Curated News: Grant Funded News

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It’s been known for years that humans and other mammals possess an antiviral gene called RSAD2 that prevents a remarkable range of viruses from multiplying. Now, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Montefiore, have discovered the secret to the gene’s success: The enzyme it codes for generates a compound that stops viruses from replicating. The newly discovered compound, described in today’s online edition of Nature, offers a novel approach for attacking many disease-causing viruses.

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In the first 90 days of concurrent opioid and benzodiazepine use, the risk of opioid-related overdose increases five-fold compared to opioid-only use among Medicare recipients, according to a new study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy.

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Promising experimental cancer chemotherapy drugs may help knock out another life-threatening disease: tuberculosis (TB).

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The first examples of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) were discovered in 2005, but quality has been poor and preparation methods uncontrolled. Now a Northwestern University research team is the first to produce high-quality versions of these materials, demonstrate their superior properties and control their growth. The team’s two-step process produces organic polymers with crystalline, two-dimensional structures. The precision of the material’s structure and the empty space its hexagonal pores provide will allow scientists to design new materials with desirable properties.

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Up to 50% of women skip potentially life-saving mammograms often because they can cause extreme discomfort. Now researchers have developed a painless, light-based, non-radioactive, 15-second procedure that could revolutionize breast cancer screening and save lives.

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The key to better treatments for brain injuries and disease may lie in the molecules charged with preventing the clumping of specific proteins associated with cognitive decline and other neurological problems, researchers from the Penn report in a new study published in Neurobiology of Disease.

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The microbiome may harbor a gene for drug resistance

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Michigan Medicine researchers discover that stimulating the prefrontal cortex results in wake-like behavior in anesthetized rats.

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A surprising event promotes global changes in glioblastoma. Dying, apoptotic cancer cells release extracellular vesicles that carry components to alter RNA splicing in the recipient glioblastoma cells, and this increases their aggressiveness, motility, and resistance to radiation or chemotherapy.

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Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a protein called Munc13-4 helps cancer cells secrete large numbers of exosomes—tiny, membrane-bound packages containing proteins and RNAs that stimulate tumor progression. The study, which will be published June 21 in the Journal of Cell Biology, could lead to new therapies that stop tumor growth and metastasis by halting exosome production.

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Bisexual men have a higher risk for heart disease compared with heterosexual men across several modifiable risk factors, finds a new study published online in the journal LGBT Health.

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Engineers have created an electronic skin that, when layered on top of prosthetic hands, can restore a sense of touch through the fingertips.

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In a new study of breast cancer patients who had breast reconstruction, researchers examine complications across the different types of surgeries. For many women facing treatment for breast cancer, breast reconstruction after mastectomy is a quality of life issue. It is linked with feeling more feminine, or “whole again” after surgery.

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• Chameleons change color by controlling the spacing among nanocrystals on their skin • Northwestern’s nanolaser changes color similarly — by controlling the spacing among metal nanoparticles • By stretching and releasing an elastic substrate, the nanoparticles move further apart or closer together to control color

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In an effort to improve stroke recognition and reduce life-threatening pre-hospital delays worldwide, researchers at Penn Medicine created a universal stroke awareness program, Stroke 112.

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Doctors found that cases of Lyme disease in children have increased exponentially in western Pennsylvania.

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Bioengineers have developed a portable, non-invasive monitor that can determine, in one minute and without drawing blood, whether chemotherapy patients have a reduced number of white blood cells that could lead to infections.

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The West Big Data Innovation Hub (WBDIH) at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego is one of four regional big data hubs partner sites awarded a $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the initial development of a data storage network during the next two years.

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The team examined city water policies over the course of four years to create a database of water conservation policies. They also developed an associated index of the number of different categories of policies each city adopted and gathered data on the climate, water sources, population, economy and political leanings.

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found new evidence suggesting that batteries based on sodium and potassium hold promise as a potential alternative to lithium-based batteries.

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Reviewing medical information gathered on more than 6,000 adults over a 10-year period, Johns Hopkins researchers have found that lower than normal blood levels of vitamin D were linked to increased risk of early signs of interstitial lung disease (ILD).

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Researchers at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto have discovered that epigenetic proteins promote the proliferation of mammary gland stem cells in response to the sex hormone progesterone. The study, which will be published June 19 in the Journal of Cell Biology, suggests that inhibiting these proteins with drugs could prevent the development of breast cancer in women at high risk of the disease.

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Researchers at The Francis Crick Institute in London have discovered that cells can trap viruses in a protein cage to stop them from spreading to neighboring cells. The study, which will be published June 19 in the Journal of Cell Biology, reveals that the vaccinia virus can escape this trap by recruiting additional proteins to dismantle the cage and propel the virus out of the cell.

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A research team at Massachusetts Eye and Ear has shown that microglia, the primary immune cells of the brain and retina, play a protective role in response to retinal detachment.

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"This new method should allow us to explore a large ‘chemical space’ that had been essentially off-limits."

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Faculty member Glenn McClure has received a $50,000 National Science Foundation Innovation Corps-National Innovation Network Teams grant to explore the interpretation and representation of large amounts of data through non-speech audio such as music.

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A new study by Scripps Research, published today in Nature Communications, suggests scientists could build better drugs by learning from bacteria-derived molecules called thiocarboxylic acids.

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A new study from the Keck School of Medicine of USC shows that African-Americans and Latinos who are diagnosed with diabetes after age 50 have a more than threefold risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

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A new Food-PRICE study finds persistent nutritional disparities within the food choices of those receiving assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) compared to those not receiving SNAP assistance.

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Graphene electrodes could enable higher quality brain imaging thanks to new research by a team of engineers and neuroscientists at UC San Diego. The researchers developed a technique, using platinum nanoparticles, to lower the impedance of graphene electrodes by 100 times while keeping them transparent. In tests on transgenic mice, the electrodes were able to record and image neuronal activity (calcium ion spikes) at of large groups of neurons and individual brain cells.

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Working with hundreds of time-lapse videos of mouse tissue, a team of biologists joined up with civil engineers to create what is believed to be the first 3D computer model to show precisely how the tiny tubes that funnel milk through the breasts of mammals form.

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Researchers led by the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center have identified a new subtype of prostate cancer that occurs in about 7 percent of patients with advanced disease. This subset of tumors were responsive to immunotherapy treatment.

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Obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer often begin with early, subtle changes in cell metabolism. Now researchers at Tufts University have developed a non-invasive optical imaging technique that detects these changes, providing an early window of opportunity for new research and potential therapeutic development.

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The world needs more students trained in global, interdisciplinary health science research. The International Research Experience for Students (IRES) program provides an eight-week-long opportunity for students to get lab experience abroad. One group is in Singapore this summer studying nanotechnology and virus detection.

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Systems biology was used to identify previously unknown protein targets of plant pathogens in Arabidopsis thaliana, employing some of the same methods used to analyze social networks. This theoretical framework could help analyze other interactions between species to reveal pathogen contact points.

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a team led by researchers at UC San Diego’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), has used machine learning techniques to develop models for simulations of water with “unprecedented accuracy.”

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As the result of a six-year long research process, Fredrick R. Schumacher, PhD, a cancer epidemiology researcher at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and an international team of more than 100 colleagues have identified 63 new genetic variations that could indicate higher risk of prostate cancer in men of European descent. The findings, published in a research letter in Nature Genetics, contain significant implications for which men may need to be regularly screened because of higher genetic risk of prostate cancer.

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A theorized but never-before detected property of quantum matter has now been spotted in the lab.

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Changes in cellular struts called microtubules can affect the stiffness of diseased human heart muscle cells, and reversing these modifications can lessen the stiffness and improve the beating strength of these cells isolated from transplant patients with heart failure.

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Oxygen photosynthesis has to be the greatest giver of life on Earth, and researchers have cracked yet another part of its complex and efficient chemistry. The more we know about it, the better we may be able to tweak photosynthesis, if it comes under environmental duress. It's also a great teacher of how to harvest sheer unlimited energy from the sun.

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Researchers at Indiana University have made the first direct observation of how bacteria use appendages thousands of times thinner than a human hair to absorb DNA in the environment. The work could help advance efforts stop antibiotic resistant bacteria.

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Vanderbilt University has been awarded a five-year, $8.1-million grant from the National Cancer Institute to serve as a research center in the institute’s prestigious Cancer Systems Biology Consortium for the study of small cell lung cancer.

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A new study led by public health researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine reports significant food insecurity for adults on probation in Rhode Island. Nearly three-quarters of the participants experienced food insecurity over a 30-day period, with almost half having very low food security.

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A research team at Wayne State University hopes to give clinicians tools for identifying the early signs of impending disease by measuring subtle deviations in the way the brain modulates its chemistry during the formation of new memories. Their research project, “Task-related modulation of hippocampal glutamate, subfield volumes and associative memory in younger and older adults: a longitudinal ¹H FMRS study,” was recently awarded a two-year, $423,500 grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health.

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Machine learning using real-time symptom reports can accurately detect lymphedema, a distressing side effect of breast cancer treatment that is more easily treated when identified early, finds a new study led by NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing and published in the journal mHealth.

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The number of insurance denials for life-saving hepatitis C drugs among patients with both private and public insurers remains high across the United States. Private insurers had the highest denial rates, with 52.4 percent of patients denied coverage, while Medicaid denied 34.5 percent of patients and Medicare denied 14.7 percent.

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Mucus and other airway secretions that are expelled when a person with the flu coughs or exhales appear to protect the virus when it becomes airborne, regardless of humidity levels, a creative experiment conducted by the University of Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech discovered.

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By screening 250 user reviews and comments for a once popular -- but proven inaccurate -- mobile app claiming to change your iPhone into a blood pressure monitor, Johns Hopkins researchers have added to evidence that a high “star rating” doesn’t necessarily reflect medical accuracy or value.

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Systematic review of task-related neuroimaging studies found addicted individuals demonstrate increased activity in these networks during drug-related processing but decreases across all other functions

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As clinical trials gear up with the aim of attaining the first FDA-approved treatments for mitochondrial disease, a new study reports for the first time what patients and families say would motivate them for or against participating in such research trials.