Curated News: Grant Funded News

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The compound CGP3466B, already proven nontoxic for people, may effectively and rapidly treat depression, according to results of a study in mice.

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New and comprehensive analyses from six independent research teams examining breast cancer screening intervals have produced a unanimous finding — that mammography screening every two years for average risk women ages 50 to 74 offers a favorable balance of benefits to harm.

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Researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have led an international effort to identify three genetic associations that influence susceptibility to primary open angle glaucoma — the most common form of adult onset glaucoma and the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the world.

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No more faking out your smartphone or bracelet activity tracker. Scientists have designed a way to train activity trackers to spot the difference between fake and real activity. The new method detects, for example, when a cheater shakes the phone while lounging on the couch, so the tracker will think he's on a brisk walk. Health care providers and insurance companies are increasingly relying on smartphone and wearable activity trackers to reward active individuals for healthy behavior or to monitor patients.

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Three scientists at the University of Washington have proposed a way to speed up common bioassays. Their solution, reminiscent of the magic behind washing machines, could reduce wait times to a fraction of what they once were. Biological assays that once took hours could instead take minutes.

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Nearly every girl and woman on Earth carries two X chromosomes in nearly every one of her cells – but one of them does (mostly) nothing. That’s because it’s been silenced, keeping most of its DNA locked up and unread like a book in a cage. Scientists thought they had figured out how cells do this, but a new piece of research from the University of Michigan Medical School shows the answer isn’t quite that clear.

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Fibrocartilage tissue in the knee is comprised of a more varied molecular structure than researchers previously appreciated. The work informs ways to better treat such injuries as knee meniscus tears – treatment of which are the most common orthopaedic surgery in the United States -- and age-related tissue degeneration, both of which can have significant socioeconomic and quality-of-life costs.

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Many doctors will ask about quality of sleep when children have problems at school, but new research shows it’s just as important to pay attention to how high achievers are sleeping.

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By utilizing a revolutionary method that allows mice to serve as “avatars” for patients, scientists at The Wistar Institute have shown that a previously ineffective targeted drug for melanoma may actually be quite potent in halting the progression of disease in certain patients.

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Using mice whose front paws were still partly disabled after an initial induced stroke, Johns Hopkins researchers report that inducing a second stroke nearby in their brains let them “rehab” the animals to successfully grab food pellets with those paws at pre-stroke efficiency.

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A new-generation drug has unprecedented potency against neuroblastoma tumors that develop resistance to the anticancer drug crizotinib. A preclinical study supports fast-tracking the agent into pediatric clinical trials this year.

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Doctors at the Duke University School of Medicine have tested a new injectable agent that causes cancer cells in a tumor to fluoresce, potentially increasing a surgeon’s ability to locate and remove all of a cancerous tumor on the first attempt. The imaging technology was developed through collaboration with scientists at Duke, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Lumicell Inc.

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A new study has revealed that cholsterol-lowering statins may help reverse the mechanisms that increase the risk of heart disease in people with sleep apnea.

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New research from North Carolina State University and the University of Michigan finds that bile acids which are altered by bacteria normally living in the large intestine inhibit the growth of Clostridium difficile, or C. diff.

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Even before they can read, children as young as 3 years of age are beginning to understand how a written word is different than a simple drawing — a nuance that could provide an important early indicator for children who may need extra help with reading lessons, suggests new research from Washington University in St.

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Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine scientists demonstrate in lab animals the regenerative dynamics of a specific signaling protein, C-C class chemokine 2 (CCL2). CCL2 sends inflammatory immune cells (macrophages) to peripheral nerve cell clusters to promote repair and to trigger gene expression that leads to new growth in nerve cells.

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Year-old changes to the system that distributes deceased donor kidneys nationwide have significantly boosted transplantation rates for black and Hispanic patients on waiting lists, reducing racial disparities inherent in the previous allocation formula used for decades, according to results of research led by a Johns Hopkins transplant surgeon.

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have produced self-consistent computer simulations that capture the evolution of an electric current inside fusion plasma without using a central electromagnet, or solenoid.

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Accelerator physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have successfully implemented an innovative scheme for increasing proton collision rates at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). More proton collisions at this DOE Office of Science User Facility produce more data for scientists to sift through to answer important nuclear physics questions, including the search for the source of proton spin.

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A gene that is known to suppress the growth and spread of many types of cancer has the opposite effect in some forms of colorectal cancer, University of Missouri School of Medicine researchers have found. It is a finding that may lay the foundation for new colorectal cancer treatments.

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The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, passed under the Affordable Care Act, requires all pharmaceutical and medical device companies to report payments to physicians, including consulting fees, gifts, speaking fees, meals, travel and research grants. A recent study by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine analyzed this database and compared payments among different specialties and identified which ones topped the list.

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A Penn-led team found that ant caste behavior can be reprogrammed, indicating that an individual’s epigenetic, not genetic, makeup determines roles in ant colonies.

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An NSAID changed the composition and diversity of gut microbes, which in turn shaped how the drug is broken down and ultimately, cut its effectiveness, according to animal study

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A device developed by University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers to automatically monitor and regulate blood-sugar levels in people with type 1 diabetes will undergo final testing in two clinical trials beginning in early 2016.

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Palbociclib, a new oral drug whose efficacy in combating breast cancer has been demonstrated alone and in combination with endocrine therapy, also has potential to combat other types of cancer, according to a literature review and additional original research conducted by experts at the Abramson Cancer Center in the University of Pennsylvania published this month in JAMA Oncology.

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The University of Washington-led Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering has won a $16M NSF grant to develop the first implantable device to reanimate paralyzed limbs and restore motor function in stroke or spinal cord injury patients.

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The specialized human ability to perceive the sound quality known as “pitch” can no longer be listed as unique to humans.

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a new nondestructive technique for investigating phase transitions in materials by examining the acoustic response at the nanoscale.

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The large, fast-moving mudslide that buried much of Oso, Washington in March 2014 was the deadliest landslide in U.S. history. University of Washington geologists analyzed woody debris buried in earlier slides and used radiocarbon dating to map the history of activity at the site.

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Two genetic variants previously linked to Alzheimer's disease have been more specifically tied to brain atrophy that is characteristic of the disease, and could be the basis for future blood biomarker tests.

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Johns Hopkins has demonstrated in animals that applying a pacemaker’s mild electrical shocks to push the heart in and out of normal synchronized contraction for part of each day may be an effective way to slow down the progression of heart failure, a disorder that afflicts millions of Americans.

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A five-center national study led by Neal Meropol, MD, and a team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Case Medical Center demonstrated that a little information goes a long way in encouraging cancer patients to enroll in clinical trials, a decision that could be potentially lifesaving.

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Ebola virus and bats have been waging a molecular battle for survival that may have started at least 25 million years ago, according to a study led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the University of Colorado-Boulder (CU-Boulder) and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) that published online today in the journal eLife. The findings shed light on the biological factors that determine which bat species may harbor the virus between outbreaks in humans and how bats may transmit the virus to people.

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A new study at Massachusetts Eye and Ear showed that in some cases of vestibular schwannoma, a sometimes-lethal tumor often associated with neurofibromatosis 2 (NF2), secretions from the tumor contain toxic molecules that damage the inner ear. The findings, published online in Scientific Reports, explain why some vestibular schwannomas cause hearing loss even though they are not large enough to compress nearby structures that control hearing.

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After observing that some gastrointestinal disease in premature human and mouse infants progresses only when certain immune system white blood cells go into inflammatory overdrive, Johns Hopkins researchers have found that giving large doses of vitamin A to mice converts those blood cells into inflammation suppressors and reduces the severity of the disease, compared to untreated mice.

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Building upon previous research, scientists at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Moores Cancer report that a protein called Wnt5a acts on a pair of tumor-surface proteins, called ROR1 and ROR2, to accelerate the proliferation and spread of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) cells, the most common form of blood cancer in adults.

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A brain region controlling whether we feel happy or sad, as well as addiction, is remodeled by chronic pain, reports a new study. And in a significant breakthrough, scientists have developed a new treatment that restores this region and dramatically lessens pain symptoms in an animal model. The new treatment combines two FDA-approved drugs: a Parkinson’s drug, L-dopa, and a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. These drugs target affected brain circuits and completely eliminate chronic pain behavior.

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A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital shows how a protein involved in cancer twists and morphs into different structures.

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Immune suppressor cells called MDSCs (myeloid-derived suppressor cells) may be important in developing treatments for advanced prostate cancer, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

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An international study of about 43,000 people has significantly expanded the number of genetic factors known to play a role in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss among people age 50 and older. Supported by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, the findings may help improve our understanding of the biological processes that lead to AMD and identify new therapeutic targets for potential drug development.

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A drug that boosts activity in the brain’s “garbage disposal” system can decrease levels of toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders and improve cognition in mice, a new study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has found.

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists discover a novel strategy that aggressive sarcomas use to promote drug resistance and cancer’s spread plus evidence of how to reverse the process.

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A new study led by researchers at the New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN) examines the validity, sensitivity, and specificity of symptoms for detecting breast cancer-related related lymphedema. The study also determines the best clinical cutoff point for the count of symptoms that maximized the sum of sensitivity and specificity.

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Genetic influence on intelligence varies according to people’s social class in the United States, but not in Western Europe or Australia, according to a psychology study at The University of Texas at Austin.

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As interdisciplinary sleuths, a Michigan Tech team recently put together clues to solve the case of the sticky protein. The new tool opens more possibilities for studying neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

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Mathematical simulations at the University of Utah show parasitic flies may spell extinction for Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos Islands, but that pest-control efforts might save the birds that helped inspire the theory of evolution.

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Researchers have demonstrated a new process for rapidly fabricating complex three-dimensional nanostructures from a variety of materials, including metals. The new technique uses nanoelectrospray to provide a continuous supply of liquid precursor, which can include metal ions that are converted to high-purity metal by a focused electron beam.

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Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have developed a synthetic biomaterial that fills wounds and aids in regeneration of skin cells, which ultimately improves wound healing.

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A University of Utah-led study identified a long-sought “hybrid inviability gene” responsible for dead or infertile offspring when two species of fruit flies mate with each other. The discovery sheds light on the genetic and molecular process leading to formation of new species, and may provide clues to how cancer develops.

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Evolutionary biologists at Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, University of Washington and the University of Utah may have solved a century-old evolutionary riddle: How did two related fruit fly species arise from one?