As the clinical use of genomic testing expands, the practical and ethical considerations of using the technology to screen newborns for genetic conditions will be the focus of a new study undertaken at the University of North Carolina.
A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center shows that community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs may be a feasible approach for providing fresh fruits and vegetables to under-resourced communities.
By investigating regeneration in planarian flatworms, Whitehead Institute researchers have identified a mechanism—involving the interplay of two wound-induced genes—by which the animal can distinguish between wounds that require regeneration and those that do not.
George Washington University researcher Aleksandar Jeremic will study the role the human pancreatic hormone plays in the development of the disease.
Whitehead Institute researchers have used the gene regulation system CRISPR/Cas (for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat/CRISPR-associated) to engineer mouse genomes containing reporter and conditional alleles in one step. Animals containing such sophisticated engineered alleles can now be made in a matter of weeks rather than years and could be used to model diseases and study gene function.
For every daily drink a girl or woman consumes before motherhood, she increases her lifetime risk of breast cancer by 13 percent, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
When a beating heart slips into an irregular, rhythm, the treatment is electric current from a pacemaker or defibrillator. But the electricity itself can cause pain, tissue damage and other side-effects. Now, researchers want to replace jolts with a gentler remedy: light.
Researchers have demonstrated a way to maintain an unstable quantum system by applying bursts of microwave radiation. The technique is comparable to methods used for controlling an inverted pendulum in classical physics.
New research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center finds that the recommended daily doses of calcium and vitamin D supplements may not prevent loss of bone mineral density (BMD) in women undergoing breast cancer.
Like volunteers handing out cups of energy drinks to marathon runners, specially engineered “helper cells” transplanted along with stem cells can dole out growth factors to increase the stem cells’ endurance, at least briefly, Johns Hopkins researchers report. Their study, published in the September issue of Experimental Neurology, is believed to be the first to test the helper-cell tactic, which they hope will someday help to overcome a major barrier to successful stem cell transplants.
By creating a powerful new gene regulation system called CRISPR-on, Whitehead Institute researchers now have the ability to increase the expression of multiple genes simultaneously and precisely manipulate each gene’s expression level. The system is effective in both mouse and human cells as well as in mouse embryos.
The brain’s tactile and motor neurons, which perceive touch and control movement, may also respond to visual cues, according to researchers at Duke Medicine.
Coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer recurrence and progression, according to a new study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists that is online ahead of print in Cancer Causes & Control.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have brought new clarity to the picture of what goes awry in the brain during Parkinson’s disease and identified a compound that eases the disease’s symptoms in mice. Their discoveries, described in a paper published online in Nature Neuroscience on August 25, also overturn established ideas about the role of a protein considered key to the disease’s progress.
A $1.3 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke could help Houston Methodist scientists better understand how the body's own immune system drives multiple sclerosis.
Much of modern agriculture relies on biologically available nitrogenous compounds (called “fixed” nitrogen) made by an industrial process developed by German chemist Fritz Haber in 1909. Himadri Pakrasi, PhD, a scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, thinks it should be possible to design a better nitrogen-fixing system. His idea is to put the apparatus for fixing nitrogen in plant cells, the same cells that hold the apparatus for capturing the energy in sunlight. The National Science Foundation just awarded Pakrasi and his team $3.87 million to explore this idea further.
A drug used to treat blood cancers may also stop the spread of invasive breast cancer, researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have discovered.
Prescribing of “atypical” antipsychotic medications to children and young adults with behavioral problems or mood disorders may put them at unnecessary risk for type 2 diabetes, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study shows. Young people using medications like risperidone, quetiapine, aripiprazol and olanzapine led to a threefold increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes within the first year of taking the drug, according to the study published Aug. 21 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
A recent study by members of the Children’s Oncology Group reports results of a large trial showing that children whose leukemia cells have amplification of a portion of chromosome 21 may require more aggressive treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) than children without this gene amplification.
People with severe encephalitis — inflammation of the brain — are much more likely to die if they develop severe swelling in the brain, intractable seizures or low blood platelet counts, regardless of the cause of their illness, according to new Johns Hopkins research.
While children of all ages will be heading back to school in a few days, a new study from the Université de Montréal may encourage their parents to return to the classroom themselves ... at least for a few evenings! The results of a study in developmental psychology published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies show that the How-to Parenting Program improves the mental health of children.
Biomedical engineers have created a new drug-delivery strategy for a type of central vision loss caused by blood vessel growth at the back of the eye, where such growth should not occur. The team gave the drug a biodegradable coating to keep it in the eye longer. If effective in humans, monthly needle sticks to the eye, which are the current standard of care, could be replaced with only two or three injections per year.
By determining the three-dimensional structure of proteins at the atomic level, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered how some commonly used flame retardants, called brominated flame retardants (BFRs), can mimic estrogen hormones and possibly disrupt the body’s endocrine system. BFRs are chemicals added or applied to materials to slow or prevent the start or growth of fire.
By studying the planarian flatworm, a master of regenerating missing tissue and repairing wounds, the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Peter Reddien has identified an unexpected source of position instruction: the muscle cells in the planarian body wall. This is the first time that such a positional control system has been identified in adult regenerative animals.
Sympathetic neurons “cross-talk” -- or engage in reciprocal signaling -- with the tissues they connect to. And when they don't, there's trouble.
Five Creighton researchers will study a form of fat that surrounds the heart. They believe this fat undergoes a chemical change in some obese patients, which could be the cause behind the narrowing of arteries and development of heart disease.
A cancer biologist's chance finding during a prostate cancer study has yielded promising results for diagnosing and treating asthma. This research could result in a new biomarker for asthma as well as novel therapies.
Decision-making by a surrogate for a family member who is unable to make medical decisions is more complicated than decision-making by patients themselves.
Seattle BioMed has been awarded a grant that will take a comprehensive systems approach to the problem of tuberculosis (TB) infection, harnessing the power of technology and systems biology to examine the progression from latent infection to disease.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have received a five-year, $3 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant will fund a longitudinal study designed to track the developmental trajectory in cognitive, academic and brain measures as very preterm children transition from preschool to grade school. Results will provide the foundation for designing appropriate learning interventions.
A Boise State research team has taken on the challenge of developing a new kind of computing architecture that works more like a brain than a digital computer.
Typical combinations of anti-HIV medications do not appear to cause language delays in children who where exposed to HIV in the womb and whose mothers took the antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy.
Black patients preoccupied with racial concerns have higher blood pressure than those who aren’t, according to results of new Johns Hopkins-led research. The findings suggest that heightened race consciousness could at least in part account for the disproportionately high rate of hypertension in black Americans — the highest prevalence of any group in the United States and one of the highest rates in the world.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have uncovered a protein switch that can either increase or decrease memory-building activity in brain cells, depending on the signals it detects. Its dual role means the protein is key to understanding the complex network of signals that shapes our brain’s circuitry, the researchers say.
A gene variant strongly associated with development of type 2 diabetes appears to interact with a Mediterranean diet pattern to prevent stroke, report researchers from Tufts University and from Spain. The results are a significant advance for nutrigenomics, the study of the linkages between nutrition and gene function.
Pregnant women whose labors are induced or augmented may have an increased risk of bearing children with autism, especially if the baby is male, according to a large, retrospective analysis by researchers at Duke Medicine and the University of Michigan.
A recently published CU Cancer Center study shows that beyond the fact of fertility, a young woman's perception of fertility based on regular menstrual cycles after cancer treatment affects her quality of life long after treatment ends.
The New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research (NJCCR) has awarded Janice Thomas, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow in the X.F. Steven Zheng laboratory at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey a two-year $100,000 grant (#DFHS13PPCO32) to further examine the impact of a protein ‘trigger’ involved in the regulation of cell function in breast cancer.
Researchers have identified two new genes and implicated 25 distinct mutations in serious forms of epilepsy, suggesting a new direction for developing tailored treatments of the neurological disorders. The findings by an international research collaboration, which includes investigators from Duke Medicine, appear Aug. 11 in the journal Nature.
Georgia Tech researchers want to put your signature up in lights. Using thousands of nanometer-scale wires, the researchers have developed a sensor device that converts mechanical pressure – from a signature or a fingerprint – directly into light signals that can be captured and processed optically.
A unique nanoscale drug that can carry a variety of weapons and sneak into cancer cells to break them down from the inside has a new component: a protein that stimulates the immune system to attack HER2-positive breast cancer cells.
Professor Paul Robbins, of The Scripps Research Institute, will be principal investigator of the new five-year study, which will focus on identifying just how damage that accumulates over time drives the human aging process. Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Riverside, will also participate in the study.
“The Collaborative, Continuous Care (3C’s) Model” project reflects a practice/education partnership between the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, the NYU College of Nursing, the NYU Silver School of Social Work, the Touro College of Pharmacy, and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.
This innovative initiative will foster communication and collaboration between physicians and nurse practitioners with a focus on transitional care handoffs of patients with multiple chronic conditions.
Scientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified a key factor that regulates the autophagy process, a kind of cleansing mechanism for cells in which waste material and cellular debris is gobbled up to protect cells from damage, and in turn, modulates aging.
A new study by thoracic surgeons and pathologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center shows that a specific pattern found in the tumor pathology of some lung cancer patients is a strong predictor of recurrence. Knowing that this feature exists in a tumor's pathology could be an important factor doctors use to guide cancer treatment decisions.
Full activation of a protein ensemble essential for communication between nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord requires the rocking motion of some of the ensemble’s segments. The ensemble is known to be defective in neurological disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson's so this insight has important implications.
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine are enrolling patients with type 2 diabetes into an NIH-funded clinical trial to evaluate the long-term benefits and risks of four widely used diabetes drugs in combination with metformin, the most common first-line medication.
A study of nearly 6,000 North Texas patients suggests sweeping changes be made to the standard of care strategy for colorectal screenings, finding that participation rates soared depending on the screening method offered and how patient outreach was done.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have identified a characteristic unique to cancer cells in an animal model of cancer -- and they believe it could be exploited as a target to develop new treatment strategies.
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