Robot

  Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear have shown that mifepristone, a drug currently FDA-approved for chemical abortion, prevents the growth of vestibular schwannoma (also known as acoustic neuroma) cells. This sometimes-lethal intracranial tumor typically causes hearing loss and tinnitus. The findings, published online in Scientific Reports, suggest that […]

People with the rare disease called primary progressive aphasia may recruit intact brain areas for help with language, according to a new UA-led study. People with a rare dementia that initially attacks the language center of the brain recruit other areas of the brain to decipher sentences, according to new […]

Researchers are now able to use induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to form a model of human adult-like cardiac muscle by introducing electric and mechanical stimulation at an early stage. Since this muscle is similar to the adult heart, it could serve as a better model for testing the effects […]

Researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health have uncovered molecular characteristics that link the genomic profiles of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five areas of the body and that set these SCCs apart from other cancers. Using a robust dataset of SCCs from the head and neck, lung, esophagus, […]

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have completed a detailed genomic analysis, known as the PanCancer Atlas, on a data set of molecular and clinical information from over 10,000 tumors representing 33 types of cancer. “This project is the culmination of more than a decade of groundbreaking work,” […]

Transmissible cancers are incredibly rare in nature, yet have arisen in Tasmanian devils on at least two separate occasions. New research from the University of Cambridge identifies key anti-cancer drugs which could be trialled as a treatment for these diseases, which are threatening Tasmanian devils with extinction. The research also […]

Cancer lurking in tissue could be more easily found when looking through a butterfly’s eye. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Washington University in St. Louis have developed a surgical camera inspired by the eye of the morpho butterfly. The camera, connected to the goggles a surgeon […]

Conflict, a death in the family, financial hardship and serious medical crises are all associated with accelerated physical aging. In a new study, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that such negative fateful life events — or FLEs — appear to also specifically accelerate […]

Currently, the main treatments for Alzheimer’s disease are drugs that increase levels of acetylcholine in the brain. The University of Bristol paper, published in Cell Reports, describes the role two main types of nicotinic receptor (α7 and α4β2 receptors) play in long-term memory retrieval and encoding – and the impact of […]

University of Queensland researchers have developed a vaccine delivery technology that enables treatment to be tailored precisely for different cancers. UQ’s Professor Ranjeny Thomas said the technology had the potential to improve the precision of cancer immunotherapy, leading to better cancer outcomes and reduce harmful side-effects. “Flexible cancer vaccines are […]

From the Universities of Oxford, Bristol and Johannesburg, the researchers argue that for some people a reduced level of kidney function is not necessarily a disease, but a normal and asymptomatic sign of ageing, given the clear link between decreasing kidney health and increasing age. Since 2002, the different stages of CKD […]

Case Western Reserve University’s Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics (CCIPD) is leading a partnership working toward the first clinical trials to determine the aggressiveness of—and appropriate treatment for—certain head and neck cancers. Head and neck cancers (squamous cell carcinomas or HNSCC) represent more than a half-million cases and 300,000 deaths […]