General

MIT scientists have identified a potential new strategy for treating Fragile X syndrome, a disorder that is the leading heritable cause of intellectual disability and autism. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that inhibiting an enzyme called GSK3 alpha reversed many of the behavioral and cellular features of […]

A four-year-old girl with a severely painful, rare immune disorder received life-changing targeted therapy, following whole genome sequencing at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Karla, now six years old, has a rare gene variant that affects an immune ‘checkpoint’ protein, resulting in an imbalance in her immune system that […]

Many severe symptoms in Parkinson’s disease are caused by the degeneration of the brain’s dopamine neurons. Transplantation of stem cell-derived dopamine neurons to patients with Parkinson’s disease is a therapeutic approach that is getting close to clinical application. The strategy uses pluripotent stem cells that are cultured under conditions that […]

A simple blood test may help predict which people with multiple sclerosis (MS) will get worse during the following year, according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published online in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “In a disease like MS that […]

Childhood environment and socioeconomic status affect cognitive ability and brain development during adolescence independently of genetic factors, researchers at Karolinska Institutet report in a new study published in the journal PNAS. The study demonstrates how important the family environment is, not just during early infancy but also throughout adolescence. While […]

Scientific research has changed dramatically in the centuries since Galileo, Newton and Darwin. Whereas scientists once often toiled in isolation with homemade experiments and treatises, today collaboration is the norm. Teams of scientists now routinely pool and process reams of data gleaned from high-tech instruments. Yet as modern science has […]

For decades, scientists have explored the use of liposomes –– hollow spheres made of lipid bilayers –– to deliver chemotherapy drugs to tumor cells. But drugs can sometimes leak out of liposomes before they reach their destination, reducing the dose received by the tumor and causing side effects in healthy […]

Study Suggests Potential Anti-Inflammatory Properties of Ketone Bodies Via Effects on Gut Microbial Ecosystems. Low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diets, which have attracted public interest in recent years for their proposed benefits in lowering inflammation and promoting weight loss and heart health, have a dramatic impact on the microbes residing in the […]

In the largest study of its kind, researchers have confirmed a new non-invasive test can be used to help with the early detection of endometrial cancer and at-risk patients. Published in the journal, Cancers, the study signals the next step forward in providing an inexpensive tool for diagnosing patients with endometrial cancer […]

Researchers examine proteins to identify what is 'broken' in tumor cells The rogue cellular engine that drives a majority of ovarian cancers remains frustratingly difficult to disable. A new study comparing cancerous tissue with normal fallopian tube samples advances important insights about this machinery and confirms biological hallmarks of survival. High-grade […]

Recent large scale efforts to categorize the molecular data of multiple cancer types has yielded so much information that researchers now have a new question: How to turn all this data into meaningful information that guides cancer research and patient care. A new analytic tool developed by the University of […]

MIT neuroscientists have discovered that an enzyme called HDAC1 is critical for repairing age-related DNA damage to genes involved in memory and other cognitive functions. This enzyme is often diminished in both Alzheimer’s patients and normally aging adults. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that when HDAC1 is […]

As a chemical engineer, Hadley Sikes loves studying complex systems such as networks of chemical reactions. But in her work designing practical devices for diagnostics and other applications, she embraces simplicity. Sikes, an associate professor who recently earned tenure in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, devotes much of her lab’s […]

A new grant will help Iowa State University researchers develop innovative gene-editing technology to better understand how human genetics affect susceptibility to disease. The four-year, $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health allows Maura McGrail, an associate professor of genetics, development and cell biology and principal investigator, and her […]

This open access paper provides a good high-level overview of what is known of the molecular mechanisms underpinning the beneficial response to calorie restriction and intermittent fasting. In short-lived species, quite sizable gains in life span are possible, though this is not the case for longer-lived species such as our own. The metabolic responses to […]

Nutraceuticals are compounds derived from foods, usually plants. In principle one can find useful therapies in the natural world, taking the approach of identifying interesting molecules and refining them to a greater potency than naturally occurs in order to produce a usefully large therapeutic effect. Unfortunately, in practice the nutraceutical industry […]

As people get older, they often feel less energetic, mobile or active. This may be due in part to a decline in mitochondria, the tiny powerhouses inside of our cells, which provide energy and regulate metabolism. In fact, mitochondria decline with age not only in humans, but in many species. […]

Researchers from Sechenov University (a Project 5-100 participant) and University of Pittsburgh (USA) discovered that the resistance of innate immune cells, macrophages, to ferroptosis – a type of programmed cell death – depends on the type of their activation. It turned out that cells helping tissues to recover from inflammation […]

Study identifies potential drug treatments for telomere diseases. Capping decades of research, a new study may offer a breakthrough in treating dyskeratosis congenita and other so-called telomere diseases, in which cells age prematurely. Using cells donated by patients with the disease, researchers at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center identified several […]

Julie H. Simpson receives an NSF CAREER award to study how neural circuits coordinate behaviors. Everything we do comes down to a series of neural signals that translate into physical behaviors. We receive information through our senses, sensory neurons convert this information into electrical and chemical signals that are processed […]

Researchers use old equations coupled with new methods to help decode the massively complex gut microbiome. For something that has evolved with us over millions of years, and remains part of our physiology over our entire lives, our gut microbiome, oddly, remains somewhat of a mystery. Comprised of trillions of […]

Talk about motherly instincts: Biologists at the University of Iowa have learned that female roundworms can alert their future offspring of dangers they will encounter when born, and the mothers pass on these warnings even before the offspring have been conceived. The study shows that a mother roundworm releases a chemical […]

Drug that reduces swelling may help protect against brain and spinal cord injury. Every year, millions of people around the world suffer brain and spinal cord injuries resulting from trauma, accidents, infections, or stroke. These injuries trigger swelling that can lead to death or long-lasting disabilities, but current treatment options […]

An off-label experiment in mice using disulfiram, which has been used to treat alcohol use disorder for more than 50 years, consistently normalized body weight and reversed metabolic damage in obese middle-aged mice of both sexes. The international study was led by researchers at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), […]

A new tool invented by the University of Alberta biologists to sequence circular DNA will provide scientists with richer, more accurate data that could help advance research on viruses, agriculture, and perhaps even cancer. The tool—called CIDER-Seq, which uses DNA sequencing technology called PacBio—was made available online by the U of […]

A large international trial has confirmed previous findings that a commonly used antidepressant is not effective in supporting the recovery of patients who have had a stroke. The results of the study, led by researchers from The University of Western Australia and The George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, were […]

Prostate cancer therapies have shown significant advances during the past decade, with multiple new therapies being introduced for patients with advanced disease. Now, the early results of a clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) reveals for the first time that therapies based on tumor genetics – specifically DNA repair […]

Early results for a potentially revolutionary brain disease therapy given under compassionate use to a 2 year-old has shown promise, a University of Manchester scientist will tell an international conference. Professor Brian Bigger will tell the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy that the safety and feasibility of the […]

A team of researchers from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Socios En Salud, and the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT report they have identified the single largest genetic contributor to height known to date. The findings, published in Nature, are based on an analysis of samples from […]

For decades, the enormous disease-curing potential of human stem cells has been thwarted by the inability to produce sufficient quantities of mature human cells in vivo — in a living organism. Now, a team led by University at Buffalo scientists has developed a method that dramatically ramps up the production […]