General

The tsetse fly is an exception to the almost universal law of nature that babies are born smaller than their mothers. In an article published in BioEssays, Drs Sinead English and Antoine Barreaux from the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, together with colleagues at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the Universities of Greenwich, Stellenbosch and California […]

Since an average human spends one-third of their life asleep, it is apparent that the quality of sleep has an important impact on the overall life quality. Sleep has restorative power and improves human brain functioning, in particular memory and attention. Sleepy people have problems with concentration and commit more […]

Accuracy is everything when you’re studying and treating the brain. This is why scientists need very precise methods and tools to deal with various conditions such as brain cancer. Now scientists at the University of Waterloo took a significant step towards development of laser imaging technology, which could precisely guide […]

The attentional control that organisms need to succeed in their goals comes from two abilities: the focus to ignore distractions and the discipline to curb impulses. A new study by MIT neuroscientists shows that these abilities are independent, but that the activity of norepinephrine-producing neurons in a single brain region, […]

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet and the University of California have uncovered the role of a polysynaptic pathway that links cholinergic neurons together. The study was recently published in Nature Communications. Cholinergic neurons are instrumental in regulating activity in the Striatum. Their acetylcholine interacts with dopamine to create just the right […]

Vanderbilt pharmacologists have reported the first evidence that aberrant spontaneous release of neurotransmitters in the brain can cause a range of severe intellectual and neurodevelopmental disorders in infants and children. Ege Kavalali, who holds the William Stokes Chair in Experimental Therapeutics and is acting chair of pharmacology, and postdoctoral scholar Baris […]

Beth Reisboard, 76, was relieved in 2018 when she received the results from her annual mammogram: “Negative.” But her OB-GYN suggested she have a second screening. Reisboard has dense breasts, which means there are certain cancers that mammography may not be sensitive enough to detect. Surprised, Reisboard scheduled an appointment […]

A new software package aims to aid drug design and biomedical research by making it easy to construct 3D images of proteins and other molecules using one of the world’s most powerful microscopes. Amit Singer, professor of mathematics and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, and his team are developing a package […]

Drug delivery is a recurring conundrum in cancer treatment. Scientists have developed many anti-cancer therapeutics. But those drugs often harm healthy tissues, and drugs can even break down in the bloodstream before reaching the tumor site. Anti-cancer drugs can last longer if dissolved in certain chemical solutions, but many come […]

Researchers working under ETH-Professor Emeritus Ruedi Aebersold have demonstrated how mutations in a gene influence the structure, function and interaction network of a protein complex. Their work plays a key foundation for personalised medicine. In the wake of proclaiming the “Age of the Genome” in the 1990s, scientists mapped the […]

While proteins on the surface of cells are the targets for most drugs, refined methods are needed to analyse how these membrane proteins are organised. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a new DNA-based analytical method that could contribute to the development of future drugs for breast and other cancers. […]

The app, dubbed NeuroSwipe, is a citizen science collaboration between students at the University’s National Software Academy and academics at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC). The app trains non-scientists to become experts at recognising brain scans that would be suitable for a scientific study, potentially saving researchers valuable […]

If you are overweight, then you will suffer a faster pace of aging, more age-related disease, greater lifetime medical costs, and an earlier death. The more excess weight and the longer that weight is held, the worse the outcome. In at least one sense, being overweight literally accelerates aging, increasing […]

Infectious disease is a far greater risk for the old than for the young. But then so is cancer. Both are conditions driven by the age-related failure of immune system competence, a growing inability to respond to vaccines and to destroy pathogens and errant cells, a state known as immunosenescence. […]

Gold nanotubes – tiny hollow cylinders one thousandth the width of a human hair – could be used to treat mesothelioma, a type of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, according to a team of researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Leeds. In a study published in journal Small, […]

Reprogramming cells in a living animal, transforming them into induced pluripotent stem cells, has the sound of a bad idea – leading to cancer, damage to structures and tissues, inappropriate signaling, and more. One of the interesting discoveries of recent years is that in vivo reprogramming can be quite beneficial, […]

Low levels of vitamin D during the first year of life are inversely associated with metabolic syndrome in adolescence—which is closely linked to obesity—according to a new University of Michigan study. A metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions such as high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist […]

Researchers at the University of Liverpool are leading a new study to test the effectiveness of a treatment for ‘retraining’ the eyes for people who experience a loss of vision after stroke. Funded by eye research charity Fight for Sight and the Stroke Association, the study hopes to establish a […]

Immunotherapies, such as checkpoint inhibitor drugs, have made worlds of difference for the treatment of cancer. Most clinicians and scientists understand these drugs to act on what’s known as the adaptive immune system, the T cells and B cells that respond to specific threats to the body. New research from […]

Before her first birthday, her parents knew something was seriously wrong. She was weak and inactive. The child, whom we are calling Lisa to protect her privacy, hardly interacted with them, and she was late on every developmental milestone – sitting, walking and speaking her first words. At the age […]

A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is part of a new multi-institution effort to better understand Alzheimer’s disease in adults with Down syndrome. Adults with Down syndrome are at high risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease beginning in their late 40s, because of their unique biology. The vast […]

Near all work to date on the treatment of age-related disease has failed to consider or target underlying mechanisms of aging, the molecular damage that accumulates to cause pathology. It has instead involved one or another attempt to manipulate the complicated, disrrayed state of cellular metabolism in late stage disease, […]

As people age, they often lose their motivation to learn new things or engage in everyday activities. In a study of mice, MIT neuroscientists have now identified a brain circuit that is critical for maintaining this kind of motivation. This circuit is particularly important for learning to make decisions that […]

A major scientific effort is underway to characterize the proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid to improve diagnostics and clinical monitoring assays and discover potential therapies, for Alzheimer’s disease. Several research labs at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Stanford University are pooling their protein science expertise in this […]

According to the American Heart Association, heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide in recent years.  During a heart attack, or myocardial infarction (MI), a blocked artery and the resulting oxygen deprivation cause massive cardiac cell death, blood vessel impairment and inflammation. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Biomaterials Science […]

Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have received intense scrutiny in recent years because of their persistence in the environment and potential endocrine-disrupting effects. However, their estrogenic activities are controversial, with different studies showing apparently contradictory results. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have used a combination of laboratory experiments and computer […]

Senescent cells are damaging to tissue function and health when they linger and grow in number, as becomes the case with age. They contribute to the chronic inflammation of aging via their signaling, the senescence-associated secretory phenotype. In skin, senescent cells are most likely responsible for a sizable fraction of […]

Using a new technique, a team of McGill University researchers has found tiny and previously undetectable ‘hot spots’ of extremely high stiffness inside aggressive and invasive breast cancer tumours. Their findings suggest, for the first time, that only very tiny regions of a tumour need to stiffen for metastasis to […]

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have discovered a new inflammatory disorder called vacuoles, E1 enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory and somatic syndrome (VEXAS), which is caused by mutations in the UBA1 gene. VEXAS causes symptoms that included blood clots in veins, recurrent fevers, pulmonary abnormalities and vacuoles (unusual cavity-like structures) in […]

New study suggests interventions to help patients build muscle before surgery may improve their outcomes. Low muscle quality and quantity are both predictive of poor outcomes in colon resection surgery, according to a new study published in JAMA Surgery. Carla Prado, a researcher at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Agricultural, Life & […]