General

Immunotherapies for cancer — treatments that prime the immune system to attack tumors — are valuable weapons in the anti-cancer arsenal. But some cancers are more difficult to target with this strategy than others. Today, scientists report a new type of immunotherapy that dramatically extends the survival of mice that […]

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a way to regenerate, in mice and human tissue, the cushion of cartilage found in joints. Loss of this slippery and shock-absorbing tissue layer, called articular cartilage, is responsible for many cases of joint pain and arthritis, which afflicts more than 55 […]

Electrical stimulation a week before surgery causes nerves to regenerate three to five times faster, leading to better outcomes. A University of Alberta researcher has found a treatment that increases the speed of nerve regeneration by three to five times, leading to much better outcomes for trauma surgery patients. “We […]

How we adapt to aging late in life may be genetically influenced, according to a study led by a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside. The research, published in Aging Cell, has implications for how epigenetic factors related to aging. Epigenesis is a process in which chemicals attached to DNA […]

CNRS researchers at the Institut Curie have recently shown that cancer cells use a membrane protein that has been known for several decades to internalise iron. Published in Nature Chemistry (August 3rd, 2020), this work shows that the absorbed iron allows cancer cells to acquire metastatic properties. Biologists knew CD44 […]

When people say “cardiovascular disease” in the context of blood cholesterol, they mean atherosclerosis. This is the name given to the build up of fatty deposits that narrow and weaken blood vessels, leading to heart failure and ultimately some form of disabling or fatal rupture – a stroke or heart […]

Every year, 150 to 300 children in the United States are diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs), aggressive and lethal tumors that grow deep inside the brain, for which there are no cures. In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, researchers showed that experimental drugs designed to […]

Opioid use among women trying to conceive may be associated with a lower chance of pregnancy, suggests a National Institutes of Health study. Moreover, opioid use in early pregnancy may be associated with a greater chance of pregnancy loss. The study appears in Epidemiology. “Our findings indicate that women who […]

Nearly three-quarters of older adults with dementia have filled prescriptions for medicines that act on their brain and nervous system, but aren’t designed for dementia, a new study shows. That’s despite the special risks that such drugs carry for older adults – and the lack of evidence that they actually ease […]

A Garvan-developed platform is providing researchers access to genomic data that will help drive discoveries in severe mitochondrial and brain disorders. Medical researchers from across the globe will gain new insight into some of the most devastating inherited conditions, thanks to anonymized genomic and clinical summary data made available by […]

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin has explored the role of factors in embryonic development that do not alter the sequence of DNA, but only epigenetically modify its “packaging”. In the scientific journal Nature, they describe how regulatory mechanisms contribute to the formation of […]

Four-stranded DNA structures – known as G-quadruplexes – have been shown to play a role in certain types of breast cancer for the first time, providing a potential new target for personalised medicine, say scientists at the University of Cambridge. In 1953, Cambridge researchers Francis Crick and James Watson co-authored […]

Genes that are thought to play a role in how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects our cells have been found to be active in embryos as early as during the second week of pregnancy, say scientists at the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The researchers say […]

Since the late 1990s, immunotherapy has been the frontline treatment against lymphomas where synthetic antibodies are used to stop the proliferation of cancerous white blood cells. However, in the more than 20 years since their use began, the molecular mechanisms that underlie this therapy are still little understood. For the […]

Researchers studying the mystery of why some weightlifters’ muscles grow much more quickly than others’ have found new answers through a novel experiment in which subjects worked out one leg and immobilized the other. In just two weeks, the immobilized leg, on average, lost the same amount of muscle mass […]

The enzyme serine palmitoyl-transferase can be used as a metabolically responsive switch that decreases tumor growth, according to a new study by a team of San Diego scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature. By restricting the dietary amino acids serine and glycine, or pharmacologically targeting the serine […]

The multiplication of genes located in extrachromosomal DNA that have the potential to cause cancer drives poor patient outcomes across many cancer types, according to a Nature Genetics study published by a team of researchers including Professors Vineet Bafna and Dr. Paul Mischel of the University of California San Diego  […]

Should rapamycin be prescribed ubiquitously as an anti-aging supplement? That is the question the authors of this commentary ask after a short overview of what is known of the beneficial effects of rapamycin on mechanisms relevant to aging. Research into inhibition of the two mTOR complexes, mTORC1 and mTORC2, via […]

New insight into a gene that controls energy production in cancer stem cells could help in the search for a more effective treatment for glioblastoma. A McGill-led study published in Nature Communications reveals that suppressing the OSMR gene can improve the effectiveness of radiation therapy. This approach, led by the laboratory of […]

New research reveals a subtype of autism associated with lipid abnormalities. Researchers at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University have identified a subtype of autism arising from a cluster of genes that regulate cholesterol metabolism and brain development. The researchers say their findings, published in Nature […]

Children suffering from restless sleep disorder would report trouble focusing during the day, and emotional and behavioral problems at home and school. A UW Medicine researcher, along with colleagues from Italy, Spain and Chile, have defined a new pediatric sleep disorder, which once diagnosed and treated, may help children and […]

Telomeres are repeated DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes. With each cell division a little telomere length is lost, and this is an important part of the countdown mechanism that limits replication of somatic cells. Somatic cells with short telomeres become senescent or self-destruct. Stem cells, on the other […]

A study from Emory Vaccine Center provides insights into why the boost in immunity from seasonal flu vaccination lasts for months but not years, unlike some childhood vaccinations. The home base for immune cells that produce antibodies is the bone marrow. Seasonal flu vaccination does increase the number of antibody-producing […]

Experts estimate up to one third of people attending specialist memory clinics could have a condition that is commonly mistaken for early dementia. In a paper published in the journal, Brain, UK academics and clinicians have collaborated to develop a diagnostic definition of the widely recognized but poorly understood condition, Functional Cognitive Disorder (FCD).  Dr Harriet Ball from the University of Bristol, first author of the […]

The disease multiple sclerosis (MS) attacks the central nervous system and, with time, can give rise to muscle tremors and loss of balance. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now identified a gene, Gsta4, that protects a certain kind of cell in the brain from being destroyed. It is hoped that […]

New research supported by the National Institutes of Health delineates how two relatively common variations in a gene called KIF3A are responsible for an impaired skin barrier that allows increased water loss from the skin, promoting the development of atopic dermatitis, commonly known as eczema. This finding could lead to genetic tests […]

Today's open access research is a good companion piece to a recent paper that investigates biochemical differences between long-lived and short-lived bats. Bats are renowned for, firstly, an exceptional resistance to classes of virus that are fatal to other mammals, allowing bat populations to act as reservoirs for potentially dangerous […]

In a proof-of-principle study, researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research revealed a potential therapeutic approach for targeting estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancers resistant to current therapies. By combining current gold-standard treatments with a drug that restores the activity of p53, a cancer suppressor protein, the researchers found they […]

Researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research have uncovered four new subtypes of cells within triple negative breast cancer, which contain promising new therapeutic targets for the aggressive disease. Using cellular genomics, the team revealed one of the new cell types produces molecules that suppress immune cells, which may […]

Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have developed an algorithm through machine learning that helps predict sites of DNA methylation — a process that can change the activity of DNA without changing its overall structure. The algorithm can identify disease-causing mechanisms that would otherwise […]