2021

A radioactive bone cement that’s injected into bone to provide support and local irradiation is proving to be a safer alternative to conventional radiation therapy for bone tumors, according to a study led by University of California, Irvine researchers. The study shows that this brachytherapy cement can be placed into […]

Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues have demonstrated that nanoengineered biodegradable microcapsules can guide the development of hippocampal neurons in an in vitro experiment. The microcapsules deliver nerve growth factor, a peptide necessary for neuron growth. The paper describing this work was published in the journal Pharmaceutics. Many neurodegenerative conditions […]

Professor Martijn Nawijn, an immunologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, tells Horizon Magazine about his quest to map every cell in a healthy human lung.  He says this work should help to understand more about the causes of lung disease – which is comparatively understudied – and should lead to new therapies in the next 15 to […]

Scientists reveal that high blood pressure increases lung damage risk in patients with cancer who receive bleomycin chemotherapy. Bleomycin is a drug used to treat certain cancers, such as Hodgkin lymphoma and germ cell tumors. But, bleomycin chemotherapy can cause near-fatal lung damage, a condition called bleomycin-induced lung injury. Now, […]

An international team of scientists has sequenced the genome of a capuchin monkey for the first time, uncovering new genetic clues about the evolution of their long lifespan and large brains. Published in PNAS, the work was led by the University of Calgary in Canada and involved researchers at the University […]

Statistical modeling developed by Oregon State University researchers has confirmed that changes to melanoma patients’ gut microbiome led them to respond to a type of treatment capable of providing long-term benefit. Findings were published in Science. The modeling technique invented by Andrey Morgun of the OSU College of Pharmacy and Natalia […]

A study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School found a way to detect the presence of ovarian cancer in patients using Pap test samples, normally used to detect cervical cancer. Currently, no early warning system exists for ovarian cancer, which in 2021, is estimated to kill […]

Bilingual people can effortlessly switch between languages during everyday interactions. But beyond its usefulness in communication, being bilingual could affect how the brain works and enhance certain abilities. Studies into this could inform techniques for learning languages and other skills. More than half of people in Europe speak more than […]

Astrocytes — star-shaped cells in the brain that are actively involved in brain function — may play an important role in stuttering, a study led by a University of California, Riverside, an expert on stuttering has found. “Our study suggests that treatment with the medication risperidone leads to increased activity […]

Advances in diagnosis and care have yielded significant improvements in childhood cancer survival rates in Europe, but the long-term side-effect burden in young people — driven by the unlicensed use of adult cancer medicines — often means the price of survival is high, scientists say. Prescribing unlicensed drugs or the ‘off-label’ use […]

Many cancer patients might respond better to treatments with the help of a new prognostic indicator based on a distinctive pattern of gene activity within tumor cells, according to a new study of human cancer data and experiments on human cancer cell lines grown in the lab. The new research, […]

Anti-retroviral drugs are a vital tool in the prevention and treatment of HIV. A new study of pregnant women in Tanzania shows that life-long antiviral treatment also seems to prevent viral transmission from mother to baby. The results of the study, which was conducted in part by researchers at Karolinska […]