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University of Alberta researchers created a new synthetic virus that could lead to the development of a more effective vaccine against smallpox. The discovery demonstrates how techniques based on the use of synthetic DNA can be used to advance public health measures. Virologist David Evans and his research associate Ryan Noyce produced […]

Fifteen years ago, University of Wisconsin–Madison researcher Meg Wise began interviewing cancer patients nearing the end of life about how they were living with their diagnosis. She was surprised to find that many asked for a transcript of the interview, saying that they had not talked about these issues with […]

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have received two grant awards, in partnership with investigators from other institutions, from the National Institutes of Health to conduct major studies on Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of memory loss and other forms of dementia in older persons. In […]

Older people with higher levels of chronic inflammation are likely to have weaker muscles and lower muscle mass, according to a new study carried out at the University of Southampton. Scientists from the University’s Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (MRC LEU) examined the relationship between levels of inflammation in […]

Dentists and dental hygienists in particular should be conducting oral cancer screenings on all patients, according to University of Alberta dentistry experts. “Oral cancer screening should be taking place on patients as part of regular dental visits,” said Seema Ganatra, an oral pathologist at the U of A. “Unfortunately, it’s not […]

Frequently encountered in the elderly, Alzheimer’s is considered a neurodegenerative disease, which means that it is accompanied by a significant, progressive loss of neurons and their nerve endings, or synapses. A joint French and Canadian study published in Scientific Reports now challenges this view. Conducted among more than 170 subjects […]

Adults with an aging parent diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease are at elevated risk of developing the disease themselves. But doctors still don’t know enough yet to predict which of these adult children will go on to develop Alzheimer’s. Nor can they predict at what age the characteristic symptoms of memory […]

One of the many difficult things about pancreatic cancer is that tumors are resistant to most treatments because of their unique density and cell composition. However, in a new Wilmot Cancer Institute study, scientists discovered that a three-drug combination can simultaneously target the cancer cells as well as the other harmful, inflammatory […]

Scientists in the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Gage Crump have revealed how key genes guide the development of the jaw in zebrafish. These findings may offer clues for understanding craniofacial anomalies in human patients, who sometimes carry a mutation in equivalent genes. In the study published in Developmental Cell, first author Lindsey Barske […]

For the first time, researchers have described atom-by-atom changes in a family of proteins linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a group of brain disorders known as frontotemporal dementia and degenerative diseases of muscle and bone. Their findings appeared in the journal Molecular Cell. The long-term goal of the research is […]

Named after the Greek goddess who spun the thread of life, Klotho proteins play an important role in the regulation of longevity and metabolism. In a recent Yale-led study, researchers revealed the three-dimensional structure of one of these proteins, beta-Klotho, illuminating its intricate mechanism and therapeutic potential. The study findings, published […]

Prostate tumors tend to be what scientists call “indolent”—so slow-growing and self-contained that many affected men die with prostate cancer, not of it. But for the percentage of men whose prostate tumors metastasize, the disease is invariably fatal. In a set of papers published in the journals Nature Genetics and Nature Communications, researchers at […]

Individual tumors respond in different ways to cancer drugs. Until now, it remained a mystery why tumors have different reactions to the same treatment. Now a new study at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering sheds light on a tumor’s growth and how it may respond to therapy. Identifying a […]

University of Queensland researchers have found that freckles and moles appearing on the iris indicate a high risk of melanoma, particularly in people under 40 years of age. Dermatology Research Centre’s Associate Professor Rick Sturm said the presence of pigmented lesions was an effective predictor of the risk of melanoma that complemented […]

A high-salt diet reduces resting blood flow to the brain and causes dementia in mice, according to a new study by scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, is the first to unveil a gut-brain connection linking high dietary salt intake to neurovascular and cognitive impairment. The […]

An unusual autoimmune disease that causes skin and lung damage can be treated effectively by stem cell transplant, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine has found. The approach could represent the first new treatment to improve survival in patients with severe scleroderma in more than four decades. The experimental procedure […]

Touch is the first of the five senses to develop, yet scientists know far less about the baby’s brain response to touch than to, say, the sight of mom’s face, or the sound of her voice. Now, through the use of safe, new brain imaging techniques, University of Washington researchers […]

An improved intracellular delivery system that can carry revolutionary gene-editing tools to stem cells, potentially curing diseases with genetic causes A method to increase prospects of successful births for couples undergoing in vitro fertilization, which currently fails 67 percent of the time The possibility that an effective drug treatment can […]

MIT biologists have designed a new peptide that can disrupt a key protein that many types of cancers, including some forms of lymphoma, leukemia, and breast cancer, need to survive. The new peptide targets a protein called Mcl-1, which helps cancer cells avoid the cellular suicide that is usually induced […]

A team of researchers has developed an ultrasound-based system that can non-invasively and remotely control genetic processes in live immune T cells so that they recognize and kill cancer cells. There is a critical need to non-invasively and remotely manipulate cells at a distance, particularly for translational applications in animals […]

The first three-dimensional structure of DHHC proteins — enzymes involved in many cellular processes, including cancer — explains how they function and may offer a blueprint for designing therapeutic drugs. Researchers have proposed blocking DHHC activity to boost the effectiveness of first-line treatments against common forms of lung and breast […]

Immunotherapies are promising in theory, but often not in practice. In fact according to experts, they actually only work 10 percent of the time in the treatment of cancer – at best. Yet, while immunotherapy drugs may only help a minority of patients, those who do respond often do extremely well. […]

A team of cancer researchers from the University, has made an important contribution to our understanding of cancer cell regulation which could better inform future cancer treatments. The research is funded by North West Cancer Research, which has ring-fenced £180,000 for the three year-long project which started in 2015. Led by Professor […]

Few cancer treatments are generating more excitement these days than immunotherapy—drugs based on the principle that the immune system can be harnessed to detect and kill cancer cells, much in the same way that it goes after infectious microorganisms. Yet these treatments only benefit some patients, and remain ineffective in […]

Although cardiac stem cell therapy is a promising treatment for heart attack patients, directing the cells to the site of an injury – and getting them to stay there – remains challenging. In a new pilot study using an animal model, North Carolina State University researcher Ke Cheng and his […]

When you receive a vaccine against a disease like polio or influenza, your immune system gears up to defend against that particular infection. If you wind up getting chickenpox instead, or even a slightly different strain of the flu, you would be out of luck. That’s because traditional vaccines enlist […]

An international team, led by researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, has developed and validated a genetic tool for predicting age of onset of aggressive prostate cancer, a disease that kills more than 26,000 American men annually. The tool, described in the journal BMJ (formerly the British Medical […]

After treatment, young women diagnosed with breast cancer who carry a BRCA mutation have the same chances of survival as women without the mutation, according to a prospective cohort study led by the University of Southampton. BRCA mutations occur in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, and are inherited. These […]

What if we could diagnose early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by looking into a person’s eyes? A retinal scan technique, developed by researchers in the University’s Center for Drug Design (CDD), has the potential to detect AD in its early stages, when treatment may still be possible, and also to allow […]

Rice University bioscientist Aryeh Warmflash has won a major National Institutes of Health grant to analyze a protein-signaling pathway that directs the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into the cells of the skin and the nervous system. The work will build upon Warmflash’s research into human embryonic development and the mechanisms by which nearly […]