A new high-precision feeding system for lab mice reinforces the idea that the time of day food is eaten is more critical to weight loss than the amount of calories ingested.
Scientists have linked specific wiring in the brain to distinct behavioral symptoms of depression. In a study published in Cell, researchers at UC San Diego found brain circuits tied to feelings of despair and helplessness and were able to alleviate and even reverse such symptoms in mice studies.
A new study in mice shows that females vaccinated before pregnancy and infected with Zika virus while pregnant bear pups who show no trace of the virus. The findings offer the first evidence that an effective vaccine can protect vulnerable fetuses from Zika infection and resulting injury.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified an enzyme present in the cornea that becomes dramatically upregulated and triggers inflammation during and even after a herpes virus infection has cleared.
A study by researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine shows that when mice that are genetically susceptible to developing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) were given antibiotics during late pregnancy and the early nursing period, their offspring were more likely to develop an inflammatory condition of the colon that resembles human IBD.
After 12 weeks of taking an anti-asthma drug, a subset of patients with type 2 diabetes showed a clinically significant reduction in blood glucose during a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, report University of California San Diego School of Medicine and University of Michigan researchers.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital discovery of the mechanism of T cell exhaustion will lead to treatments to enhance immunotherapies against cancers and such viruses as HIV
Decades after the discovery of anti-obesity hormone, scant evidence that leptin keeps lean people lean, scientists caution
A new study by a team of plant biologists from the National University of Singapore found that some plants may selectively kill part of their roots to survive under cold weather conditions.
Scientists used human pluripotent stem cells to generate human embryonic colons in a laboratory that function much like natural human tissues when transplanted into mice, according to research published June 22 in Cell Stem Cell. The study is believed to be the first time human colon organoids have been successfully tissue engineered in this manner, according to researchers who led the project.
Researchers worked backwards, employing a series of drugs used in the clinic to understand a new way that cancer stem cells can be killed.
Researchers have discovered a clue that could unlock the potential of immunotherapy drugs to successfully treat more cancers. The findings, published in Cell, were made in mice and showed that targeting a sub-population of immune cells called regulatory T cells could be an effective approach to treating cancers. The findings also point to what could be an important mechanism by which current immunotherapy drugs work, providing clues to making them more effective.
UNC School of Medicine researchers have cracked a long-standing mystery about an important enzyme called Set2 found in virtually all organisms other than bacteria. The basic science finding may have implications for understanding cancer development and how to halt it.
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have found that in utero exposure to stress, then experiencing stressors after birth, can lead to overeating disorders in females. However, the scientists were able to prevent the onset of the disorders through dietary intervention.
A new study at the Weizmann Institute of Science reveals that there is no difference between the health effects of “wholesome” and white bread – rather, one’s gut microbiome affects individual response.
A Tulane endocrinologist has co-authored a guide in the latest issue of Cell Metabolism to help scientists who study obesity, diabetes or other metabolic diseases better account for inherent sex differences in research.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital discovery of a regulatory enzyme working at the primary cilium could lead to treatments for the brain tumor medulloblastoma
In humans, developing metabolic disease, particularly type 2 diabetes, is correlated with having bacteria that penetrate the mucus lining of the colon, according to a study led by Drs. Benoit Chassaing and Andrew Gewirtz at Georgia State University.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have used a drug being developed to fight solid tumors to restore normal metabolism in flu-infected cells and reduce viral production without the threat of drug resistance
A study led by the University of Birmingham has made a breakthrough in the understanding of how different genetic mutations cause acute myeloid leukaemia.
After analyzing the blood of a survivor of the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak, a team of scientists from academia, industry and the government has discovered the first natural human antibodies that can neutralize and protect animals against all three major disease-causing ebolaviruses. The findings, published online today in the journal Cell, could lead to the first broadly effective ebolavirus therapies and vaccines.
Scientists for the first time have assembled a "disease in a dish" model that pinpoints how a defect in the blood-brain barrier can produce an incurable psychomotor disorder, Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome. The findings point to a path for treating this syndrome and hold promise for analyzing other neurological diseases.
By using induced pluripotent stem cells to create endothelial cells that line blood vessels in the brain for the first time for a neurodegenerative disease, University of California, Irvine neurobiologists and colleagues have learned why Huntington’s disease patients have defects in the blood-brain barrier that contribute to the symptoms of this fatal disorder.
A team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles have used the cells of AHDS patients to recreate not only the disease, but a mimic of the patient’s blood-brain barrier in the laboratory dish using induced pluripotent stem cell technology.
Leading hospital “superbugs,” known as the enterococci, arose from an ancestor that dates back 450 million years — about the time when animals were first crawling onto land (and well before the age of dinosaurs), according to a new study.
Until now, scientists have only had a murky understanding of how these relationships arise. Now Colin Dale and his colleagues at the University of Utah have an answer. It’s good news and bad news, germophobes: The bad news? Mutualistic bacteria start out by invading animal cells just like malevolent disease-causing bacteria do. The good news? Once they’re in, they calm down and play nice.
Immunotherapy, which has achieved remarkable results in late-stage lung cancer patients, can also hold great hope for newly diagnosed patients, cutting the deadly disease off before it has the chance to take hold and offering a potential cure, according to a new Mount Sinai study published today in Cell.
Pancreatic beta cells help maintain normal blood glucose levels by producing the hormone insulin — the master regulator of energy (glucose). Impairment and the loss of beta cells interrupts insulin production, leading to type 1 and 2 diabetes. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have, for the first time, mapped out pathways that regulate beta cell growth that could be exploited to trick them to regenerate.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered why some cancers may reoccur after years in remission.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) — a condition that can lead to liver cirrhosis and cancer — isn’t typically detected until well advanced. Even then, diagnosis requires a biopsy. To more easily detect NAFLD, UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers and their collaborators report that the microbial makeup of a patient’s stool — gut microbiome — can be used to predict advanced NAFLD with 88 to 94 percent accuracy. The study is published May 2 in Cell Metabolism.
Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute at UC San Diego Health, with colleagues in China, have reprogrammed mutated rod photoreceptors to become functioning cone photoreceptors, reversing cellular degeneration and restoring visual function in two mouse models of retinitis pigmentosa.
A new study finds defective HIV proviruses, long thought to be harmless, produce viral proteins and distract the immune system from killing intact proviruses needed to reduce the HIV reservoir and cure HIV. The study was published by researchers at the George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University in Cell Host & Microbe.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and George Washington universities report new evidence that proteins created by defective forms of HIV long previously believed to be harmless actually interact with our immune systems and are actively monitored by a specific type of immune cell, called cytotoxic T cells.
Diabetes researchers have puzzled for decades about why insulin-producing beta cells in one pancreatic islet often look and behave quite differently than their counterparts in the same islet or in nearby islets. Using newly identified cellular markers of aging, Joslin Diabetes Center scientists now have shown that this diversity may be driven at least in part by differently aged beta cell populations within the pancreas.
Inhibiting the Ezh2 enzyme may be counterproductive for treatment of certain cancers, including the aggressive brain tumor Group 3 medulloblastoma
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have discovered a common genetic variant that greatly affects normal brain aging in older adults. The discovery may point toward new targets for preventing or treating age-associated brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Intestinal stem cells rejuvenate daily so bowels will stay healthy and function normally, but a new study in Cell Reports suggests they also age along with people and lose their regenerative capacity. Reporting their data online March 14, researchers suggest that reactivating the signaling of a key molecule lost in aging intestinal stem cells could restore healthy intestinal function in older people.
Everyone knows that exercise is good for you, but what type of training helps most, especially when you’re older - say over 65? A Mayo Clinic study says it’s high-intensity aerobic exercise, which can reverse some cellular aspects of aging. The findings appear in Cell Metabolism.
Targeting cancer stem cells may be a more effective way to overcome cancer resistance and prevent the spread of squamous cell carcinoma — the most common head and neck cancer and the second-most common skin cancer, according to a new study by cancer researchers at the UCLA School of Dentistry. Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is a highly invasive form of cancer and frequently spreads to the cervical lymph nodes.
A specific protein inside cells senses threatening changes in its environment, such as heat or starvation, and triggers an adaptive response to help the cell continue to function and grow under stressful conditions, according to a new study by scientists from the University of Chicago.
Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have shown that the composition of the mitochondrial calcium portal (the protein that regulates when and how much calcium enters) is different depending on the organ in the body, and this difference allows mitochondria to tune their energy output by decoding a pattern of amplitude and/or frequency of calcium oscillations inside a cell. The results, published March 7 in the journal Cell Reports, could shed light on our basic understanding of organ health and disease.
Ovarian cancer researchers have identified a protein biomarker expressed on the surface of tumour cells in high-grade serous ovarian cancer, the most common and lethal subtype of the disease.
Choosing among cancer treatments increasingly involves determining whether tumor cells harbor specific, mutated “oncogenes” that drive abnormal growth and that may also be especially vulnerable or resistant to particular drugs. But according to a new study led by UCSF researchers, in the case of the most commonly mutated cancer-driving oncogene, called KRAS (pronounced “kay-rass”), response to treatment can change as tumors evolve, either when a normal copy of the gene from the other member of the matched chromosome pair is lost, or when the cancers cells evolve to produce additional copies of the mutated form of the gene.
Researchers at Whitehead Institute have now uncovered a role for the protein-folding chaperone HSP90 in humans, not only as a modifier of the effects of mutations, but as a mediator of the impact of the environment on the function of mutant proteins. And these effects of HSP90 can alter the course of human diseases.
In 2013, Mass. Eye and Ear researchers restored partial hearing to mice by regenerating hair cells — tiny, sound-sensing cells in the ear, which are lost through noise damage, age, etc., and do not regenerate on their own — by converting stem cells found in the ear into hair cells. However, the success of restoring hearing through this approach was limited by the small number of cells that could be turned into hair cells. In a new study in Cell Reports, a research team from Mass. Eye and Ear, Brigham and Women's Hospital and MIT has shown that they can augment the number of those cells, and then convert that large population into hair cells, lending hope that full hearing can be restored to those with hearing loss due to damaged hair cells.
The community of microorganisms that resides in the gut, known as the microbiome, has been shown to work in tandem with the genes of a host organism to regulate insulin secretion, a key variable in the onset of the metabolic disease diabetes. That is the primary finding of a study published this week by a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
Mount Sinai researchers have created a novel model that shows the step-by-step progression from normal blood cells to leukemia and its precursor diseases, creating replicas of the stages of the disease to test the efficacy of therapeutic interventions at each stage, according to a study to be published in Cell Stem Cell. This research marked the first time scientists have been able to transplant leukemia from humans to a test tube and then into mice for study, a landmark feat that will allow for valuable research to help find therapies for blood cancer patients in the future.
A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center identifies a protein in that microenvironment that promotes the spread of breast cancer cells. It’s part of a well-known family of receptors for which promising inhibitors are being developed.
Keeping blood sugar levels within a safe range is key to managing both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. In a new finding that could lead to fewer complications for diabetes patients, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that changes in the size of mitochondria in a small subset of brain cells play a crucial role in safely maintaining blood sugar levels.
Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) today published a seminal review of the rapidly evolving field of precision oncology, which allows doctors to recommend therapies based on a genetic understanding of a person’s cancer. Appearing in the special cancer-focused February 9 issue of Cell, the article — “Implementing Genome-Driven Oncology” — presents a critically self-reflective but solutions-focused perspective on this approach to cancer treatment.
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