Feature Channels: Biotech

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The exercise was an early opportunity for the NBAF program to observe a simulated full-scale emergency response to allow its planners to envision how the facility might serve a crucial role in response and recovery.

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A scanning-tunneling microscope (STM), used to study changes in the shape of a single molecule at the atomic scale, impacts the ability of that molecule to make these changes – the entropy of the molecule is changed and, in turn, can be measured. The study is published in Nature Communications.

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The Endocrine Society expressed disappointment today in the European Commission's revised proposal on defining and identifying endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), citing unnecessarily narrow criteria for identifying EDCs that will make it nearly impossible for regulatory agencies to meet the unrealistically high burden of proof and protect the public from dangerous chemicals.

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One big challenge targeted drug delivery faces today is efficiently “loading” a drug into a carrier without compromising the carrier’s structural integrity. A promising method is to deform a carrier by squeezing it through a narrow, microscale constriction. This mechanical deformation creates transient pores in the carrier membrane to enhance the membrane’s permeability to macromolecules and promote the efficient uptake of drugs. During the Society of Rheology meeting, being held Feb. 12-16, Joseph Barakat will present his work to develop a model for vesicle squeezing that can be used to predict and optimize drug loading procedures.

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A new report from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research chronicles the embryonic origins of planaria, providing new insight into the animal's remarkable regenerative abilities.

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A team of investigators from Cedars-Sinai and UCLA is using a new blood-analysis technique and tiny experimental device to help physicians predict which cancers are likely to spread by identifying and characterizing tumor cells circulating through the blood.

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Research published this week in Nature Communications makes it possible to predict how volume for a given protein will change between the folded and unfolded state. Computations accurately predict how a protein will react to increased pressure, shed light on the inner-workings of life in the ocean depths, and may also offer insights into alien life.

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Berkeley Lab chemists have developed a powerful new method of selectively linking chemicals to proteins, a major advance in the manipulation of biomolecules that could transform the way drugs are developed, proteins are probed, and molecules are tracked and imaged. This technique, called ReACT, is akin to a chemical Swiss army knife for proteins.

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California State University, Los Angeles and its partners the Biocom Institute and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) have been awarded an i6 Challenge grant of nearly $500,000 to fund LABioStart, a boot camp to train emerging bioscience entrepreneurs in the region and prepare them to launch bioscience startup companies.

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Instead of running tests on live kidneys, researchers at Binghamton, University State University of New York have developed a model kidney for working out the kinks in medicines and treatments. Developed by Assistant Professor Gretchen Mahler and Binghamton biomedical engineering alumna Courtney Sakolish PhD ’16, the reusable, multi-layered and microfluidic device incorporates a porous growth substrate, with a physiological fluid flow, and the passive filtration of the capillaries around the end of a kidney, called the glomerulus, where waste is filtered from blood.

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Ludwig researchers discover that circular DNA, once thought to be rare in tumor cells, is actually very common and seems to play a fundamental role in tumor evolution

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A team of researchers, led by the University of Minnesota, has invented a new technology to produce automobile tires from trees and grasses in a process that could shift the tire production industry toward using renewable resources found right in our backyards.

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Day in and day out, the DNA in our cells is damaged for a variety of reasons, and thus DNA-repair systems are fundamental to the maintenance of life. Now UNC scientists have confirmed and clarified key molecular details of one of these repair systems, known as nucleotide excision repair.

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Irvine, Calif., Feb. 7, 2017 – Your doctor waves a hand-held scanner over your body and gets detailed, high-resolution images of your internal organs and tissues. Using the same device, the physician then sends gigabytes of data instantly to a remote server and just as rapidly receives information to make a diagnosis.Integrated circuit researchers at the University of California, Irvine have created a silicon microchip-based component that could make these and many other actions possible.

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An expectant mother’s exposure to the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) can raise her offspring’s risk of obesity by reducing sensitivity to a hormone responsible for controlling appetite, according to a mouse study published in the Endocrine Society’s journal Endocrinology.

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Researchers found that the metal-organic framework NU-1000 allows separation of toxic furanics from sugars, which is necessary for efficient ethanol production.

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After 10 years of research, a team at Université de Montréal's research centre has succeeded in deleting the Armc5 gene in experimental mice, discovering that its loss gives rise to a heretofore unidentified syndrome.

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The University of Maryland School of Medicine announced that it has hired several top scientists in a range of fields, including orthopaedics and brain science.

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Using Harvard-developed technology, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have catalogued more than 20,000 brain cells in one region of the mouse hypothalamus. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, revealed some 50 distinct cell types, including a previously undescribed neuron type that may underlie some of the genetic risk of human obesity. This catalog of cell types marks the first time neuroscientists have established a comprehensive “parts list” for this area of the brain. The new information will allow researchers to establish which cells play what role in this region of the brain.