General

“Do not erase.” “Recycle me.” “Free to a good home.” Humans post these signs to indicate whether something has value or not, whether it should be disposed of or not. Inside our cells, a sophisticated recycling system uses its own enzymatic signs to flag certain cells for destruction — and […]

Your spine deteriorates naturally over time, even if you tread lightly and are mindful of good posture. Radiologists are keenly aware of this truth due to an endless queue of patients with low back pain whose imaging scans reveal no acute injury but, instead, show typical signs of activity, gravity, […]

Two new grants totaling nearly $14 million over three years will jump-start research at UC Berkeley into the molecular and genetic causes of Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that afflicts more than 1 million Americans, yet whose cause remains a mystery. The grants are among 21, for a total of […]

As society ages, we have more and more people living with dementia. It is an incurable disease and we are sort of accepting it as a sad part of life. Your lifestyle, genes and some other factors influence the risk of dementia. And the goal for you is to reduce […]

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet describe molecular and cellular consequences of unique genetic mutations affecting the CASK gene which has been implicated in various neurodevelopmental disorders. Notably, the results indicate differences in the development of presynapses of inhibitory neurons in individuals with specific mutations. The findings elucidate key mechanisms during early […]

You have probably heard of the promise of bioprinting for controllably creating tissues and organs thanks to a layer-by-layer deposition of biomaterial-based inks (bioinks). So far, it is fulfilling those expectations as it is now one of the most rapidly growing sectors thanks to the regenerative capacity of most of […]

Babies who have life-saving surgery for congenital heart problems within the first month of life face a lifelong risk of chronic kidney disease and high blood pressure, according to new research led by University of Alberta pediatric specialists. “We know that kidneys, like all organs, have to last a lifetime,” said Catherine Morgan, […]

Penn Medicine researchers have found that middle-aged individuals — those born in the late 1960s and the 1970s — may be in a perpetual state of H3N2 influenza virus susceptibility because their antibodies bind to H3N2 viruses but fail to prevent infections, according to a new study led by Scott Hensley, […]

Tearing an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) can be an excruciatingly painful injury. Nearly 50 percent of these patients will develop a secondary form of osteoarthritis, deemed post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the UC Davis Medical Center have found that treatment with antibiotics prior to the injury could reduce inflammation […]

Lab study shows promise of aiming genetically engineered T-cell therapy at a gene fusion. Precision immunotherapies that aim the power of the body’s soldier cells at cancer have revolutionized the care of certain types of leukemia. But not all types — yet. New research by a team from Fred Hutchinson […]

A research team led by Professor Kim Gyo-beom of Dongguk University's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering has developed the latest technology for joint tissue regeneration via simultaneous delivery of therapeutic growth factors and adi-pose derived stem cells into the body. The work was published in the Journal of Controlled […]

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 […]