General

A year ago, when the COVID-19 lockdown began, Dr. Rachel Issaka expected that colonoscopies would decline. She was surprised by how much. In the first two months, in-clinic colon cancer screenings fell by 90%.  “I was shocked,” said Issaka, a UW Medicine gastroenterologist and researcher with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. There […]

When cancer invades the brain, normal salt levels are quickly thrown off-kilter, but detecting this change in patients has been difficult. A team of Yale researchers has developed a non-invasive way to observe these changes in close detail at the early stages of cancer growth. This method, developed in the […]

Earlier studies have shown that supplementary vitamin D seems to provide a certain degree of protection against respiratory infections. A new study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet has now made the most comprehensive synthesis to date of this connection. The study, which is published in the journal Lancet Diabetes & […]

When variants of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) emerged in late 2020, concern arose that they might elude protective immune responses generated by prior infection or vaccination, potentially making re-infection more likely or vaccination less effective. To investigate this possibility, researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious […]

A new study shows that in the time after first trying cannabis or first misusing prescription drugs, the percentages of young people who develop the corresponding substance use disorder are higher among adolescents (ages 12-17) than young adults (ages 18-25). In addition, 30% of young adults develop a heroin use […]

In a landmark study, a team led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has discovered—and filmed—the molecular details of how a cell, just before it divides in two, shuffles important internal components called mitochondria to distribute them evenly to its two daughter cells. […]

Gustavo Aguirre and William Beltran, veterinary ophthalmologists and vision scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, have studied a wide range of different retinal blinding disorders. But the one caused by mutations in the NPHP5 gene, leading to a form of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), is one of the most severe. […]

Scientists at UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley and UCLA have received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to jointly launch an early phase, first-in-human clinical trial of a CRISPR gene correction therapy in patients with sickle cell disease using the patient’s own blood-forming stem cells. The trial will combine CRISPR […]

As the ability of medicine to diagnose diseases expands, so does the need for science to decipher their causes. To that end, a team of neuroscientists at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute, affiliated with Université de Montréal, has launched a new project called NeuroBasis. It’s an $8M, a multi-institution collaboration […]

Researchers led by the University of Missouri create a new method for analyzing large amounts of biological data to help scientists draw faster conclusions for possible treatments. Studying genetic material on a cellular level, such as single-cell RNA-sequencing, can provide scientists with a detailed, high-resolution view of biological processes at […]

Many people with early-stage or first-episode bipolar disorder have cognitive deficits, such as issues with visual processing and spatial memory, but those deficits are often so subtle that the disorder can go undiagnosed for years. That could change thanks to researchers at the University of Alberta who have created a […]

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have produced a detailed molecular atlas of lung development, which is expected to be a fundamental reference in future studies of mammalian biology and of new treatments for diseases, such as COVID-19, that affect the lungs. The researchers, […]

But up to half of older patients undergoing surgery face a lesser-known but similarly formidable cognitive challenge: postoperative delirium, a condition triggered by a surgery that requires anaesthesia and whose trademarks are confusion, disturbed mental faculties, loss of orientation and anxiety. In the worst cases, postoperative delirium leads to extended […]

A team of researchers co-led by Michael Frohman of Stony Brook University has identified an important cause of congenital heart disease. The researchers discovered that certain loss of functions in the PLD1 (phospholipase D1) gene causes congenital right-sided cardiac valve defects and neonatal cardiomyopathy. The findings are detailed in a paper in […]

Researchers are perfecting a new generation of anticancer drugs that will be able to specifically target the low-oxygen environment of solid tumors. So far, the new drug has been tested in preliminary experiments with human tumors transplanted into otherwise healthy adult mice. Low oxygen levels among the densely packed cells […]

A study with first-time learners of Japanese has measured how brain activity changes after just a few months of studying a new language. The results show that acquiring a new language initially boosts brain activity, which then reduces as language skills improve. “In the first few months, you can quantitatively […]

People previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 show significantly higher T cell and antibody responses following a single dose of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine compared with uninfected individuals, a collaborative study involving University of Liverpool researchers has found, While both groups show robust immune responses after one dose, the higher response experienced by previously […]

A rare isotope in high demand for treating cancer is now more available to pharmaceutical companies developing and testing new drugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently acknowledged receipt of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s drug master file for actinium-225 nitrate, which enables pharmaceutical companies to reference the document to […]

Cholinesterase inhibitors are a group of drugs recommended for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, but their effects on cognition have been debated and few studies have investigated their long-term effects. A new study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet and published in the journal Neurology shows persisting cognitive benefits and reduced […]

Sydney researchers are testing whether an existing medication could be repurposed to treat sarcoma. Recruitment is now open for a national clinical trial that will test whether an existing therapy for psoriasis can help treat patients with sarcomas, which are rare cancers arising in the connective tissues (bone, muscle, tendons, […]

New clues to a long-pursued drug target in cancer may reside within immune cells, researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center have discovered. The findings, which appear in Nature Immunology, not only shed new light on cancer immunology, they also suggest clinical trials related to this key target — an interaction that […]

Scientists have genetically engineered immune cells, called myeloid cells, to precisely deliver an anticancer signal to organs where cancer may spread. In a study of mice, treatment with the engineered cells shrank tumors and prevented the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body. The study, led by scientists […]

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have discovered specific regions within the DNA of neurons that accumulate a certain type of damage (called single-strand breaks or SSBs). This accumulation of SSBs appears to be unique to neurons, and it challenges what is generally understood about the cause of […]

A recent study published in JCI found that a neutrophil’s endoplasmic reticulum, the organelle that normally makes proteins in the cell, becomes stressed in the autoimmune disorder lupus. This stress activates a molecule called IRE1α, which appears to play a critical role in lupus pathogenesis in mice. A multidisciplinary research group at the University […]

Scientists are preparing a cancer modeling study to run on Argonne’s upcoming Aurora supercomputer before it goes online in 2022. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will be home to one of the nation’s first exascale supercomputers when Aurora arrives in 2022. To prepare codes for the architecture and scale of […]

Two papers by University at Buffalo researchers reveal important new findings as to how regeneration of myelin in multiple sclerosis fails and, potentially, more efficient ways to treat it. The findings include the first demonstration that an existing drug, currently being studied as a cancer therapy, can alter key signalling […]

Epileptics, listen up: imagine being able to have a “weather forecast for your brain,” a way to get advance of the onset of your next seizure, thanks to a microchip planted under your scalp. Science fiction, you think? Not for two researchers at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal […]

New research provides insights into the process of diffusion in living systems, with implications from novel active coatings to understanding how pathogens are cleared from lungs. A drop of food colouring slowly spreading in a glass of water is driven by a process known as diffusion. While the mathematics of […]

A new study led by University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine professor Erin Lashnits shows evidence of Bartonella infection in the blood of people with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. “Researchers have been looking at the connection between bacterial infection and neuropsychiatric disease for some time,” Lashnits says in a news release by North Carolina […]

Excessive fat accumulation in the liver can lead to serious medical problems, including liver failure. Thus, understanding the distribution of lipids within the liver is a critical step in diagnosing fatty liver diseases. A team of researchers at Tokyo University of Science has now shown that near-infrared hyperspectral imaging permits […]