Curated News: Grant Funded News

• share
• favorite_border

Getting the results of a cancer biopsy can take up to two weeks. What if it could happen in 10 minutes? In two new papers, a team of chemists and engineers from Michigan Technological University lay the groundwork for cancer detection and diagnostics based on a fluorescent GLUT5 probe. Documented in the new research, a cancer's type and malignancy changes the GLUT5 activity in a cell, creating a detectable "fingerprint" of cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study published in JMIR Medical Informatics describes how a “smart home” prototype may help people with dementia dress themselves through automated assistance, enabling them to maintain independence and dignity and providing their caregivers with a much-needed respite.

• share
• favorite_border

New research shows small, New World monkeys called marmosets may be an important animal model for emerging viruses with the potential for harmful effects on fetuses

• share
• favorite_border

Preliminary research using mcDESPOTmagnetic resonance imaging shows changes in the myelin content of white matter in the brain following mild traumatic brain injury. Myelin changes are apparent at the time of injury and 3 months afterward.

• share
• favorite_border

In an archived webcast, University of Kentucky genomicist Jeramiah Smith describes the sea lamprey’s innovative strategy for avoiding cancer: shedding 20 percent of its genome following development. He also talks with NIGMS director Jon Lorsch about the challenges faced by early career scientists.

• share
• favorite_border

By treating living cells like tiny absorbent sponges, researchers have developed a potentially new way to introduce molecules and therapeutic genes into human cells.

• share
• favorite_border

The Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) has received over $34 million in renewed funding from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to advance medical research and clinical care through genomic and digital technologies.

• share
• favorite_border

Penn Medicine researchers may have found the reason why some patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) don’t respond to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, and the answer is tied to how primed patients’ immune systems are before the therapy is administered.

• share
• favorite_border

Some bacteria not only escape being killed by bacteria, they turn it into food. Until now, scientists have understood little about how bacteria manage to consume antibiotics safely, but new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis illuminates key steps in the process. The findings, published April 30 in Nature Chemical Biology, could lead to new ways to eliminate antibiotics from land and water, the researchers said. Environmental antibiotic contamination promotes drug resistance and undermines our ability to treat bacterial infections.

• share
• favorite_border

When lava flows down the slope of a volcano, it can leave behind an extreme environment ideal for unusual microbial life and potential clues to answering the life on Mars question. Kansas State University geology professor Saugata Datta is one of the primary investigators of a new NASA study that will use a robotic vehicle to explore and collect data inside caves at Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the Saint Louis University School of Medicine have discovered why many multiple myeloma patients experience severe pain when treated with the anticancer drug bortezomib. The study, which will be published April 27 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that a drug already approved to treat multiple sclerosis could mitigate this effect, allowing myeloma patients to successfully complete their treatment and relieving the pain of myeloma survivors.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute are launching a pair of studies on genetic factors behind oxycodone and cocaine addiction and treatment.

• share
• favorite_border

A University of Washington study finds that a community-based approach to substance-abuse prevention, which can include after-school activities, can affect young people into adulthood.

• share
• favorite_border

You’ve heard of “nature versus nurture,” and philosophers argue about which is more important. But how does this work on the cellular level?

• share
• favorite_border

Penn Medicine researchers have used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology to isolate a key genetic feature that could cause resistance to PARP inhibitors in patients with ovarian cancer – and they’ve also proven they have a way to see that feature using PET imaging.

• share
• favorite_border

By aiming intense X-ray beams at iron samples, scientists have discovered what may lie at the core of “super-Earths,” rocky planets triple the mass of Earth orbiting far-distant stars.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have developed novel ways to study how and why cells move in their search for treatments of bacterial infection and diseases such as cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

A study of nearly 6,000 Americans followed for 24 years from middle to late adulthood found that having chronic inflammation in middle age may be linked to an increased risk of frailty and overall poorer health decades later.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Washington, working with researchers from the ETH-Zurich, Purdue University and Virginia Commonwealth University, have achieved an optical communications breakthrough that could revolutionize information technology. They created a tiny device, smaller than a human hair, that translates electrical bits (0 and 1 of the digital language) into light, or photonic bits, at speeds 10s of times faster than current technologies.

• share
• favorite_border

Bacteria traveling along "fungal highways" on cheese rinds can spread more quickly and ruin quality or cause foodborne illnesses, but cheesemakers could manipulate the same highways to help cheese mature faster and taste better, according to new research from Tufts University.

• share
• favorite_border

A team from Northwestern University and the University of Florida has developed a new type of electron microscope that takes dynamic, multi-frame videos of nanoparticles as they form, allowing researchers to view how specimens change in space and time.

• share
• favorite_border

By working directly with consumers and citizen scientists, the project is designed to increase public awareness of lead in water and plumbing on a national scale.

• share
• favorite_border

A new analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers of national data gathered from physical activity monitors concludes that most Americans hit the sack later on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Delayed bedtimes are especially pronounced for teens and young adults.

• share
• favorite_border

In a groundbreaking new study, researchers at the University of Minnesota used a customized, low-cost 3D printer to print electronics on a real hand for the first time.

• share
• favorite_border

Investigators at the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles provide preclinical evidence that the presence of tumor-associated macrophages—a type of immune cell—can negatively affect the response to chemotherapy against neuroblastoma.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers investigating a key signaling protein in Huntington’s disease describe deleterious effects on heart function, going beyond the disease’s devastating neurological impact. By adjusting protein levels affecting an important biological pathway, the researchers improved heart function in mice, shedding light on the biology of this fatal disease.

• share
• favorite_border

A genomic analysis of a large study population has identified uncommon gene variants involved in responses to dietary fats and medicine. Although these variants are rare, they may play a large role in a carrier's risk of heart disease.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study by Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) researchers helps explain the connection between a tumor suppressor called protein kinase C zeta (PKC zeta) and metastatic colorectal cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

Worse cognitive function in soccer players stems mainly from frequent ball heading rather than unintentional head impacts due to collisions, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have found. The findings suggest that efforts to reduce long-term brain injuries may be focusing too narrowly on preventing accidental head collisions. The study published online today in the Frontiers in Neurology.

• share
• favorite_border

How a bacteria hijacked insect fertility remained a mystery for five decades, until Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Seth Bordenstein and his team helped solve it.

• share
• favorite_border

From energy materials to disease diagnostics, new microscopy techniques can provide more nuanced insight. Researchers first need to understand the effects of radiation on samples, which is possible with a new device that holds tightly sealed liquid cell samples for transmission electron microscopy.

• share
• favorite_border

ai-Yen Chen, Ph.D., assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Wayne State University’s College of Engineering, recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, the organization’s most prestigious accolade for up-and-coming researchers in science and engineering. Chen is the recipient of a five-year, $500,000 grant for his project, “Integrated Research and Education on Self-Activated, Transparent Harmonics-Based Wireless Sensing Systems Using Graphene Bioelectronics.”

• share
• favorite_border

Need stronger timber, better biofuel or new sources of green chemicals? A systems biology model built on decades of NC State research will accelerate progress on engineering trees for specific needs.

• share
• favorite_border

Often people think performing in front of others will make them mess up, but a new study led by a Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist found the opposite: being watched can make people do better.

• share
• favorite_border

An epidemiological study conducted by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Seoul National University suggests that persons deficient in vitamin D may be at much greater risk of developing diabetes. The findings are reported April 19 in PLOS One.

• share
• favorite_border

With the help of a $55,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Kristin O’Donovan, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University, will explore the limits on policy learning about disaster mitigation after a community has experienced a disaster. O’Donovan will also seek to understand why one community may be more vulnerable to a disaster than its neighbor.

• share
• favorite_border

Cancer immune cell therapy has made headlines with astounding successes like saving former U.S. President Jimmy Carter from brain cancer. But immunotherapy has also had many tragic flops. Georgia Tech researchers working to optimize the innovative treatment have implanted a genetic switch that activates T-cells when they are inside of tumors. Remote-control light waves resembling those used in a TV remote combine with gold nanorods to flip the switch.

• share
• favorite_border

A host of nuclear RNA-binding proteins, when misplaced outside the nucleus, form the harmful clumps seen in several brain disorders, including FTD and ALS. Clumps that form from these disease proteins are composed of sticky fibrils that damage nerve cells.

• share
• favorite_border

In a groundbreaking paper published today in the journal Cell, investigators at the Cancer Research Institute Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have found dozens of important new genes, both coding and non-coding that impact sensitivity to chemotherapy. In doing so, the scientists developed a novel technique that marries CRISPR technology with big data mining to identify and assign function to non-coding RNAs

• share
• favorite_border

In recent years, researchers have firmly established that gene mutations appearing for the first time, called de novo mutations, contribute to approximately one-third of cases of autism spectrum disorder. In a new study, a team led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have identified a culprit that may explain some of the remaining risk: rare inherited variants in regions of non-coding DNA. The findings are published April 20 in Science.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have identified a protein, called GPR68, that senses blood flow and tells small blood vessels called arterioles when to dilate.

• share
• favorite_border

New research documents how chemicals and a certain gene activate an enzyme to increase the risk and severity of RA and bone destruction.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center designed this new delivery system – a drug hidden in a nanodisc – to increase the number of patients who can be treated successfully with cancer immunotherapy drugs.

• share
• favorite_border

A Vanderbilt team and their international colleagues characterized for the first time a complex, little-understood cellular receptor type that, when activated, shuts off hunger.

• share
• favorite_border

A compound from the body's own immune cells can treat psoriasis in mice and holds promise for other autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study shows that individual brain networks are remarkably stable from day to day and while undertaking different tasks, suggesting that finding differences between individuals could help diagnose brain disorders or diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Chronic bladder pain affects millions with abdominal discomfort that increases as their bladder fills, causing excessive urinary urgency and frequency. Neuroscientists used optogenetics in experiments with mice to switch on and off the neurons that signal bladder pain.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have long wondered why the physical traits of Neanderthals, the ancestors of modern humans, differ greatly from today’s man. In particular, researchers have deliberated the factors that necessitated early man’s forward-projecting face and oversized nose. As published in the April 4 edition of The Royal Proceedings Society B, an international research team led by a professor at the University of New England in Australia, with the aid of an anatomy and fluid dynamics expert at NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University (NYITCOM at A-State), may have the answer.

• share
• favorite_border

PAs increasingly used in dermatology to cut costs and improve access, but are less likely than dermatologists to accurately diagnose early stage skin cancers, according to new research.

• share
• favorite_border

Women still at higher risk; new research could improve prevention