General

How old are you for your age? Scientists who study ageing have begun to distinguish chronological age: how long it's been since a person was born, and so-called biological age: how much a body is “aged” and how close it is to the end of life. These researchers are uncovering […]

Greater maternal stress during pregnancy is linked with significant increases in the number and variety of infant illness during the first year of life, independent of the level of stress after birth, according to a study led by researchers at UC San Francisco. The study, published in the Journal of […]

Genomes are routinely subjected to DNA damage. But most cells have DNA repair systems that enforce genome stability and, ideally, prevent diseases like cancer. The trouble gets serious when these systems break down. When that happens, damage such as unrepaired DNA lesions can lead to tumors, and genomic chaos ensues. […]

Batteries fade as they age, slowly losing power and storage capacity. As in people, aging plays out differently from one battery to another, and it’s next to impossible to measure or model all of the interacting mechanisms that contribute to decline. As a result, most of the systems used to […]

A team of scientists led by a researcher at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is making strides to fight deadly metastatic breast cancer by combining nanotechnology with immunotherapy. Efstathios “Stathis” Karathanasis, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, is directing the novel technique—sending nanoparticles into the body to […]

Species typically evolve over the course of eons, but researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a way to do it in less than a year. A team of scientists led by Mike Smanski, Ph.D., in the College of Biological Sciences (CBS) has generated speciation events in fruit flies so that engineered […]

A team of researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine and Université de Montréal has succeeded in using bioinformatics to develop a statistical model to assess how the gain or loss of genetic material impacts the risk of autism. The results of this work are presented in the American Journal of Psychiatry. This […]

The immune system usually mounts a strong immune response to infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. That defensive response, however, appears to be weaker in men and people over the age of 60, a study led by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle has […]

UT Health physicians use supercomputers to interpret results of traumatic brain injury clinical trial. Individuals with traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, frequently experience the shrinking or atrophying of brain tissue near where the injury occurred, causing additional damage beyond the original harm. If this can be prevented, many could function […]

Researchers are able to visualize the retina's function at the cellular level, which will help accelerate cures for blinding diseases. While there is no cure for blindness and macular degeneration, scientists have accelerated the process to find a cure by visualizing the inner workings of the eye and its diseases at […]

A cure for type-1 diabetes has come closer with the development of a new method for keeping transplanted insulin-producing cells alive and functional in recipients for long periods even when transplanted underneath the skin. A team led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania […]

A new study from McGill University’s Goodman Cancer Research Centre (GCRC) has revealed significant biological changes in mice expressing an activated, mutant form of the Estrogen Receptor alpha (ER alpha), shedding new light on the role of this important gene in development and cancer. Over-expressed in approximately 70 % of breast cancer cases, the Estrogen Receptor is often associated […]

For artificial intelligence (AI) tools being developed at Case Western Reserve University to have impact in the fight against cancer, they’re going to have to be validated in rigorous human clinical trials. That validation may be a step closer following two recent agreements among bioengineering pioneer Anant Madabhushi, a longtime […]

People with autism spectrum disorder have lower levels of a protein that regulates the amount of serotonin in the brain, a paper from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry reports. For their study, the researchers used a molecular brain imaging technique to compare people with and […]

An experimental treatment for eczema that aims to modify the skin microbiome safely reduced disease severity and increased quality of life for children as young as 3 years of age, a National Institutes of Health study has found. These improvements persisted for up to eight months after treatment stopped, researchers report […]

Researchers at Tel Aviv University, led by Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro of TAU's Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Sackler School of Medicine, have developed an innovative nanotechnological drug delivery system that significantly enhances the effectiveness of treatment for the aggressive skin cancer melanoma. The nanocarrier is a biocompatible and biodegradable polymer, which comprises repeating units […]

New research from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, in collaboration with Boston University and the University of California, Los Angeles, provides an accelerated platform for studying early-stage lung cancer and identifying and testing potential treatments: “organoids” created from lung cells. The researchers reported in Cell Stem Cell that […]

What’s the risk of different human populations to develop a disease? To find out, a team led by Université de Montréal professor Guillaume Lettre created an international consortium to study the blood of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. In one of the largest studies of its kind, published in […]

A well-known protein family binds to many more RNA sequences than previously thought in order to help neurons grow. In every cell, RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) help tune gene expression and control biological processes by binding to RNA sequences. Researchers often assume that individual RBPs latch tightly to just one RNA […]

In years to come, personal memories of the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to be etched in our minds with precision and clarity, distinct from other memories of 2020. The process which makes this possible has eluded scientists for many decades, but research led by the University of Bristol has made […]

Brain cancer in children is always a devastating diagnosis, but McMaster researchers may have found a way to have the most serious types of pediatric brain cancer respond better to therapies. Medulloblastoma (MB) is the most common malignant childhood brain tumour and it has recently been categorized into four molecular […]

What would you do if you knew how long you had until Alzheimer’s disease set in? Don’t despair. New UC Berkeley research suggests one defense against this virulent form of dementia — for which no treatment currently exists — is deep, restorative sleep, and plenty of it. Neuroscientists Matthew Walker […]

In rodents with type 2 diabetes, a single surgical injection of a protein called fibroblast growth factor 1 can restore blood sugar levels to normal for weeks or months. Yet how this growth factor acts in the brain to generate this lasting benefit has been poorly understood. Clarifying how this […]

As we get older, many of our body’s processes start slowing down. For instance, a cut on the hand will take longer to heal after middle age than in youth. That said, it still heals. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for the cells at the back of the eye, which […]

The number of cases of dementia in the U.S. is rising as baby boomers age, raising questions for boomers themselves and also for their families, caregivers and society. Dementia, which is not technically a disease, but a term for impaired ability to think, remember or make decisions, is one of […]

A malignant tumor is a bustling metropolis populated by many different kinds of cancer cells. This cellular diversity, however, is what makes cancer so difficult to treat, as each type of cell in a tumor responds differently – and sometimes not at all – to cancer therapies. This is especially […]

What determines the life span of a mouse, alligator, dog or human? A team of scientists at the University of Georgia believes they have new insight into this age-old question. Emily Bertucci and Benjamin B. Parrott, a research team at the Odum School of Ecology and the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, […]

Yale scientists have discovered an underlying mechanism for Fragile X syndrome — a leading cause of autism and the primary genetic driver of intellectual disability — as well as a drug that reversed the underlying abnormality and autism-like behaviours in mice. Their research appears in the edition of the journal […]

Aging is something we all have to deal with. And it’s no fun – your body gradually loses some of its capacities and you’re left wondering what you will be able to do tomorrow. One of the parts of aging is losing senses – older people tend to have impaired […]

Some people are into the sort of behaviour that we know is harmful. For example, millions and millions of people drink, use illicit drugs, smoke, gamble and so on. You may be one of those people. But why? This new study, led by scientists from UCL, found that these harmful […]