Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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Progress in treating lung cancer has been enormous in the past 20 years according to a new review by researchers at Yale Cancer Center.

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Scientists in Vienna, Dresden and Heidelberg have decoded the entire genetic information of the Mexican salamander axolotl, the largest genome ever to be sequenced. This will be a powerful tool to study the molecular basis of regeneration. The journal NATURE publishes the news today.

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Through the haze of a sonogram screen, an expectant mother catches a glimpse of the growing baby within her. The outline of a nose, chin and head, instantly recognizable as a tiny human, brings to life what parents, until then, could only imagine. Biologists, too, aim to bring their scientific discoveries to life by creating three-dimensional models—at the atomic level—of the inner workings of cells

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New research from Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) reveals a novel gene regulatory system that may advance stem cell therapies and gene-targeting treatments for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and mental health disorders that affect cognitive abilities.

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“The 2018 SLAS Technology Ten represent some of the most innovative scientific achievements that were featured in SLAS Technology in the past 12 months,” says Editor-in-Chief Edward Kai-Hua Chow, PhD (National University of Singapore).

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People with the rare genetic disease primary ciliary dyskinesia suffer repeated lung infections because they lack functional cilia, hairlike structures that sweep mucus through the airways.  Most people have errors in the molecular motor that powers the cilia. But some have errors in non-motor proteins. Now, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis researchers report that mutated non-motor proteins cause disease by assembling the motor incorrectly. The findings suggest new routes to drug discovery.

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Investigators at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey have developed a statistical method to identify patients with potential inherited, germline alterations in tumor suppressor genes while estimating gene loss in cancer cells through targeted genome sequencing.

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Researchers explain a cell differentiation mechanism in Nature Genetics.

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In animal experiments, a human-derived glioblastoma significantly regressed when treated with the combination of an experimental enzyme inhibitor and the standard glioblastoma chemotherapy drug, temozolomide.

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UT Southwestern researchers report that development of the endocrine pancreas is promoted by a weblike network of epithelial tubes that exist only transiently in the developing embryo. The findings, published online by Genes & Development, suggest that a deeper understanding of this endocrine differentiation “niche” could propel development of novel treatments for diabetes.

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When most of us think of breast cancer, we envision a malignant lump. It might be large. It might be small. But it’s all the same. It’s cancer.

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Scientists often struggle to predict how these cells will act in different environments in the body.

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Scientists have revealed the atomic-level structure of a molecular complex responsible for modifying proteins, possibly paving the way for the development of new medications for cancer and a host of other diseases.

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A new article in the February 2018 issue of SLAS Technology describes a new platform that could change the way cancer is diagnosed and treated by automating the isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) directly from cancer patient blood. The article provides unique insight into the development of a commercial system that has the potential to change the standard of care in cancer diagnosis and treatment.

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A study led by UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and published in the Journal of Cell Biology examined the role of the physical structure of the nucleus in cell movement through different surfaces.

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Using an approach that combines ultrasound imaging and genetic engineering of bacterial microbes, a team from California Institute of Technology (Caltech), with funding from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), has created a powerful new system to track bacteria dispatched to deliver therapies deep inside the body.

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La Jolla Institute scientists provide new insights into how so-called CD4 cytotoxic T cells arise in humans and thus could facilitate improved vaccine design.

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Apply for ASCB’s Public Engagement Grants. Grantees will receive from $10,000 to $35,000 for bold ideas that engage local communities with the process of science and increase public scientific literacy. The application deadline is March 31.

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A new Michigan State University study is helping to answer a pressing question among scientists of just how close mice are to people when it comes to researching cancer.

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For the first time, scientists can see in minute-time resolution how cells package chromosomes into highly condensed structures prior to cell division.

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What lives in your dirt? University of Colorado Boulder researchers are one step closer to finding out after compiling the first global atlas of soil bacterial communities and identifying a group of around 500 key species that are both common and abundant worldwide.

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Doctors have long treated heart attacks, improved asthma symptoms, and cured impotence by increasing levels of a single molecule in the body: nitric oxide. The tiny molecule can change how proteins function. But new research featured in Molecular Cell suggests supplementing nitric oxide—NO—is only the first step. Researchers have discovered previously unknown enzymes in the body that convert NO into “stopgap” molecules—SNOs—that then modulate proteins. The newly discovered enzymes help NO have diverse roles in cells. They may also be prime therapeutic targets to treat a range of diseases.

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Wistar is pleased to announce it has been awarded a $1,494,972 grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to advance a DNA-based vaccine candidate for protection against malarial infection utilizing a synthetic DNA platform created in the lab of David B. Weiner, Ph.D., executive vice president, director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at The Wistar Institute and the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust Professor in Cancer Research.

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Columbia University researchers have identified two new breast cancer genes that also cause Lynch syndrome.

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A research team at GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences found that latent HIV reservoirs exhibit resistance to elimination by CD8+ T-cells of people living with the virus.

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Columbia biomedical engineers design a new, biomaterials-based system that takes a soft approach to improving cell manufacturing and may bring new hope to cancer patients for T-cell therapy.

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Los pacientes con gammapatía monoclonal de significado incierto corren más riesgo de avanzar hacia mieloma múltiple u otro cáncer afín, incluso después de 30 años de estabilidad.

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Gender-based differences may influence several ocular conditions, suggesting that fluctuations in sex steroid homeostasis may have direct effects on eye physiology and the pathogenesis of conditions like Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD).

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No individual fish or bee or neuron has enough information by itself to solve a complex problem, but together they can accomplish amazing things. In research recently published in Science Advances, Eleanor Brush (University of Maryland), David Krakauer, and Jessica Flack address how this is possible through a study of the emergence of social structure in primate social groups.

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Using Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Titan supercomputer, a team led by Brown University’s George Karniadakis devised a multiscale model of sickle cell disease that captures what happens inside a red blood cell affected by the disease.

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A three-year, $675,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to understand cell-size control in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

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A research team at the Duke Cancer Institute has found a new way to keep the immune system engaged, and is planning to test the approach in a phase 1 clinical trial.

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A team of scientists from Singapore and France, led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck, Principal Investigator at the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore, has described a novel ‘microtube’-based platform to study how tubular organs, such as the heart and the kidneys, form under the various topographical restrictions commonly experienced inside the body.

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Scientists in Montreal develop a unique technique to map, on a scale of milliseconds, the elasticity of the components inside a cell.

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Prostate tumors tend to be what scientists call “indolent” – so slow-growing and self-contained that many affected men die with prostate cancer, not of it. But for the percentage of men whose prostate tumors metastasize, the disease is invariably fatal. In a set of papers out today in the journals Nature Genetics and Nature Communications, researchers at the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) shed new light on the genetic mechanisms that promote metastasis in the mouse model and also implicated the typical Western high-fat diet as a key environmental factor driving metastasis.

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Scientists at the University of Washington announced that they have built and tested a new biomaterial-based delivery system — known as a hydrogel — that will encase a desired cargo and dissolve to release its freight only when specific physiological conditions are met.

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By analyzing immune cells of children who came to the emergency department with flu symptoms, researchers found that the suite of genes these early-response cells expressed was shaped by factors such as age and previous exposures to viruses. Better understanding how early infections influence long-term immune response has implications for the diagnosis and treatment of young patients who suffer from acute respiratory tract infections.

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The field of immunotherapy – the harnessing of patients’ own immune systems to fend off cancer – is revolutionizing cancer treatment today. However, clinical trials often show marked improvements in only small subsets of patients, suggesting that as-yet unidentified variations among tumors result in distinct paths of disease progression and response to therapy.

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The approach could represent the first new treatment to improve survival in patients with severe scleroderma in more than four decades.

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A multi-institutional research team led by Indiana University School of Medicine scientists has developed a new way to harvest blood stem cells for bone marrow donation that is faster and more effective than the current standard of care.

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A discovery by scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center presents drug developers with an entirely new tack in targeting one of the most-wanted molecular culprits in cancer.

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Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have, for the first time, coaxed human stem cells to become sensory interneurons — the cells that give us our sense of touch. The new protocol could be a step toward stem cell–based therapies to restore sensation in paralyzed people who have lost feeling in parts of their body.

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Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have discovered that two estrogen-mimicking compounds found in many foods appear to potently reverse the effects of palbociclib/letrozole, a popular drug combination for treating breast cancer.

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A protein involved in cognition and storing long-term memories looks and acts like a protein from viruses. The protein, called Arc, has properties similar to those that viruses use for infecting host cells, and originated from a chance evolutionary event that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.

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Canadian researchers’ innovative work promises to make vaccines more effective against tuberculosis and other infectious diseases like the flu.

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UCLA researchers have developed the first map of gene regulation in human neurogenesis, the process by which neural stem cells turn into brain cells and the cerebral cortex expands in size. The scientists identified factors that govern the growth of our brains and, in some cases, set the stage for several brain disorders that appear later in life

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Desmoplastic melanoma is a rare subtype of melanoma that is commonly found on sun-exposed areas, such as the head and neck, and usually seen in older patients. Treatment is difficult because these tumors are often resistant to chemotherapy and lack actionable mutations commonly found in other types of melanoma that are targeted by specific drugs. However, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers report in the Jan. 10 issue of Nature that patients with desmoplastic melanoma are more responsive to immune-activating anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapies than previously assumed.

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Defects in mitochondria, the tiny structures that power our cells by functioning as biological batteries, cause an array of complex, often life-threatening disorders that can affect any and all organs and systems. In the absence of validated, effective drug treatments, patients with mitochondrial disease often take a variety of vitamins and supplements, substances that are largely unstandardized, unregulated, and unproven. A group of medical experts recommend performing systematic scientific studies to test precise nutritional interventions for patients.