A clearer understanding of how mussels stick to surfaces could lead to new classes of adhesives that will work underwater and even inside the body.
UNC School of Medicine researchers have provided the first quantitative evidence that mucins – the protein framework of mucus – are significantly increased in cystic fibrosis patients and play a major role in failing lung function.
Collaboration Combined with Revolutionary Technology opens new potential to identify new biomarkers and therapeutic points of intervention for use in the development of new Alzheimer’s treatments
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and other institutions have applied a newly developed software tool to identify genetic mutations that contribute to a person’s increased risk for developing common, complex diseases, such as cancer.
Scientists have developed a powerful tool called pVAAST that combines linkage analysis with case control association to identify disease-causing mutations in families faster and more precisely than ever before.
A new technology under development at the Georgia Institute of Technology could one day provide more efficient delivery of the bone regenerating growth factors with greater accuracy and at a lower cost.
Protea Biosciences Group, Inc. (OTCQB:PRGB) announced it has entered into a research collaboration with the University of Southampton, a leading biomedical and clinical research institution located in the United Kingdom. The collaboration will partner Protea’s proprietary direct molecular imaging technology and capabilities with a team of Alzheimer’s researchers at the University of Southampton, to study the molecular mechanisms of the aged brain, in order to identify markers that may indicate risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
A paper from University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers in the journal Science about the fertility of roundworms may have implications for everything from captive pandas to infertile couples struggling to conceive.
Mice severely disabled by a condition similar to multiple sclerosis (MS) were able to walk less than two weeks following treatment with human neural stem cells. The finding, which uncovers potential new avenues for treating MS, will be published online on May 15, 2014, in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
Feeling sluggish? Gaining weight? What you need is a shot in the arm, claim advertisers for trendy vitamin B12 injections.Don’t let marketers needle you.“If medical testing confirms that an individual has a vitamin B12 deficiency, a vitamin B12 supplement will help. But if a B12 deficiency has not been identified by a physician or primary care doctor, there is no need to waste energy and money on B12 shots,” says Ashley Barrient, clinical dietitian, Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery & Bariatric Care.
Ram Sasisekharan’s startups provide novel methods to fight disease and make better drugs.
Researchers from MIT’s Koch Institute, the Broad Institute, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute come together to overcome the barriers to sequencing circulating tumor cells.
Chang Lu of Virginia Tech’s Chemical Engineering Department has developed techniques that allow him to obtain reliable results over the course of disease development inside cells. The National Institutes of Health is a past supporter of this work, and just announced a new $1.3 million grant to further this work.
Newswise hosts the first live, interactive virtual event for major research finding for journalists. Newswise and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center are collaborating to offer direct access to the investigator via Newswise Live, an interactive virtual event.
Long-term results are reported for the first patients to receive laboratory-engineered vaginal organs.
As one of the most widely consumed and commercially important beverages on the planet, one would expect the experts to know everything there is to know about lager beer. Now, however, scientists are beginning to color in the margins of yeast ecology and genetics, identifying new strains in new environments and using the tools of molecular biology to ferret out traits that could aid industrial fermentation technologies.
A biomedical engineering breakthrough could speed soft tissue injury recovery and limit disfigurement from radical cancer surgeries. It could circumvent the need to harvest and transfer large amounts of tissue, avoiding many current complications.
From time to time, living cells will accidentally make an extra copy of a gene during the normal replication process. Throughout the history of life, evolution has molded some of these seemingly superfluous genes into a source of genetic novelty, adaptation and diversity. A new study shows one way that some duplicate genes could have long-ago escaped elimination from the genome, leading to the genetic innovation seen in modern life.
University of California, San Diego bioengineer Karen Christman's new injectable hydrogel, which is designed to repair damaged cardiac tissue following a heart attack, has been licensed to San Diego-based startup Ventrix, Inc, which is planning the first human clinical trials of the technology. Christman is a co-founder of Ventrix.
A look back at how Institute Professor Phillip Sharp, his startup Biogen, and MIT’s biotech community helped revive Kendall Square
Tweaking a specific cell type’s ability to absorb potassium in the brain improved walking and prolonged survival in a mouse model of Huntington’s disease, reports a UCLA study in Nature Neuroscience. The discovery could point to new drug targets for treating the devastating disease, which strikes one in every 20,000 Americans.
Scientists at the Center for Nanotechnology and Nanotoxicology at Harvard School of Public Health have discovered a way to measure the effective density of engineered nanoparticles in physiological fluids, making it possible to determine the amount of nanomaterials that come into contact with cells and tissue in culture.
Narine Sarvazyan, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and physiology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, has invented a new organ to help return blood flow from veins lacking functional valves.
As stem cells continue their gradual transition from the lab to the clinic, a research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has discovered a new way to make large concentrations of skeletal muscle cells and muscle progenitors from human stem cells.
A new kind of single-dose vaccine that comes in a nasal spray and doesn’t require refrigeration could dramatically alter the public health landscape — get more people vaccinated around the world and address the looming threats of emerging and re-emerging diseases. Researchers presented the latest design and testing of these “nanovaccines” at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.
Animal fat from chicken, pork, beef and even alligators could give an economical, ecofriendly boost to the biofuel industry, according to researchers who reported a new method for biofuel production here today. The report, following up on their earlier study on the potential use of gator fat as a source of biodiesel fuel, was part of the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
While the world’s best athletes competed during last month’s winter Olympics, doctors and scientists were waging a different battle behind the scenes to make sure no one had an unfair advantage from banned performance-enhancing drugs. Here today at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, researchers unveiled a new weapon — a test for doping compounds that is a thousand times more sensitive than those used today.
When cancer spreads, it becomes even more deadly. It moves with stealth and can go undetected for months or years. But a new technology that uses “nano-flares” has the potential to catch these tumor cells early. Today, at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented the latest advances in nano-flare technology as it applies to the detection of metastatic breast cancer cells.
Using tiny particles designed to target cancer-fighting immune cells, Johns Hopkins researchers have trained the immune systems of mice to fight melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. The experiments represent a significant step toward using nanoparticles and magnetism to treat a variety of conditions, the researchers say.
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai have developed a unique, compact, relatively inexpensive imaging device to “light up” malignant brain tumors and other cancers. The experimental system consists of a special camera designed and developed at Cedars-Sinai and a new, targeted imaging agent based on a synthetic version of a small protein – a peptide – found in the venom of the deathstalker scorpion.
Engineered tissues like the ones used to create artificial skin need a scaffold for cells to grow on. Now a team led by Michigan Technological University’s Feng Zhao has coaxed cells called fibroblasts into creating a scaffold that mimics the body’s own internal matrix, and in early tests, cells seem happy to set up residence.
A team of bioinformaticians from Harvard University and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute of Virginia Tech has presented new methods to integrate data from different sequencing platforms, thus producing a reliable set of genotypes that will serve as a benchmark for human genome sequencing.
The Immune Tolerance Network’s (ITN) HALT-MS study, 24 patients with relapsing, remitting multiple sclerosis received high-dose immunosuppression followed by a transplant of their own stem cells. Data published today quantified and characterized T cell populations following this aggressive regimen.
By sandwiching a biological molecule between sheets of graphene, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have obtained atomic-level images of the molecule in its natural watery environment.
An ingenious new technique may open up new vistas for scientists seeking to understand health and disease at the most fundamental level.
Genetically modified (GM) crops and foods and ingredients made available with the techniques of modern biotechnology have recently been dominating food and agriculture news coverage in the United States. Food Technology magazine contributing editors Bruce Chassy, PhD, University of Illinois and Wayne Parrott, PhD, University of Georgia, and John Ruff, CFS, past IFT president dispel myths and clarify common consumer questions when it comes to GMOs.
For plants, the only way to grow is for cells to expand. Unlike animals, cell division in plants happens only within a tiny region of the root and stem apex, making cell expansion the critical path to increased stature. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports the discovery of a hormone and receptor that control cell expansion in plants.
University of Utah bioengineers showed that tiny blood vessels grow better in the laboratory if the tissue surrounding them is less dense. Then the researchers created a computer simulation to predict such growth accurately – an early step toward treatments to provide blood supply to tissues damaged by diabetes and heart attacks and to skin grafts and implanted ligaments and tendons.
Researchers at the University of Delaware have developed a “smart” hydrogel that can deliver medicine on demand, in response to mechanical force, in laboratory studies. Such gels hold promise in helping people with wear-and-tear injuries including osteoarthritis, torn ligaments and others.
A team including researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered that a specific gene may play a major role in the development of a life-threatening birth defect called congenital diaphragmatic hernia, or CDH, which affects approximately one out of every 3,000 live births.
With the help of biomimetic matrices, a research team led by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego has discovered exactly how calcium phosphate can coax stem cells to become bone-building cells. This work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Jan. 6, 2014.
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered that outer skin cells are able to unite to form suspended “bridges” during wound healing. The new findings will pave the way for tissue engineering, such as the design of artificial skin, and better wound treatment.
For the first time, scientists have succeeded in transforming human stem cells into functional lung and airway cells. The advance, reported by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, has significant potential for modeling lung disease, screening drugs, studying human lung development, and, ultimately, generating lung tissue for transplantation. The study was published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers and co-authors from four other U.S. institutions from the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network are repurposing genetic data and electronic medical records to perform the first large-scale phenome-wide association study (PheWAS), released today in Nature Biotechnology.
Researchers led by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have generated the most complete genome sequences from single E. coli cells and individual neurons from the human brain. The breakthrough comes from a new single-cell genome sequencing technique that confines genome amplification to fluid-filled wells with a volume of just 12 nanoliters.
Tricking algae’s biological clock to remain in its daytime setting can dramatically boost the amount of commercially valuable compounds that these simple marine plants can produce when they are grown in constant light.
Researchers at the University of Iowa have created an implantable bio patch that regrows bone in a living body, using existing cells. The team created a scaffold seeded with plasmids containing the genetic information for producing bone. The plasmids are absorbed by bone cells already in the body, spurring new growth. Potential applications extend to dentistry. Results appear in the journal Biomaterials.
A new technique successfully takes on a longstanding challenge in DNA sequencing – determining whether a particular genetic sequence comes from an individual's mother or father. The method, described in a Ludwig Cancer Research study in Nature Biotechnology, promises to accelerate studies of how genes contribute to disease, improve the process of matching donors with organs and help scientists better understand human migration patterns.
New discoveries, presented at the AVS Meeting in Long Beach, Calif., could impact applications ranging from artificial snowmaking to global climate models.
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