General

In researching the causes and potential treatments for degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, neuroscientists frequently struggle to accurately identify cells needed to understand brain activity that gives rise to behaviour changes such as declining memory or impaired balance and tremors. A multidisciplinary team of the Georgia Institute […]

The small intestine is ground zero for survival of animals. It is responsible for absorbing the nutrients crucial to life and it wards off toxic chemicals and life-threatening bacteria. In a new study published in the journal Science, Yale researchers report the critical role played by the gut’s immune system […]

New insights into a little-understood DNA structure could provide the basis for new cancer therapies. DNA is usually depicted as double-stranded, but not much is known about parts of the genome that adopt four-stranded structures known as quadruplexes. UC Riverside researchers have discovered that they play a key role in […]

Researchers here note an association between vision impairment and mortality in later life. This has the look of a correlation that exists because aging is a global process at work throughout the body. It stems from the accumulation of a few classes of cell and tissue damage. That damage causes […]

University of Manchester scientists have discovered previously unseen blood biomarkers which could one day be used to test for Alzheimer’s disease, years before its symptoms appear. The ground-breaking study, published in ACS Nano, used cutting-edge nanotechnology uniquely developed and patented by the Nanomedicine Lab in Manchester, to extract blood signals of […]

In the past few years, several medications have been found to be contaminated with NDMA, a probable carcinogen. This chemical, which has also been found at Superfund sites and in some cases has spread to drinking water supplies, causes DNA damage that can lead to cancer. MIT researchers have now […]

TARM1 is a receptor protein whose role in the functioning of the immune system is unknown. In a new study, scientists from Japan have explored the potential role of TARM1 in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis by analyzing mouse models. They found that TARM1 activated dendritic cells, and the development of […]

CytoSeek’s technology is designed to help target the immune cells to the solid tumour and improve their cancer cell-killing ability. Solid tumours account for the majority of deaths from cancer and are notoriously difficult to treat, even with existing immune cell therapies, because the tumour suppresses immune cells’ ability to […]

It has long been understood that a parent’s DNA is the principal determinant of health and disease in offspring. Yet inheritance via DNA is only part of the story; a father’s lifestyle such as diet, being overweight and stress levels have been linked to health consequences for his offspring. This […]

More than 1,200 people with rare diseases have received a diagnosis thanks to the integration of large-scale genomics into the Stockholm region’s healthcare system. This is according to a study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden that analysed the result of the first five years of collaboration on whole-genome sequencing between […]

The vast majority of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 clear the virus, but those with compromised immunity—such as individuals receiving immune-suppressive drugs for autoimmune diseases—can become chronically infected. As a result, their weakened immune defenses continue to attack the virus without being able to eradicate it fully. This physiological tug-of-war between […]

The ears don't just help you hear. They also help a person walk, stand, and stay balanced. In fact, they work together with other systems in the body to help one understand our place in space. Many people who have sensations of vertigo find that the problem lies in their […]

Even though a fruit fly doesn’t have ears, it can hear with its antennae. In a study published in the journal Development, USC Stem Cell scientists describe how adult flies can regenerate sensory hearing cells in their antennae, and how studying flies can provide a new way to understand and […]

Since 2009, Daniel Tward and his collaborators have analyzed more than 47,000 images of human brains via MRI Cloud—a gateway created to collect and share quantitative information from human brain images, including subtle changes in shape and cortical thickness. The latter was the topic of a recently published study in the […]

A study led by researchers at the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering provides new insights for developing therapies for muscle disease, injury and atrophy. By studying how different pluripotent stem cell lines build muscle, researchers have for the first time discovered how epigenetic mechanisms can be […]

Breast cancer poses a substantial threat as it spreads to other organs, often lying in wait for years in these tissues and recurring without warning. Bones are a prime target, but the mechanisms that influence whether skeletal metastasis will develop or not remain poorly understood. A collaboration between researchers at […]

Cancer cells have evolved mechanisms to escape the body's immune defense. Agents that prevent immune escape are attractive targets for the development of new cancer therapies. A group of scientists led by Herbert Waldmann and Slava Ziegler at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund has now developed […]

Piperlongumine, an extract of long peppers, was shown to be senolytic a few years ago. The compound is capable of selectively destroying senescent cells by sensitizing them to oxidative damage, provoking apoptosis. The accumulation of senescent cells is one of the causes of aging, and means of clearance are thus […]

Screening tools for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often fail to identify ASD among children from low-income families and racial/ethnic minority groups, particularly when English is not the family’s primary language. A new visually-based tool may reduce these disparities at a pivotal point in children’s development. In Pediatrics, Zuleyha Cidav, David Mandell, and colleagues found […]

Head injury in the United States is common, with over 23 million adults age 40 or older reporting a history of head injury with loss of consciousness. Many head injuries can be caused by a host of different situations – from car and motorcycle accidents to sports injuries. What’s more, it […]

Anyone who has watched an infant’s eyes follow a dangling trinket dancing in front of them knows that babies are capable of paying attention with laser focus. But with large areas of their young brains still underdeveloped, how do they manage to do so? Using an approach pioneered at Yale […]

Nearly every older adult has prescribed a prescription drug that increased their risk of falling in 2017, according to new University at Buffalo research. The study found that the percentage of adults 65 and older who were prescribed a fall- risk-increasing drug climbed to 94% in 2017, a significant leap […]

A worldwide clinical trial aimed at finding treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has expanded to include investigational drugs targeting a harmful form of the brain protein tau. The trial, known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network Trials Unit (DIAN-TU) and led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, launched […]

New software advances ability to turn stem cells into other cell types. Harvard Medical School researchers and colleagues have developed new software to help scientists generate different types of cells for use in research and medicine. The software aids ongoing efforts to turn induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPSCs—adult cells that […]

This interesting study shows that when given the choice to consume sugar or protein, flies consume a lot of sugar and exhibit reduced life span as a result. Feeding the same proportional mix of sugar and protein to flies without giving them the choice of what to consume does not […]

To date, not much is known about two similar, but different, pediatric rheumatic conditions: juvenile myositis, an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks its own tissue and causes inflammation in the muscles, and systemic lupus erythematosus, the most common and serious form of lupus where the immune systems attacks its own […]

Mapping the cerebral vascular network in human patients, at unprecedented scales: this tour de force has been achieved by the French laboratory Physics for Medicine Paris (ESPCI Paris-PSL, Inserm, CNRS). In a study published on the front page of Nature Biomedical Engineering, the research team details its method: ultrasound localization […]

Scientists report on the structural and molecular factors governing the stability of a protein complex involved in DNA repair pathways in cells. The cells in our body are constantly fighting off the threat of cancer by repairing damaged DNA. In a new study, scientists from Tokyo University of Science investigate […]

Intake of a high-fat diet leads to an increased risk for obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and fatty liver. A study in mice from Karolinska Institutet shows that it is possible to eliminate the deleterious effects of a high-fat diet by lowering the levels of apolipoprotein CIII (apoCIII), a […]

New research by the University of Bristol as part of a team led by the University of Maryland (UMD) identifies age-related changes to DNA, revealing longevity-related differences among bat species. The study found that DNA from tissue samples can be used to accurately predict the age of bats in the […]