General

A small device that contains human cells in a 3D matrix represents a giant leap in the ability of scientists to test how those cells respond to stresses, drugs and genetic changes. About the size of a thumb drive, the devices are known as tissue chips or organs on chips. […]

A new immunotherapy screening prototype developed by University of California, Irvine researchers can quickly create individualized cancer treatments that will allow physicians to effectively target tumors without the side effects of standard cancer drugs. UCI’s Weian Zhao and Nobel laureate David Baltimore with Caltech led the research team that developed […]

Stanford scientists and their collaborators have identified two key genes responsible for the rapid growth of deer antlers. They hope their insights will open the door to new approaches for treating bone diseases and fractures. Each spring, male deer sprout a new pair of antlers, which are essentially temporary external […]

Researchers can design the perfect molecule to edit a gene, treat cancer or guide the development of a stem cell, but none of that will matter in the end if they can’t get their molecule into the human cells they want to manipulate. The solution to that problem, described in […]

Skeletal stem cells are valuable because it’s thought they can heal many types of bone injury, but they’re difficult to find because researchers don’t know exactly what they look like or where they live. Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a type of skeletal stem cell in the […]

Lung cancer is among the most frequently occurring forms of cancer, second only to prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women. It’s also the most lethal cancer type, claiming the lives of more adults than colon, breast and prostate cancer combined. About 8 in 10 lung cancer cases […]

Ovarian cancer claims the highest mortality rate of all gynecologic cancers – as high as 70 percent – in part because the disease is rarely detected earlier than stage 3 or 4. When the disease is discovered early in its development, however, survival rates are high. An effective screening technique […]

New Vanderbilt research finds how long humans and other warm-blooded animals live—and when they reach sexual maturity—may have more to do with their brain than their body. More specifically, it is not animals with larger bodies or slower metabolic rates that live longer; it is animals with more neurons in […]

Physicians can assess the risks of major coronary events in someone with diabetes reasonably well. Among those with diabetes, there are well-established indicators of risk such as weight, fasting levels of blood glucose and family history of the disease. Doctors also can consider more general measures of health such as […]

A new study puts a fresh spin on what it means to “go with your gut.” The findings, published in Nature, suggest that gut bacteria may control movement in fruit flies and identify the neurons involved in this response. The study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders […]

Infant formula is designed to mimic human breast milk not only in nutrients but also by nurturing a similar set of microbes in the digestive tract. Such microbes are indispensable in keeping us healthy: They crowd out disease-causing bacteria, influence our metabolism, and synthesize many vitamins and amino acids, the […]

Delivering an effective therapeutic payload to specific target cells with few adverse effects is considered by many to be the holy grail of medical research. A new Tel Aviv University study explores a biological approach to directing nanocarriers loaded with protein “game changers” to specific cells. The groundbreaking method may prove useful […]

A new Tel Aviv University study finds that neonatal birthweights increase in direct proportion with the number of births of the mother in at least 30 percent of all cases. The study focuses on the risk of having large for gestational age (LGA) infants, babies who clock in at higher than the […]

Anne Teitelman believes the key to helping women stay healthy is to meet them where they are, to bring the personal, health-related care into their daily lives, not sequester it to a once- or twice-a-year visit to a nurse practitioner, doctor, or another care provider. So, the Penn Nursing researcher built two apps. The […]

Screens are now a fixture of modern childhood. As young people spend an increasing amount of time on electronic devices, the effects of these digital activities has become a prevalent concern among parents, caregivers, and policy-makers. Research indicating that between 50% to 90% of school-age children might not be getting […]

The cerebral cortex is responsible for a large number of complex brain functions, ranging from the perception of sensory stimuli through alertness, memory and language to consciousness. Neurobiologists at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen have decoded a new regulatory principle that controls the development of the […]

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) have committed $2,265,000 in prize money for “KidneyX: Redesign Dialysis,” a prize competition that challenges the public to develop better treatment options for patients with kidney failure. This prize competition is the first in […]

Type 2 diabetes is driven by many metabolic pathways—some driven by amino acids, the molecular building blocks for proteins. Harvard Medical School scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center found that one amino acid, alanine, may produce a short-term lowering of glucose levels by altering energy metabolism in the cell. “Our study […]

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Kaiser Permanente have discovered that mothers who breastfed a child or children for six months or more are at lower risk for developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) years later during mid-life. With no other current prevention options aside […]

Some drugs for heart disease might also work against brain cancer, according to an analysis by researchers from the Jackson Laboratory (JAX), Connecticut Children’s Medical Center (CCMC), and UConn Health. The researchers used a new approach to identify five heart medicines that might also be effective at fighting the most […]

The odds were stacked against Michael Champion. The 65-year-old was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a disease that requires aggressive chemotherapy designed with much younger patients in mind. Thanks to a new cancer rehabilitation program at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, Champion was able to recover from the debilitating […]

The days leading up to a woman’s first mammogram can be intimidating. The screening, after all, has one purpose: to detect early signs of breast cancer. But it’s a crucial test, says Michigan Medicine radiologist Kate Klein, M.D., FACR. And it often finds no abnormalities: About 2 to 6 screenings in 1,000 test […]

With its unmistakable thick, scaly, white-and-red patches, psoriasis is a relatively common chronic skin condition that can lead to a greatly reduced quality of life. And about 30 percent of people with psoriasis go on to develop psoriatic arthritis, a painful joint inflammation that can lead to long-lasting joint damage. […]

Whether or how much the gut microbiome contributes to diseases ranging from inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer to Parkinson’s disease and diabetes was the central question scientists explored at Harvard Medical School recently as they sought to unravel some of the mysteries behind the human microbiome—a relatively unexplored frontier […]

Immune checkpoint therapy has transformed the way certain cancers are treated, but could a similar approach hold promise for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s? In a review article published in the issue of Nature Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School investigators based at Massachusetts General Hospital have proposed that targeting immune […]

The mechanisms that regulate our bodies and keep us healthy are complicated, involving critical molecular components that are still poorly understood. The prestigious journal Nature Communications has published recent research on this topic by a team led by Dr. El Bachir Affar, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine […]

She immune system is often framed as the part of our bodies responsible for fighting infection. But a key part of immunity involves restraining that battle-ready immune cell army so its artillery is only trained upon true threats. This element of immune regulation—and how it can go awry in cancer […]

You’re experiencing jaundice, abdominal pain or constipation. And by then, you may be too late. Pancreatic cancer symptoms often arrive after the cancer has already spread, making the disease one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in the U.S. However, a team of researchers believes that targeting how blood […]

One afternoon in July, deep within the labyrinthine halls of the Medical Sciences Building at UC San Francisco’s hilltop campus on Parnassus Avenue, the laboratory of Alex Marson, MD, PhD, is buzzing. Doors clap. Gloves snap. Keyboards clack. Cells incubate in nutrient baths the color of Kool-Aid while machines resembling […]

As a wrestler at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, Adam Kuchnia lost a lot of pounds so he could compete in a particular weight class. And that didn’t always lead to the best nutritional choices. “I started to notice how good and bad nutrition felt when I was competing and the outcomes […]