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The risk of early-onset neonatal bacterial sepsis increases with maternal obesity, according to a new study of the University of Michigan and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Lead researcher Eduardo Villamor, a professor of epidemiology at U-M’s School of Public Health, said the study builds on previous research into exposure […]

A new method of screening thousands of drugs in freshly collected human tumor cells could help identify which of the drugs are most likely to be effective against those cancers, report Harvard Medical School researchers based at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology at HMS in a study published […]

DNA from uterine cells of women with endometriosis has different chemical modifications, compared to the DNA of women who do not have the condition, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The changes involve DNA methylation — the binding of compounds known as methyl groups to DNA […]

Combining more healthy lifestyle behaviors was associated with a substantially lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease in a study that included data from nearly 3,000 research participants. Those who adhered to four or all of the five specified healthy behaviors were found to have a 60% lower risk of Alzheimer’s. The […]

An experimental drug that has been shown to improve the function of diseased and aged mitochondria binds to 12 key proteins involved in energy production, researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine have found. The drug, elamipretide, also called SS-31, has shown promise for treating rare inherited diseases […]

The benefits of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test to screen men for prostate cancer may be greater than the harm, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Genitourinary cancer specialists from Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, University of Washington School of Medicine, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, […]

Vanderbilt University’s Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery has entered into an exclusive worldwide licensing and collaboration agreement with San Diego-based ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Inc., which will seek to develop and commercialize treatments for central nervous system disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. This collaboration will focus on positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) of […]

A neuroscientist’s neon pink arm cast led him and fellow researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to discover previously undetected neuronal pulses in the human brain that activate after an immobilizing illness or injury. The pulses appeared on MRI scans used to measure the brain activity […]

A new study by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified what they believe to be a key reason behind patients’ treatment-resistance in the rare inflammatory disorder HLH. The finding could offer additional insights into other immune conditions, including a type of childhood […]

Research from the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University has found that the practical advantages of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), or short bursts of all-out exercise, could be especially beneficial for people who have experienced spinal cord injuries (SCI). While many studies have proven the benefits of HIIT for the […]

A Rice University lab’s project to make better fluorescent tags has turned into a method to kill tumors. Switching one atom in the tag does the trick. Rice chemist Han Xiao and his colleagues found that replacing a single oxygen atom with a sulfur atom in a common fluorophore turns it into a photosensitizing molecule. When […]

Like finding that needle in the haystack every time, your T cells manage what seems like an improbable task: quickly finding a few invaders among the many imposters in your body to trigger its immune response. T cells have to react fast and do so nearly perfectly to protect people from diseases. […]

The brain and its surrounding blood vessels exist in a close relationship. The vessels supply the energy-hungry neuronal cells with nutrients. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have now discovered how cells of the blood vessels sense the metabolic condition of the brain and […]

A world-first study of the epigenetics of posttraumatic growth and resilience points the way for further research into how people can overcome the negative impacts of trauma after events such as bushfires, serious motor vehicle accidents, domestic violence, childhood and work-related trauma. QUT trauma researcher Professor Jane Shakespeare-Finch from the […]

MIT researchers pinpoint mechanism and demonstrate that drugs could help. By developing a lab-engineered model of the human blood-brain barrier (BBB), neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have discovered how the most common Alzheimer’s disease risk gene causes amyloid protein plaques to disrupt the brain’s vasculature and […]

Scientists have discovered an important cell signaling pathway in the kidney which if stopped, could hold the key to treating chronic kidney disease as well as other deadly conditions, including heart attack and stroke. The pathway was already known to exist in the brain, where it helps to maintain the […]

Our brains use various reference frames—also known as coordinate systems—to represent the motion of objects in a scene. Some coordinate systems are more useful than others for representing information. To represent a location on Earth, for example, we might use an Earth-centered coordinate system such as latitude and longitude. In […]

We owe a great deal to the hair cells in our inner ear—without them we couldn’t detect sounds or take five steps without tripping. Moreover, these cells happen to be a useful model for biologists who want to understand how tissues self-organize into complex shapes during embryonic development. The cells’ […]

Researchers found that efforts should be focused on optimizing embryo culture to ensure healthy outcomes for mothers and offspring. An experimental study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania links a specific procedure – embryo culture – that is part of the assisted reproduction […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the first video game therapeutic as a treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, based on research by UC San Francisco’s Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD. In 2013, Gazzaley published a paper in Nature reporting that six weeks of training with a video game […]

In 2005, the University of California, Berkeley, researchers made the surprising discovery that making conjoined twins out of young and old mice — such that they share blood and organs — can rejuvenate tissues and reverse the signs of aging in the old mice. The finding sparked a flurry of research […]

Senescent cells accumulate throughout the body with age. They are constantly created and destroyed throughout life, but the balance between creation and destruction is upset with age, leading to an accumulated burden of cellular senescence. These cells secrete a potent mix of signals that produce chronic inflammation, disrupt tissue structure and cell function, and encourage […]

The formation of stress granules in cells is an interesting topic. As the name might suggest, this behavior emerges in cells undergoing stress, such as lack of nutrients, heat, cold, and so forth. Stress granules are transient structures that form within cells, made up of a wide variety of biomolecules that are packed […]

Many aspects of aging correlate with one another, even those with quite different underlying mechanisms and proximate causes. The various forms of root cause damage that result in the aging process, as well as their downstream consequences, all interact with one another. So whether or not any specific correlation teaches us anything […]

Using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and deleting a key gene, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have created natural killer cells — a type of immune cell — with measurably stronger activity against a form of leukemia, both in vivo and in vitro. The findings were published in […]

Scientists have developed a new gene therapy approach that offers tremendous promise for one day treating an eye disease that leads to blindness and affects thousands of people across the globe. Researchers from Trinity College Dublin and University College London (UCL) teamed up to pool their expertise in genetics, virology […]

Severed nerve tracts are very difficult to treat. If at all, the damage so far can only be repaired through complex operations. At the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, we have developed materials that stimulate damaged nerves into growth. Results from initial tests on mice show that nerve tracts […]

Scientists from the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the Hubrecht Institute in The Netherlands, have developed a new model to study an early stage of human development using human embryonic stem cells. The model resembles some key elements of an embryo at around 18-21 days old and allows the […]

Essential processes in mammalian cells are controlled by proteins called transcription factors. For example, the transcription factor HIF-1 is triggered by a low-oxygen situation to cause the cell to adapt to decreased oxygen. Transcription factors operate in healthy cells, but cancer cells can co-opt transcription factors such as HIF-1 into […]

The first few days of embryonic development are a critical point for determining the failure or success of a pregnancy. Because relatively few cells make up the embryo during this period, the health of each cell is vital to the health of the overall embryo. But often, these young cells […]