General

Scientists from Trinity have identified a rare, new cell in the immune system with “Jekyll and Hyde properties”. These cells play a key protective role in immunity to infection but – if unregulated – also mediate tissue damage in autoimmune disorders. The findings should help us design more effective vaccines […]

Netherton syndrome, a rare skin disease caused by a single genetic mutation, is exacerbated by the presence of two common Staphylococcal bacteria living on human skin, one of which was previously thought to only offer protective properties, report University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers. “Our study shows how closely […]

Researchers at the University of Southampton have identified how new checkpoint inhibitor treatments for cancer can activate tuberculosis in some patients. Immune therapies for cancer are transforming treatment by activating the body’s immune cells to fight off cancer. Immune checkpoints are part of the human body’s immune system that prevent […]

A study led by the University of Southampton, funded by Cancer Research UK, has shown a new drug – originally developed to tackle the scarring of organ tissue – could help to significantly improve the success rate of cancer immunotherapy treatment. Scientists have shown in mouse cancers, that GKT137831 (Setanaxib) […]

Immune cell activity in the brain differs between males and females in ways that may explain why some neurodegenerative diseases affect the sexes differently, according to a new study from Weill Cornell Medicine scientists. Dr. Li Gan, the Burton P. and Judith B. Resnick Distinguished Professor in Neurodegenerative Diseases in […]

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have analysed all cell types in the human ovary and found that the hotly debated so-called egg stem cells do not exist. The results, published in Nature Communications, open the way for research on improved methods of treating involuntary childlessness. The researchers used single-cell […]

Researchers report an advance in the development of a blood test that could help detect pathological Alzheimer’s disease in people who are showing signs of dementia. This approach could be less invasive and less costly than current brain imaging and spinal fluid tests. The blood test detects the abnormal accumulation […]

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with higher measures of tumor mutations that show up in a blood test generally have a better clinical response to PD-1-based immunotherapy treatments than patients with a lower measure of mutations. A clinical trial led by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the […]

A simple blood test may soon be able to diagnose patients with two common forms of dementia – Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) – and tell the two apart. Researchers at UC San Francisco analyzed the blood test in more than 300 patients and say they hope to see […]

Machine-learning algorithms could help improve the accuracy of breast cancer screenings when used in combination with assessments from radiologists, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. The study was based on results from the Digital Mammography (DM) DREAM Challenge, a crowd-sourced competition to engage an international scientific community to assess whether […]

Turns out, even your cells hate traffic jams. In order for cells to function properly, they need to be able to coordinate traffic within their walls and let information flow in and out. Inside a cell, molecules, organelles and information travel along microtubules, which work like highways or conveyor belts. […]

Researchers from The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford have found that while having high cholesterol levels does not influence your risk of aortic or mitral valve regurgitation, it does increase your risk of developing another major heart valve disease – aortic stenosis. Aortic stenosis is […]

The targeted drug palbociclib may boost the effectiveness of chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer if the two treatments are given in the right sequence, according to new preclinical research by Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators. The study, published in Cancer Cell, found that palbociclib may stop pancreatic cancer cells from repairing […]

Errors during cell division can trigger the development of cancer. No wonder that this central process is controlled by multiple regulators and guards. Alex Bird's research group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology has discovered a hitherto unknown key player and how it provides the necessary stability to […]

CRISPR-Cas9 has revolutionized the field of genetics by its ability to cut DNA at defined target sites. Researchers are using the Cas9 enzyme to specifically switch off genes, or insert new DNA fragments into the genome. But no matter how specific the Cas9 enzyme is – sometimes it cuts where […]

If the heart pumps too little blood into the body, the brain is usually not adequately supplied with oxygen. Until now, however, it was unclear how this affects brain structure. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences together with colleagues from the Leipzig Heart Clinic, […]

Epigenetic clocks are multiplying year by year. Each is a weighted algorithmic combination of the status of various methylation sites on the genome, built by analyzing the epigenome of many different people at different ages in order to arrive at correlations with chronological age, or, more usefully, with metrics such as mortality risk that reflect biological […]

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet led by Professor Erik Melén have together with an international team mapped the relationship between the length of pregnancy and chemical DNA changes in more than 6,000 newborn babies. For each week's longer pregnancy, DNA methylation changes in thousands of genes were detected in the umbilical […]

Scientists have developed a probe named CoxFluor that can distinguish between Cyclooxygenase-2, an enzyme that plays a major role in driving the progression of cancer, and the enzyme Cyclooxygenase-1, which is expressed in all cells. Led by Jefferson Chan, a chemist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a paper detailing […]

In recent years, diet trends such as Intermittent Fasting have popularized the practice of delayed or restricted eating for many individuals looking to manage caloric intake. Still, many people open to restructuring their schedules have the same question: When is the right time to avoid eating? According to a new […]

A new study by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital puts the results of a landmark trial about blood pressure control into terms that may be easier to interpret and communicate to patients. When data from The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) were published in 2015, the medical community responded enthusiastically […]

The death of a spouse often means the loss of intimacy, companionship and everyday support for older adults. A new study finds that widowhood can have another profound effect: It may accelerate cognitive decline. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed older, cognitively normal Americans enrolled […]

Many tests for cytomegalovirus infection are difficult to interpret because most of its DNA fragments are too small to be detected in the blood of infected people through current assays.  Laboratory medicine experts at the University of Washington School of Medicine are looking at this problem to find better ways […]

Scientists from UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz and Duke University synchronized their research watches to study what makes our biological clocks tick. Specifically they set out to understand why some people are what they call extreme “morning larks” who operate on a shorter 20-hour cycle compared to a regular 24-hour pattern. […]

A research project at Linköping University has shown that children whose parents often use digital media develop language more slowly than others. For three years, Associate Professor Anett Sundqvist and her research group in the Child and Infant Lab at Linköping University have studied young children and their development in […]

Our skin protects us from physical injury, radiation, and microbes, and at the same time produces hair and facilitates perspiration. Details of how skin cells manage such disparate tasks have so far remained elusive. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have systematically mapped skin cells and their genetic programs, […]

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are reporting another advance in the understanding and treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, which is particularly aggressive and difficult to treat. Their findings, detailed in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, offer new hope for identifying patients most likely to respond to the latest treatments. “This […]

A followup to a University of Alberta study done in 2016 confirms that pregnant women who eat more fruit during pregnancy may be giving their babies’ cognitive development a boost. “Our research followed up on results from the original CHILD Cohort Study, which found that fruit consumption in pregnant mothers influences […]

Parkinson’s disease researchers have used gene-editing tools to introduce the disorder’s most common genetic mutation into marmoset monkey stem cells and to successfully tamp down cellular chemistry that often goes awry in Parkinson’s patients. The edited cells are a step toward studying the degenerative neurological disorder in a primate model, […]

Without enough sugar in their diets, bumblebee queens can experience difficulty reproducing and shorter lifespans. Hollis Woodard, assistant professor of entomology at UCR, has conducted multiple studies showing how loss of plant availability negatively affects the prolific pollinators. Previous research indicates a queen’s diet can impact how quickly her brood develops, or […]