General

An international team led by physics researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington has published a paper in the high-impact journal Bioactive Materials that describes a breakthrough method of photodynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment. Nil Kanatha Pandey, a doctoral student in physics Professor Wei Chen’s lab, is the first […]

The urgency to remember a dangerous experience requires the brain to make a series of potentially dangerous moves: Neurons and other brain cells snap open their DNA in numerous locations — more than previously realized, according to a new study — to provide quick access to genetic instructions for the mechanisms […]

A University of Manchester led a team of scientists has discovered that the most common form of adult blindness is probably caused by a failure of at least one of five proteins to regulate the immune system. The breakthrough could one day herald the development of transformative treatments for developing […]

Biologists are trying to figure out what makes a cell unique in form and function. But they are not certain which components are key to making similar cells behave differently. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Jesse Gillis and his lab are tackling this problem with a new statistical method: they […]

When a doctor gives a patient antibiotics for a bacterial infection, they usually require them to finish the entire treatment, even when symptoms go away. This is to ensure the drugs kill off any remaining bacteria. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Visiting Scientist Raffaella Sordella investigated a similar problem that occurs in […]

Altum Sequencing, a start-up in the biotechnology sector that is part of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid’s (UC3M) Incubation and Acceleration of Companies and Industrial PhD programmes, has patented a system that allows for the early identification of tumour-specific genetic markers and the quantification of cancer cells following responses […]

Antibodies induced by currently available mRNA vaccines can still neutralize the Delta and Kappa variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but do so at a reduced potency, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Delta variant, first identified in India and previously known as B.1.617.2, is […]

You’re as old as your immune system. Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have built an inflammatory-ageing clock that’s more accurate than the number of candles on your birthday cake in predicting how strong your immune system is, how soon […]

Intervertebral discs provide load support and motion between vertebrae in the spine, but when they start to break down and compress due to ageing, disease or injury, a person experiences significant pain and reduced mobility. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found a way to […]

Infant boys with a higher composition of a particular gut microbiota show enhanced neurodevelopment, according to a new study. The University of Alberta-led research followed more than 400 infants from the CHILD Cohort Study (CHILD) at its Edmonton site. Boys with a gut bacterial composition that was high in the bacteria Bacteroidetes […]

The mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, are among the most powerful vaccines the world has ever seen. According to clinical trial data, they are more than 94% effective at preventing symptomatic disease, with real-world data bearing out that success. The other vaccine currently available in the […]

For 30 years, University of Tokyo Associate Professor Hisayoshi Nozaki has traveled an hour west of Tokyo to visit the Sagami River and collect algal samples to understand how living things evolved different sexes. Through new analysis of samples collected in 2007 and 2013 from dam lakes along the river, […]