General

A new Liverpool led study, published in Diabetologia, presents the results of the largest clinical trial for diabetic retinopathy. The study highlights a new approach that could transform diabetic eye screening around the world that also has a significant cost saving for the NHS. The number of people living with diabetes […]

It's the holy grail of synthetic biologists: creating a living cell from scratch. So far they’ve managed to make simple prototypes—essentially tiny fat balloons with a soup of genetic material inside, capable of reading genetic code, producing proteins, and transporting molecules around. Yet these artificial blobs lack an essential feature […]

Night-shift workers face an increased risk of obesity and diabetes, but the underlying reason for that has been a mystery. Now, University of Missouri School of Medicine researchers have found a potential cause for metabolic changes during night-shift work that creates confusion between cells in the body and the central clock in […]

The body's immune system defeats diseases by sensing foreign invaders, such as bacteria or viruses, then mounting a response against them. But how immune cell receptors work together to sense multiple molecules and make these decisions remained a mystery. Now, researchers at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University […]

Researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center have identified a promising targeted therapy against the basal subtype of bladder cancer by screening 3-D cell cultures. MEK inhibitors showed the strongest response against the basal molecular subtype, the research group reported in Oncotarget. “It’s becoming more and more clear that […]

Gut-trained immune cells at CNS borders guard against meningitis and other infections. The membranes surrounding our brains are in a never-ending battle against deadly infections, as germs constantly try to elude watchful immune cells and sneak past a special protective barrier called the meninges. In a study involving mice and […]

Unrelated mutations, when present in the blood, can lead to false positive results in men with advanced prostate cancer who are undergoing liquid biopsies.  Such tests, which look for variants in the cell-free DNA that tumors shed into the blood plasma, help determine suitable treatment options. “You can actually measure […]

Problems with the sense of smell appear to be an early indicator of cognitive decline in people with type 2 diabetes. However, it’s unknown whether factors such as diet and obesity play a role in who develops these symptoms. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Chemical Neuroscience found that mice fed a moderate-fat, […]

Climate change will bring an acute toll worldwide, with rising temperatures, wildfires and poor air quality, accompanied by higher rates of cancer, especially lung, skin and gastrointestinal cancers, according to a new report from UC San Francisco. In an analysis of nearly five dozen published scientific papers, the researchers provided […]

When babies are born with congenital hydrocephalus (CH), a condition traditionally thought to be a result of a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the brain, neurosurgeons normally treat the condition by surgically implanting a shunt that drains fluid from the brain into the abdomen. “This neurosurgical treatment can be […]

The tsetse fly is an exception to the almost universal law of nature that babies are born smaller than their mothers. In an article published in BioEssays, Drs Sinead English and Antoine Barreaux from the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, together with colleagues at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the Universities of Greenwich, Stellenbosch and California […]

Since an average human spends one-third of their life asleep, it is apparent that the quality of sleep has an important impact on the overall life quality. Sleep has restorative power and improves human brain functioning, in particular memory and attention. Sleepy people have problems with concentration and commit more […]

Accuracy is everything when you’re studying and treating the brain. This is why scientists need very precise methods and tools to deal with various conditions such as brain cancer. Now scientists at the University of Waterloo took a significant step towards development of laser imaging technology, which could precisely guide […]

The attentional control that organisms need to succeed in their goals comes from two abilities: the focus to ignore distractions and the discipline to curb impulses. A new study by MIT neuroscientists shows that these abilities are independent, but that the activity of norepinephrine-producing neurons in a single brain region, […]

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet and the University of California have uncovered the role of a polysynaptic pathway that links cholinergic neurons together. The study was recently published in Nature Communications. Cholinergic neurons are instrumental in regulating activity in the Striatum. Their acetylcholine interacts with dopamine to create just the right […]

Vanderbilt pharmacologists have reported the first evidence that aberrant spontaneous release of neurotransmitters in the brain can cause a range of severe intellectual and neurodevelopmental disorders in infants and children. Ege Kavalali, who holds the William Stokes Chair in Experimental Therapeutics and is acting chair of pharmacology, and postdoctoral scholar Baris […]

Beth Reisboard, 76, was relieved in 2018 when she received the results from her annual mammogram: “Negative.” But her OB-GYN suggested she have a second screening. Reisboard has dense breasts, which means there are certain cancers that mammography may not be sensitive enough to detect. Surprised, Reisboard scheduled an appointment […]

A new software package aims to aid drug design and biomedical research by making it easy to construct 3D images of proteins and other molecules using one of the world’s most powerful microscopes. Amit Singer, professor of mathematics and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, and his team are developing a package […]

Drug delivery is a recurring conundrum in cancer treatment. Scientists have developed many anti-cancer therapeutics. But those drugs often harm healthy tissues, and drugs can even break down in the bloodstream before reaching the tumor site. Anti-cancer drugs can last longer if dissolved in certain chemical solutions, but many come […]

Researchers working under ETH-Professor Emeritus Ruedi Aebersold have demonstrated how mutations in a gene influence the structure, function and interaction network of a protein complex. Their work plays a key foundation for personalised medicine. In the wake of proclaiming the “Age of the Genome” in the 1990s, scientists mapped the […]

While proteins on the surface of cells are the targets for most drugs, refined methods are needed to analyse how these membrane proteins are organised. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a new DNA-based analytical method that could contribute to the development of future drugs for breast and other cancers. […]

The app, dubbed NeuroSwipe, is a citizen science collaboration between students at the University’s National Software Academy and academics at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC). The app trains non-scientists to become experts at recognising brain scans that would be suitable for a scientific study, potentially saving researchers valuable […]

If you are overweight, then you will suffer a faster pace of aging, more age-related disease, greater lifetime medical costs, and an earlier death. The more excess weight and the longer that weight is held, the worse the outcome. In at least one sense, being overweight literally accelerates aging, increasing […]

Infectious disease is a far greater risk for the old than for the young. But then so is cancer. Both are conditions driven by the age-related failure of immune system competence, a growing inability to respond to vaccines and to destroy pathogens and errant cells, a state known as immunosenescence. […]

Gold nanotubes – tiny hollow cylinders one thousandth the width of a human hair – could be used to treat mesothelioma, a type of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, according to a team of researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Leeds. In a study published in journal Small, […]

Reprogramming cells in a living animal, transforming them into induced pluripotent stem cells, has the sound of a bad idea – leading to cancer, damage to structures and tissues, inappropriate signaling, and more. One of the interesting discoveries of recent years is that in vivo reprogramming can be quite beneficial, […]

Low levels of vitamin D during the first year of life are inversely associated with metabolic syndrome in adolescence—which is closely linked to obesity—according to a new University of Michigan study. A metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions such as high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist […]

Researchers at the University of Liverpool are leading a new study to test the effectiveness of a treatment for ‘retraining’ the eyes for people who experience a loss of vision after stroke. Funded by eye research charity Fight for Sight and the Stroke Association, the study hopes to establish a […]

Immunotherapies, such as checkpoint inhibitor drugs, have made worlds of difference for the treatment of cancer. Most clinicians and scientists understand these drugs to act on what’s known as the adaptive immune system, the T cells and B cells that respond to specific threats to the body. New research from […]

Before her first birthday, her parents knew something was seriously wrong. She was weak and inactive. The child, whom we are calling Lisa to protect her privacy, hardly interacted with them, and she was late on every developmental milestone – sitting, walking and speaking her first words. At the age […]