General

A team of Caltech researchers has developed a biological toolkit of proteins that can be assembled together in different ways, like Legos, to program new behaviors in cells. As a proof-of-concept, they designed and constructed a circuit that can be added to human cells growing in a laboratory dish, detect […]

A decade-long effort led by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists has been rewarded with the identification of the human skeletal stem cell. The cell, which can be isolated from human bone or generated from specialized cells in fat, gives rise to progenitor cells that can make new bone, the spongy stroma […]

For the first time, researchers have shown in preclinical models that it’s possible to treat cancer by delivering a gene that naturally suppresses tumors. Although no two tumors are alike, most cancer cells do a combination of two things: overexpress genes that drive tumor growth and lose normal genes that […]

Testicular cancer survivors have a markedly better chance of staving off cardiovascular disease caused by the cancer treatment and report a higher quality of life if they undertake some kind of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) as part of their recovery, according to new University of Alberta research. Testicular cancer is […]

One of the drawbacks of chemotherapy is that cancer patients can build up resistance to treatment over time, increasing their chances of possible relapse. Finding a way to suppress that resistance would be a major step toward boosting the therapeutic effects of some cancer-fighting drugs. UConn medicinal chemist M. Kyle […]

Researchers have developed a new way to target the toxic particles that destroy healthy brain cells in Alzheimer’s disease. Academics at the University of Cambridge and at Lund University in Sweden have devised the first strategy to ‘go after’ the cause of the devastating disease, which could eventually lead to […]

Researchers have developed a genome-editing tool for the potential treatment of mitochondrial diseases: serious and often fatal conditions which affect 1 in 5,000 people. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, applied an experimental gene therapy treatment in mice and were able to successfully target and eliminate the damaged […]

Sometimes, the body's otherwise intelligent immune system mistakenly attacks the body's healthy tissue by responding to infections that do not exist. This causes chronic inflammation and leads to diseases including e.g. Lupus (SLE), when the immune system overreacts, and this is what happens when the body activates the STING protein. […]

Scientists have been working on making eggs and sperm from stem cells for a long time, and it seems like they have finally reached a tipping point. Last Thursday in the leading journal Science, a group of Japanese researchers announced they’ve created immature human eggs from stem cells, which have […]

Twenty years after the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s James Thomson derived the first human embryonic stem cell lines (ESC), his revolutionary discovery is just beginning to emerge on the clinical landscape. To date, a handful of clinical trials of ESC-derived therapies have been completed, with approximately 16 more now underway worldwide. […]

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Timothy Nelson, associate professor of psychology, is studying how certain cognitive processes that develop throughout childhood affect health behaviors during adolescence and beyond. His research could lead to novel interventions to prevent and treat obesity. Nelson received a five-year, $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes […]

About a quarter of women treated for breast cancer experience moderate to severe pain for many years after their treatment ends. Sometimes, there’s no obvious reason why. “Are there people, before cancer therapy, who are more likely to develop chronic pain later?” asks Ellen M. Lavoie Smith, Ph.D., a researcher at […]

She once saw a father look into the eyes of his adult daughter and say, “I love you so much,” then die seconds later. A hospitalized man with an aggressive cancer worked diligently to settle his affairs, then after he finished, paused for a few seconds and whispered in her […]

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Biomolecular Design and Discovery (IBD) and Center for Nucleic Acids Science and Technology (CNAST), Chemistry Professor Danith Ly and postdoctoral associate Shivaji Thadke, have developed a two-faced synthetic nucleic acid that shows promise as a treatment for Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases […]

Body organs such as the intestine and ovaries undergo structural changes in response to dietary nutrients that can have lasting impacts on metabolism, as well as cancer susceptibility, according to Carnegie’s Rebecca Obniski, Matthew Sieber, and Allan Spradling. Their work, published by Developmental Cell, used fruit flies, which are currently […]

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have discovered how to quickly and accurately predict which lung cancer patients will benefit from chemotherapy by analyzing how immune cells the body sends out to fight the disease are arranged. The scientists—aided by smart-imaging computers and machine-learning methods—were able to swiftly analyze hundreds […]

They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, but new research shows you can teach an old rat new sounds, even if the lesson doesn’t stick very long. Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) of McGill University examined the effects of aging on neuroplasticity in […]

A new report, published today in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke, reveals that a diet high in fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts and beans, and lower in meat and dairy, reduces stroke risk among white adults who are at high risk of cardiovascular disease. The study is one of the largest […]

Cancer immunotherapy — efforts to boost a patient’s own immune system, allowing it to better fight cancer cells on its own — has shown great promise for some previously intractable cancers. Yet immunotherapy doesn’t work for everyone, for reasons that aren’t always clear. Most research and new therapies in this […]

A protein linked to both Alzheimer’s disease and a form of dementia caused by damage to blood vessels in the brain increases the risk of cognitive impairment by reducing the number and responsiveness of blood vessels in the organ, a study by Weill Cornell Medicine researchers suggests. The study, published […]

Few treatments exist for neurodegenerative diseases that progressively rob a person’s ability to move and think, yet the results of a new study are opening additional approaches for exploration. S­­cientists at University of Utah Health report for the first time that a protein, called Staufen1, accumulates in cells of patients […]

Fewer and fewer women die from breast cancer in recent years but, surprisingly, the decline is just as large in the age groups that are not screened. The decline is therefore due to better treatment and not screening for breast cancer. This is shown by a major Danish-Norwegian study, Effect of […]

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most common movement disorder in the world. PD patients suffer from shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and have difficulties walking. It is a neurodegenerative disease and is caused by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. Currently PD cannot be cured or even halted […]

Weight gain trajectories in early childhood are related to the composition of oral bacteria of two-year-old children, suggesting that this understudied aspect of a child’s microbiota — the collection of microorganisms, including beneficial bacteria, residing in the mouth — could serve as an early indicator for childhood obesity. A study […]

Researchers at King’s College London have discovered a vicious feedback loop underlying brain degeneration in Alzheimer’s disease which may explain why so many drug trials have failed. The study also identifies a clinically approved drug which breaks the vicious cycle and protects against memory-loss in animal models of Alzheimer’s. Overproduction […]

When Jamie Thomson, director of regenerative biology at the Morgridge Institute for Research, addressed a room of admirers that included John and Tashia Morgridge and former Gov. Tommy Thompson in April at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, he made a point of emphasizing the important role that nonhuman primates played […]

Using tiny plastic beads, University of Oregon biologists have captured new detail on how early embryonic cells in worms and mice orient themselves to establish their proper spatial arrangements and divide properly. Getting into position is vital for these cells in any lifeform as they build what will become an […]

A new scientific analysis of nearly 4,000 mutations deliberately engineered into the BRCA1 gene will immediately benefit people undergoing genetic testing for breast or ovarian cancer risk. The study was published today in the Sept. 12 edition of the scientific journal, Nature.  Additional data from the research has been made […]

DNA is a lengthy molecule — approximately 1,000-fold longer than the cell in which it resides — so it can’t be jammed in haphazardly. Rather, it must be neatly organized so proteins involved in critical processes can access the information contained in its nucleotide bases. Think of the double helix like […]

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are everywhere in our bodies. They are embedded in our cell membranes, where they act as signal transducers, allowing cells to respond to their external environments. GPCRs play a crucial role in most biological functions, including heart rate, blood pressure, vision, smell, taste and allergic responses. GPCR […]