2021

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified ingredients for snack food prototypes that have been formulated to deliberately change the gut microbiome in ways that can be linked to health. Translating results from animal models, the scientists have shown in two pilot human studies of […]

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists identified how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, gets inside cells to cause infection. All current COVID-19 vaccines and antibody-based therapeutics were designed to disrupt this route into cells, which requires a receptor called ACE2. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in […]

The canine disease granulomatous meningoencephalomyelitis (GME), the most common neuroinflammatory disease that affects dogs, shares key features of its pathology and immunology with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a new study. A detailed investigation of GME by a team led by Molly Church and Jorge Iván Alvarez of Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, incorporating MRI […]

Thanks to researchers in different fields who put in nearly two decades of past work on mRNA vaccine technology, people around the world are being immunized today from COVID-19 — and hopefully leading us out of this pandemic. Now, because of the increased focus on this versatile technology and that foundation […]

A Canadian research team has uncovered a new mechanism involved in Bourneville tuberous sclerosis (BTS), a genetic disease of childhood. The team hypothesizes that a mutation in the TSC1 gene causes neurodevelopmental disorders that develop in conjunction with the disease. Seen in one in 6,000 children, tuberous sclerosis causes benign […]

Researchers at UC San Francisco have found that extreme caloric restriction diets alter the microbiome in ways that could help with weight loss but might also result in an increased population of Clostridioides difficile, a pathogenic bacterium that can lead to severe diarrhoea and colitis. Such diets, which allow people only […]

Bone cancer is hard to treat and prone to metastasis. Research teams at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have a new strategy to attack it. Chemist Han Xiao at Rice and biologist Xiang Zhang at Baylor and their labs have developed an antibody conjugate called BonTarg that delivers drugs to bone tumors and inhibits […]

Each day the average human heart beats 100,000 times and pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood. It’s a process that is critical to life, and yet it often goes awry for unknown reasons.   “Despite knowing a lot about muscle contraction and the heart, in particular, there are still a number of questions scientists have […]

A new art/science collaboration uses molecular structures as its creative medium. In Jenna Sutela’s work, which ranges from computational poetry to experimental music to installations and performance, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) Visiting Artist enlists microbes and neural networks as co-creators. “I want to explore this notion […]

PhD student Sarah Nyquist applies computational methods to understudied areas of reproductive health, such as the cellular composition of breast milk. Sarah Nyquist got her first introduction to biology during high school, when she took an online MIT course taught by genomics pioneer Eric Lander. Initially unsure what to expect, […]

A University of Texas at Arlington researcher is examining how historic segregation in the United States may contribute to cardiovascular disease among individuals from minority or low-income groups. “If this research does find neighborhood factors, like racial segregation and income, impact cardiovascular disease in minority and low-income people, then we […]

Blood-brain barrier typically protects the brain, but is also quite a bit of a challenge for scientists trying to create therapies for neurological conditions. Drugs that should act on the brain struggle to pass this barrier. Now scientists at The University of Queensland have found that an ultrasound therapy could […]