strategies to prevent it. The study appears in Molecular Biology of the Cell and was funded by the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Proton therapy is a promising form of radiation treatment used to kill cancerous cells and effectively halt their rapid reproduction, and the fundamental understanding for it is contained in the radiation induced water chemistry that occurs immediately after the interaction. The ensuing processes are therefore a subject of considerable scientific interest. Researchers describe their work exploring this ionization with an experimental setup, with enhanced temporal resolution, in this week’s Applied Physics Letters.
In a Phase I clinical study, researchers were able to transform the immune system by taking cells damaged in Parkinson’s disease and making them cells that protect and defend against brain injury.
Star-shaped cells called astrocytes, long considered boring, “support cells,” are finally coming into their own. To everyone’s surprise they even play an important role in the body’s master clock, which schedules everything from the release of hormones to the onset of sleepiness.
By inserting an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)-linked human gene called TDP-43 into fruit flies, researchers at Stony Brook University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory discovered a potential role for ‘transposons’ in the disease.
Applications by the IMP, the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, were 100% successful in the latest call of the European Research Council ERC. Over the coming five years, projects by Senior Scientists Meinrad Busslinger and Elly Tanaka will be funded with 4.8 million euros.
The brain hosts an extraordinarily complex network of interconnected nerve cells that are constantly exchanging electrical and chemical signals at speeds difficult to comprehend. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report they have been able to achieve — with a custom-built microscope — the closest view yet of living nerve synapses.
In new research, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have implicated a specific molecule in the self-destruction of axons, the wiring of the nervous system. Understanding just how that damage occurs may help researchers find a way to halt it.
Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have identified, for the first time, an epigenetic mechanism promoting breast cancer. The team found that inhibition of the PI3K pathway leads to activation of ER-dependent transcription through the epigenetic regulator KMT2D. These findings provide a rationale for epigenetic therapy in patients with PIK3CA-mutant, ER-positive breast cancer. While epigenetic factors have been known to play an important role in various cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, this is the first evidence found in breast cancer.
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists report data from a new study providing evidence that random, unpredictable DNA copying “mistakes” account for nearly two-thirds of the mutations that cause cancer. Their research is grounded on a novel mathematical model based on DNA sequencing and epidemiologic data from around the world.
The body’s ability to repair DNA damage declines with age, which causes gradual cell demise, overall bodily degeneration and greater susceptibility to cancer.
Thin parts of the cell membranes of neurons turn out to be particularly vulnerable to a protein that collects in the brain of people with Alzheimer's disease, according to a University of Michigan researcher.
University of North Carolina scientists found that mucin proteins, which make mucus thick and sticky, fail to unfold properly in the airways of people with cystic fibrosis. And they found the lack of water in the lung can trigger the misfolding mucins.
Connecting pieces of information by finding a common thread often takes glaucoma researchers in unexpected directions. Zinc is one such thread that joined together different experts at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
UCLA scientists have traced the Pavlovian response to a small cluster of brain cells -- the same neurons that go awry during Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Tourette syndrome. The research could one day help scientists find new approaches to diagnosing and treating these neurological disorders.
Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University, and Cissy Ballen of the University of Minnesota have just published a paper in PLOS Biology, “Walking and Talking the Tree of Life: Why and How to Teach About Biodiversity,” discussing why the evolutionary TOL approach to biodiversity is best, to what extent the traditional taxonomy is still used and how to teach TOL using an active learning approach.
Membrane fusion lies at the heart of many cell functions—from the secretion of antibodies to the release of neurotransmitters. For more than two decades, one view of the process by which membrane fusion occurs has been accepted as dogma; now recent studies indicate that fusion is more complex. These discoveries are being regarded by at least one leading cell biologist as “textbook changing” and could alter how we develop drugs that affect membrane fusion activities.
Since a couple of decades, metal-containing drugs have been successfully used to fight against certain types of cancer. The lack of knowledge about the underlying molecular mechanisms slows down the search for new and more efficient chemotherapeutic agents. An international team of scientists, led by Leticia González from the University of Vienna and Jacinto Sá from the Uppsala University, have developed a protocol that is able to detect how metal-based drugs interact with DNA.
University of Utah bioengineering researchers have discovered that damage to collagen, the main building block of all human tissue, can occur much earlier at a molecular level from too much physical stress. This could be helpful for some who want to know earlier if they are developing diseases such as arthritis or for athletes whose bodies are taking a toll.
A group of computational biological researchers, led by Stony Brook University’s Rob Patro, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has developed a new software tool, Salmon — a lightweight method to provide fast and bias-aware quantification from RNA-sequencing reads. The research was published in the March 6 edition of Nature Methods. .
UCLA researchers have discovered the molecular basis of an incurable disease known as inclusion body myopathy, Paget disease with frontotemporal dementia, or IBMPFD. Using both fruit flies and human cells the researchers discovered how IBMPFD mutations cause cellular damage, and identified two compounds that are able to reverse the mutations effects. The findings suggest potential strategies to combat IBMPFD and other diseases, including ALS.
Using a technique that avoids the use of high-dose chemotherapy and radiation in preparation for a stem cell transplant, physicians at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System have documented the first cure of an adult patient with congenital dyserythropoietic anemia.
Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine (RCIGM) announced that Robert Wechsler-Reya, Ph.D., has been named program director for the Joseph Clayes III Research Center for Neuro-Oncology and Genomics at RCIGM. Wechsler-Reya, a professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), will retain his position as director of the Tumor Initiation and Maintenance Program at SBP’s NCI-designated Cancer Center and will hold a joint appointment at RCIGM.
The Galat laboratory at Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, has developed an elegant system to derive blood cell precursors from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC). This type of stem cell has the potential to develop into many different kinds of cells in the body, and is capable of participating in organ repair and function. These qualities have prompted scientists to test the use of hPSC to treat some diseases. However, the development of a fully defined system to generate functional blood cell precursors has proven to be a significant challenge. The Galat lab’s findings hold promise to overcome this challenge.
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