General

In mammals, including humans, the cells that contract the heart muscle and enable it to beat do not regenerate after injury. After a heart attack, there is a dramatic loss of these heart muscle cells and those that survive cannot effectively replicate. With fewer of these contractile cells, known as […]

Right now, most existing therapies are concerned with reducing symptoms in people with heart damage, but none have been successful at actually replacing tissue that was lost due to a heart attack or a similar condition. This might soon change as researchers from Duke University in the US have recently […]

Yale researchers have discovered novel chemical compounds that extend the lifespan of a species of yeast by using a new technology that could also hunt for tools to combat aging in other species as well, they reported Nov. 28 in the journal Cell Reports. “Research on human aging has been […]

New King’s College London research, published in eLife, shows that adults born prematurely – who also suffered small brain injuries around the time of birth – have lower levels of dopamine in the brain. This chemical change has been linked to lack of motivation and enjoyment in normal life, and changes to […]

In a major step forward in the battle against macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss among the elderly, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have discovered a critical trigger for the damaging inflammation that ultimately robs millions of their sight. The finding may allow doctors to halt the […]

The goal of any cancer treatment is to kill tumor cells. Yet, one little understood paradox of certain cancers is that the body's natural process for removing dead and dying cells can actually fuel tumor growth. A new University of Michigan study identifies the pathway by which this poorly understood […]

New research from Florida State University is beginning to piece together the stubborn puzzle posed by a family of rare and debilitating premature aging disorders. Most of these diseases, called progeroid syndromes, share physiological symptoms characterized by the appearance of accelerated aging, such as skin disorders, loss of hair, skeletal […]

A drug that spurs cancer cells to self-destruct has been cleared for use in a clinical trial of patients with anaplastic astrocytoma, a rare malignant brain tumor, and glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive late-stage cancer of the brain. This phase Ib trial will determine if the experimental drug PAC-1 can be used safely […]

University of Illinois researchers are sending tiny drug-laden nanoparticles on a mission to seek and destroy cancer stem cells, the elusive and rare cells that can cause cancer to come back even when years have passed since the initial tumor was treated. In a study led by Dipanjan Pan, an Illinois […]

To undergo high-resolution imaging, cells often must be sliced and diced, dehydrated, painted with toxic stains, or embedded in resin. For cells, the result is certain death. But if researchers can only view the inner workings of dead cells, they’re only seeing part of the story. They cannot monitor living […]

A PhD candidate from Canada’s Queen’s University Caitlin Miron had recently accepted the Mitacs Award for Outstanding Innovation as a token of recognition for a ground-breaking discovery in cancer research. Sifting through numerous chemical compounds, Miron had identified a novel substance which binds to a four-strand DNA structure called a […]

The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer‘s disease – most likely you already know that. However, other causes are not somehow less significant just because of smaller number of cases. Dementia with Lewy Bodies is the third most common form of dementia, but it still affects millions of people. […]

Glaucoma, which affects over 60 million people worldwide, can seem easy to treat: medicated eye drops can be used to ease the buildup of fluid in the eye that underlies the condition. If glaucoma is caught early, eye drops can prevent irreversible blindness. But prescription eye drops aren’t the perfect […]

Researchers at the Whitehead Institute have illuminated an important role for different subtypes of muscle cells in orchestrating the process of tissue regeneration. In a paper appearing in Nature, they reveal that a subtype of muscle fibers in flatworms is required for triggering the activity of genes that initiate the regeneration program. […]

Researchers at King's College London have discovered new mechanisms of cell death, which may be involved in debilitating neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. This novel research, published in Current Biology, could lead to new therapeutic approaches for treating or delaying the progression of neurodegenerative conditions that are […]

How can we facilitate better knowledge transfer and collaboration between multi-disciplinary healthcare teams to improve the continuity of care for patients in an environment where new treatment approaches are fundamentally shifting how patients live with their cancer? Why the Rewrite Cancer Innovation Challenge? Significant strides have been made to improve […]

A team of bioengineers and bioinformaticians at the University of California San Diego have discovered how the environment surrounding a tumor can trigger metastatic behavior in cancer cells. Specifically, when tumor cells are confined in a dense environment, the researchers found that they turn on a specific set of genes […]

New research shows that chronic stress suppresses the immune system’s response to cancer, reducing the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments. University of Queensland scientists say they are investigating dual therapies for patients to reduce stress signalling and improve their response to treatments. UQ Diamantina Institute researcher Dr Stephen Mattarollo said lymphoma progressed more rapidly in […]

A signaling pathway in cells that regulates fat production could become a new target for cancer drugs, according to a finding by Weill Cornell Medicine researchers. The discovery of the signaling pathway, reported in Cell, represents a significant advance in understanding how cells regulate their growth in health and disease. […]

After years of rigorous research, a team of scientists has identified the genetic engine that drives a rare form of liver cancer. The findings offer prime targets for drugs to treat the usually lethal disease, fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma (FL-HCC), which mainly strikes adolescents and young adults. Sanford Simon, who conducted […]

So-called “triple-negative” breast cancer is a particularly aggressive and difficult-to-treat form. It accounts for only about 10 percent of breast cancer cases, but is responsible for about 25 percent of breast cancer fatalities. Triple-negative breast cancer earns its name because, unlike other breast cancer subtypes, its cells test negative for […]

Cancer immunotherapy drugs have had notable but limited success because in many cases, tumors develop resistance to treatment. But researchers at Yale and Stanford have identified an experimental antibody that overcomes this problem by targeting a wider range of immune cells linked to tumor growth. Existing cancer immunotherapies act on only a […]

Using CRISPR genome editing, the team took the genetic engineering of killer T-cells one step further by removing their non-cancer specific receptors and replacing them with ones that would recognise specific cancer cells and destroy them. Dr Mateusz Legut from Cardiff University, who led the study while undertaking a Cancer […]

Catching cancer early can make all the difference for successful treatment. A common screening practice measures tumor growth with X-ray computed tomography (CT), which takes a series of cross-section images of the body. Before they are used in clinics, researchers test multiple CT imaging techniques with standard objects called “phantoms,” […]

Doctors have many drugs available to treat multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. However, there is no way to predict, by genetic markers or other means, how a patient will respond to a particular drug. This can lead to months of treatment with a drug that isn’t working. Researchers […]

“The biological clock ensures that a plant times its metabolism according to the environment,” says Dorothee Staiger. “Thus enabling it to directly use the first rays of sunlight for photosynthesis to produce carbohydrates, for example.” As the Nobel Prize winners have shown, individual genes in the genome of plants, animals […]

Since it first evolved in the common ancestor to multicellular animals some one billion years ago, the p53 family of genes has played the role of genomic guardian for countless organisms. So essential is its task—to protect the DNA of cells from damage and stress—that some form of p53 can […]

Folding your laundry or doing the dishes might not be the most enjoyable parts of your day. But simple activities like these may help prolong your life, according to the findings of a new study in older women led by the University at Buffalo. In the U.S. study of more […]

Nevan Krogan, PhD, is a mapmaker, but the object of his exploration is not any newfound continent or alien world. Instead, he and his colleagues map cells. Rather than cities, towns and interstates, these maps show proteins, genes, and the shifting, convoluted network of interactions between them. Learning to read […]

Scientists have created mini biological models of human primary liver cancers, known as organoids, in the lab for the first time. In a paper published in Nature Medicine, the tiny laboratory models of tumours were used to identify a new drug that could potentially treat certain types of liver cancer. Primary liver cancer […]