General

Scientists from the Tokyo University of Science have made a breakthrough in the development of potential drugs that can kill cancer cells. They have discovered a method of synthesizing organic compounds that are four times more fatal to cancer cells and leave non-cancerous cells unharmed. Published in the American Chemical […]

Deep inside your cells, DNA provides the instructions to produce proteins, the essential molecules that grow and maintain your body. RNA is the intermediary nucleic acid that carries these instructions from DNA to ribosomes, where proteins are produced within the cell. But in humans and in plants, only a tiny […]

An international team of scientists led by The University of Manchester and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has found that shift workers, especially those working permanent night shifts, showed increased risks of asthma, especially moderate or severe asthma. The study of 280,000 UK Biobank participants also revealed that irregular night shift workers […]

You might recall that OneSkin recently launched a cosmetic product claimed to reduce levels of senescent cells in aged skin, as measured by the usual markers for cellular senescence, such as p16 expression and senescence-associated β-galactosidase. Removal of senescent cells is more or less literal rejuvenation, given that the accumulation […]

Research by University at Buffalo biomedical engineers Ruogang Zhao and Yun Wu may help discover new drugs to treat pulmonary fibrosis, a severe lung disease that can be life-threatening. Pulmonary fibrosis has many causes, including smoking, ageing, environmental factors and viral infections, such as those associated with COVID-19. There is […]

A gene that cured a man of HIV a decade ago has been successfully added to developing monkey embryos in an effort to study more potential treatments for the disease. Timothy Brown, known for years as “the Berlin Patient,” received a transplant of bone marrow stem cells in 2007 to […]

University of Saskatchewan (USask) pharmacologist Robert Laprairie will use a Brain Canada research grant to determine how a mother’s use of cannabis during pregnancy affects the brain of the developing fetus she’s carrying. Laprairie is one of 20 Canadian neuroscientists each awarded $100,000 today as part of Brain Canada’s Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research Program.  “Following on Canada’s legalization of cannabis in […]

Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) and Fujitsu Laboratories Limited have recently completed, in less than a day, estimation of the network that represents the influence relationship between genes and prediction of their relationship with infiltration and metastasis based on genes highly likely to be involved in cancer development. TMDU […]

James Cook University researcher Dr Brandon Mahan worked with a team of French researchers at the Université de Paris, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (UP, IPGP; Paris, France) who compared brains with and without Alzheimer’s to discover what made them different. “Our study is the first time it […]

For the first time, medication has impacted heart muscle thickness and function for patients with the most common inherited heart condition, rather than simply addressing their symptoms. “This is the first study to show a favourable impact of a medication on cardiac structure and function in any form of hypertrophic […]

This short commentary looks at just one cell type, T cells of the adaptive immune system, in which loss of mitochondrial function produces issues such as cellular senescence that contribute to broader degenerative aging throughout the body. Every cell contains hundreds of mitochondria, responsible for producing adenosine triphosphate, an energy […]

Researchers have discovered a previously unknown way that pancreatic cells decide how much insulin to secrete. It could provide a promising new target to develop drugs for boosting insulin production in people with Type 2 diabetes. In a pair of papers recently published in Cell Metabolism, scientists from the University of […]

A drug that has shown promise for treating multiple sclerosis may actually make the debilitating disease worse, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine suggests. The drug has not yet made it to human trials for MS, but the UVA scientists are warning their fellow researchers to proceed […]

The transcriptome of a cell is an assessment of gene expression at a moment in time, specifically which genes have RNA transcripts under production, and the relative amounts of those transcripts. Like all such detailed cell data, the transcriptome changes with age in characteristic ways, a reaction to the presence […]

A high-sugar diet reprograms the taste cells in fruit flies, dulling their sensitivity to sugar and leaving a “molecular memory” on their tongues, according to a University of Michigan study. Examining fruit flies, researchers Monica Dus, Anoumid Vaziri and collaborators found that high-sugar diets completely remodelled the flies’ taste cells, […]

When it comes to complex life — that of the multicellular variety — cell death can be just as important as survival. It allows organisms to clean house and prevent the proliferation of damaged cells that could compromise tissue function. Several years ago, biologist Denise Montell, a distinguished professor at UC […]

More than 100 different cancers can arise all over the body, but two universal metabolic pathways may tie them all together, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania report in a new study published online in Cell Metabolism. Researchers have long believed all cancers are […]

Developed by researchers at UdeM and the CHU Sainte-Justine, the innovation allows testing of patients who cannot participate in clinical studies due to the severity of their condition. Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), better known as chronic fatigue syndrome, is a complex chronic disease affecting some 600,000 Canadians and up to 2.5 […]

UW Medicine researchers at the Brotman Baty Institute in Seattle have created two cell atlases that track gene expression and chromatin accessibility during the development of human cell types and tissues. One atlas maps gene expression within individual cells across 15 fetal tissues. The second atlas maps the chromatin accessibility […]

Both of Andrew Kiselica’s grandfathers developed dementia when he was in graduate school. As Kiselica was going through neuropsychology training in graduate school, he saw his mother’s father become unable to walk or speak due to severe dementia. The University of Missouri researcher said that personal experience has motivated his work to […]

Marking Breast Cancer Awareness Month, researchers say they eventually hope to identify women at risk and offer methods to prevent weight gain following chemotherapy. Approximately 30% of breast cancer patients who receive chemotherapy treatment gain weight, though it is unclear why this phenomenon occurs in some women but not in others.  […]

Stress is a major cause of relapse after people quit smoking. Worrying situations, such as money or relationship problems, can affect neurotransmitter levels in the brain, leading former smokers to reach for a cigarette. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science have discovered that compounds that activate γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) […]

Deleting the TSC2 gene in specific lung cells of mice led to the activation of the mTORC1 signalling pathway and pulmonary disease characteristics consistent with human LAM disease, particularly in female breeder mice. These mice without TSC2 also exhibited a dysfunctional WNT cellular signalling pathway, which is also tied to lung […]

IMDEA Nanociencia researchers present a new family of organometallic iridium complexes that generate cytotoxicity only upon intracellular activation. Chemotherapy is defined as the use of chemicals to reach and damage cancer cells. On its way towards the tumour, the drugs can affect healthy cells as well. For example, cisplatin, a […]

Study debunks common myth that hormonal contraceptives cause depression, suicide in women. Women who struggle with mental illness often don’t take the most effective birth control methods because they worry the hormones in these contraceptives can trigger depression and suicide, a myth that has been perpetuated by recent studies. A […]

As researchers and medical professionals work to develop new treatments for cancer, they face a variety of challenges. One is intratumor heterogeneity — the presence of multiple kinds of cancer cells within the same tumor. Often, these “mosaic” tumors include cells, such as polyploidal giant cancer cells, that have evolved […]

A tiny fish is helping scientists understand how the human brain processes sound, while also giving insight to autism spectrum disorder. Scientists at The University of Queensland used zebrafish that carry the same genetic mutations as humans with Fragile X syndrome and autism, and discovered the neural networks and pathways that produce […]

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have investigated the association between certain immune markers in neonates and the risk of later developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They found that mid-levels of a classical marker of inflammation, C-reactive protein, were associated with the lowest risk for ASD – whereas too much or not […]

Radiation and chemotherapy are designed to kill cancer cells. But for many patients, cancer cells can survive even after being hit with high doses of chemotherapy or radiation. To make treatment more effective, scientists are focusing on ways to tweak the inner machinery of cancer cells to make them more […]

A new UC Riverside study shows flame retardants found in nearly every American home cause mice to give birth to offspring that become diabetic. These flame retardants, called PBDEs, have been associated with diabetes in adult humans. This study demonstrates that PBDEs cause diabetes in mice only exposed to the […]