General

When cells in our bodies need to move—to attack infection or heal a wound, for example—cellular proteins send and receive a cascade of signals that directs the cells to the right place at the right time. It’s a process cancer cells can hijack to spread to new tissues and organs. […]

A new character has stepped onstage in the story of human aging: neural excitation. The brain’s neural activity, long implicated in disorders ranging from dementia to epilepsy, plays a role in human aging and life span, according to research led by scientists in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School. The […]

A new National Institutes of Health grant merges two ongoing frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) studies to form a new, integrated consortium. FTLD is a rare disease that can affect parts of the brain responsible for personality, behavior, language, and motor function. The funding, from NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) […]

National Institutes of Health scientists have developed an ultrasensitive new test to detect abnormal forms of the protein tau associated with uncommon types of neurodegenerative diseases called tauopathies. As they describe in Acta Neuropathologica, this advance gives them hope of using cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF—an accessible patient sample—to diagnose these and […]

Exercise might lower the risk of cancer recurrence and improve survival rates, according to the latest guidelines released today about exercise and cancer. “There's some provocative data coming out that says patients who exercise during and after treatment might actually even lower their risk of the disease coming back, which […]

As tumor cells multiply, they often spawn tens of thousands of genetic mutations. Figuring out which ones are the most promising to target with immunotherapy is like finding a few needles in a haystack. Now a new model developed by researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania hand-picks […]

The UCSF scientists who identified the two known human genes that promote “natural short sleep” – nightly sleep that lasts just four to six hours but leaves people feeling well-rested – have now discovered a third, and it’s also the first gene that’s ever been shown to prevent the memory […]

You have to learn to be grateful for what you have, but it is impossible to deny that some people have it much more difficult than others. Living in disadvantaged situations can and will hurt you eventually. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian found that children from […]

Squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, amphibians, and chameleon lizards are among the animals that can change the color of their skin in a blink of an eye.  They have photoreceptors in their skin that operate independently of their brains. The photoreceptors are part of a family of proteins known as opsins. Mammals […]

Researchers have discovered that a key cell type involved in liver injury and cancer consists of two cellular families with different origins and functions. The research by academics from the Universities of Edinburgh and Bristol and funded by the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council is published in Nature Communications. […]

Children born to women who underwent gastric bypass surgery before becoming pregnant had a lower risk of major birth defects than children born to women who had severe obesity at the start of their pregnancy. That’s according to a matched cohort study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Örebro University […]

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences have investigated the effects of testosterone supplementation in young athletically active women in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. The results, which are published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, show that there is a causal relationship between […]

UCLA research identifies a potential strategy that may lead to treatment for the disorder. A new study examining the role that star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes play in Huntington’s disease has identified a potential strategy that may halt the disease and repair some of the damage it causes. Astrocytes interact […]

Eye gaze helps infants communicate. Through everyday interactions, eye gaze establishes a social connection between parent and child and is linked to early word learning. But can learn experiences before a baby’s first birthday prompt babies to pay more attention to their parent’s eye gaze? To test this, a research […]

A therapy developed by Yale researchers stimulates immune cells to shrink or kill tumors in mice, according to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. The therapy is effective alone or in combination with existing cancer immunotherapies, and it appears to have lasting effects, the researchers said. The […]

Cancer cells are masters at avoiding detection, but a new system developed by Yale scientists can make them stand out from the crowd and help the immune system spot and eliminate tumors that other forms of immunotherapies might miss, the researchers report in the journal Nature Immunology. The new system […]

The search for effective biological tools is a marathon, not a sprint, even when the distances are on the microscale. A discovery at Rice University on how engineered communities of cells communicate is a long step in the right direction. The Rice lab of synthetic biologist Matthew Bennett has designed […]

Many people are looking forward to their retirement. You have so much spare time once you stop working and can finally dedicate yourself to the things you love doing the most. But did you know that the time you spend retired actually differs if you earn more or less? Scientists […]

Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego are a step closer to making CAR T-cell therapy safer, more precise and easy to control. They developed a system that allows them to select where and when CAR T cells get turned on so that they destroy cancer cells without harming […]

Discovery of a type of immunity that protects koalas’ DNA from viruses has importance for the survival of koalas and our fundamental understanding of evolution. A team of scientists from The University of Queensland and University of Massachusetts Medical School are studying tissue samples from koalas to understand how a […]

New research from King’s College London has found that maternal stress before and during pregnancy could affect a baby’s brain development. In their study published in Biological Psychiatry, MRC Doctoral Researcher in Perinatal Imaging and Health, Alexandra Lautarescu and Head of Advanced Neuroimaging, Professor Serena Counsell, for the first time looked at the relationship between […]

A unique type of immune cell has been discovered in human breast tissue, and breast cancer patients with more of these cells are more likely to survive, finds new research from the King's College London and the Francis Crick Institute. The study, published in Science Translational Medicine and led by Professor Adrian Hayday, […]

A new, interdisciplinary muscle research center is celebrating its opening at its main location at UW Medicine South Lake Union. With collaborating labs across the University of Washington campus and at other Seattle-area institutions and beyond, the Center for Translational Muscle Research will encompass a myriad of muscle science and […]

Today, the University at Buffalo officially launched the UB Biorepository, a critical new facility in the Clinical and Translational Research Center that will be a powerful resource regionally and throughout the state in driving biomedical innovation in academia and industry. From molecular profiling of samples to integration with clinical data […]

In a new study, UC San Francisco scientists used maps of brain connections to predict how brain atrophy would spread in individual patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), adding to growing evidence that the loss of brain cells associated with dementia spreads via the synaptic connections between established brain networks. The […]

When chemotherapy was first invented, its premise seemed relatively simple: to curb the growth of tumors by stopping their cells from proliferating. Today, many of these drugs are known to act through different mechanisms and have turned out to be useful only in certain tumor types and patients. Consider the […]

A new liquid-cell technology allows scientists to see living biological materials and systems in three dimensions under an electron microscope, according to researchers at Penn State, Virginia Tech and Protochips Inc. “With this technology that we developed in collaboration with Protochips, scientists could analyze host-pathogen interactions, see a virus being […]

Using a fluorescent probe that lights up when brain cells are electrically active, MIT and Boston University researchers have shown that they can image the activity of many neurons at once, in the brains of mice. This technique, which can be performed using a simple light microscope, could allow neuroscientists […]

A novel nanosystem developed by Anil Kishen, a professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry, shows promising results in promoting healing and regeneration by host tissues following root canals. Kishen’s research was published recently in the medical journal Nanomedicine: Nanotechology, Biology and Medicine. The current treatment for root canals focuses on […]

Not all patients feel the same way about medical treatment. Some are “minimizers,” preferring to see a doctor as little as possible and to give health issues a chance to resolve on their own. Others are “maximizers” who want to treat a disease to the fullest extent possible, even if […]