General

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 […]

Regarding overall health, there is probably no symptom more readily linked to prevailing conditions and illnesses than stress. The question we should be asking, however, is whether or not naming stress as a cause is accurate. There is no doubt that stress can be a contributor to all kinds of […]

A research collaboration involving the University of Liverpool proposes a set of measurements that can be used as a toolkit to assess bone, joint and muscle health that could provide a benchmark for how well older people are able to keep moving. The composition of the body changes as we […]

A DNA-based analysis of blood cells soon after a stem cell transplant can predict likelihood of disease recurrence in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a group of cancerous disorders characterized by dysfunctional blood cells, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Such a practice […]

The results from a seven-year study of the benefits and risks of a low daily dose of aspirin to the lives of people over 70 are published in three papers in New England Journal of Medicine. The study, led by a team from Monash University, involved the University of Adelaide’s […]

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers have answered questions about the incidence and timing of rare but sometimes fatal reactions to the most widely prescribed class of immunotherapies. Their research, which appeared in JAMA Oncology, is the largest evaluation of fatal immune checkpoint inhibitor toxicities published to date. They determined that although these severe […]

When sound reaches the inner ear, it is converted into electrical signals that are relayed to the brain via the ear’s nerve cells in cochlea. Previously, most of these cells were considered to be of two types: type 1 and type 2 neurons, type 1 transmitting most of the auditory […]

Sometimes kids trip and fall, and their teeth take the hit. Nearly half of children suffer some injury to a tooth during childhood. When that trauma affects an immature permanent tooth, it can hinder blood supply and root development, resulting in what is essentially a “dead” tooth. Until now, the […]

In a large clinical trial to determine the risks and benefits of daily low-dose aspirin in healthy older adults without previous cardiovascular events, aspirin did not prolong healthy, independent living (life free of dementia or persistent physical disability). Risk of dying from a range of causes, including cancer and heart […]

Improving Care for People with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Using Technology (iCare-AD/ADRD) Challenge Through this challenge, the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, seeks to reward and spur the development of solutions for a technology-based application, fostering connections between relevant stakeholders to use […]

Research has shed new light on genetic processes that may one day lead to the development of therapies that can slow, or even reverse, how our cells age. A study led by the University of Exeter Medical School has found that certain genes and pathways that regulate splicing factors – […]

Research from Oxford University published in the journal Genome Research has found that a special combination of epigenetic modifications crucial to stem cell growth evolved in animals much earlier than previously appreciated. These findings imply that our stem cells, and those of simple animals such as planarian worms, have much more in […]

Unlocking the mysteries of chromatin – a mix of RNA, DNA and protein that serves to package and protect DNA – could lead to important insights about gene regulation and the genome, as well as cancer and other diseases. Combining engineering, biology and physics, three Yale researchers have received a […]

The amoeba Naegleria fowleri is commonly found in warm swimming pools, lakes and rivers. On rare occasions, the amoeba can infect a healthy person and cause severe primary amebic meningoencephalitis, a “brain-eating” disease that is almost always fatal. Other than trial-and-error with general antifungal medications, there are no treatments for the infection. […]

A new study by Harvard Medical School researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital finds that inducing the production of new neurons in the brain structure in which memories are encoded can improve cognitive function in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Their investigation shows that those beneficial effects on cognition […]

A multi-institutional study led by Harvard Medical School investigators based at Massachusetts General Hospital and researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has found how the abnormal form of tau, which accumulates in the neurofibrillary tangles that characterize Alzheimer’s disease, can disrupt the normal function of brain cells. In […]

A pregnant woman’s higher blood sugar level is linked to a significantly greater long-term risk of obesity in her child — even more than a decade later, reports a large new international study led by Northwestern Medicine. The higher the woman’s blood sugar, the greater the risk of her child […]

Many men suffering from advanced-stage prostate cancer appear to share at least one thing in common: they are now or have been heavy drinkers of beer, according to a study by uro-oncologist Pierre Karakiewicz, a professor of urological surgery at UdeM’s Faculty of Medicine. In the study, published in Cancer Epidemiology in […]

UC San Francisco researchers have discovered how a mutation in a gene regulator called the TERTpromoter — the third most common mutation among all human cancers and the most common mutation in the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma — confers “immortality” on tumor cells, enabling the unchecked cell division that powers their aggressive […]