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Like the mythological phoenix bird, gene therapy has risen from the ashes and is spreading its wings. September 17 marked 20 years since the death of 19-year-old Jesse Gelsinger in a gene therapy trial. That tragedy halted the fledgling field, with the outlook worsening when, soon after, boys with an […]

Scientists have identified a pair of molecules critical for T cells, part of the immune system, to travel to and populate the lungs. A potential application could be strengthening vaccines against respiratory pathogens such as influenza. The findings were published online in Journal of Experimental Medicine. Much research on immunity […]

A new study, published in Aging Cell, has found that human ageing processes may hinder cancer development. Ageing is one of the biggest risk factor for cancer. However, the biological mechanisms behind this link are still unclear. Each cell in the human body is specialised to carry out certain tasks and […]

Imagine cancer treatment without chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. Just a small aspirin-like pill. Sound like magic? That’s because it kind of is, according to Khaled Barakat, a University of Alberta biophysicist searching for innovative immunotherapies that could help knock out multiple types of cancer simply by empowering the immune system. “We […]

Most women now know to how to check for breast cancer.  And a yearly pap smear to check for cervical cancer is de rigueur.  But awareness of endometrial cancer, not so much. That bothers Dr. Kemi Doll, a gynecologic oncologist with the University of Washington School of Medicine. “The truth is, this is […]

There are 20 amino acids in the standard genetic code. A Rice University professor wants to know what one can do with 21. Rice chemist Han Xiao has landed a $1.8 million National Institutes of Health grant to learn how a custom-designed 21st amino acid could be employed to make life-saving substances — and […]

A new discovery about pancreatic cancer sheds light on how the cancer fuels its growth and may help explain how promising cancer drugs work – and for whom they will fail. The finding one day could help doctors determine which treatments will be most effective for patients, so that they […]

Radiation therapy can be a very effective way to treat cancer – tumour are zapped with a very accurate and very sharp beam of radiation. However, despite the machines being incredibly precise, the treatment might be compromised by the patient’s movement. Now scientists from the University of Birmingham demonstrated that […]

World War 2 was a global-scale conflict and, therefore, soldiers had to work in mosquito-ridden areas. Malaria was just as big of a threat back then as it is today and a sick soldier is a soldier in danger. That is why they were administered quinacrine. Now scientists at the […]

You would get cancer all the time, if your body was not ready to react and suppress the starting disease. Immune system recognizes young cancer cells and kills them. Then there are tumour fighting genes, which stop cancer cells from dividing and spreading. Sadly, cancer is a sneaky disease, able […]

For a long time, the contents of cells were thought to be fairly unstructured and chaotic: a mixture of proteins, DNA and a multitude of small metabolic molecules. Although important cellular processes in plants and animals were known to take place in organelles (larger structures enclosed by a membrane, such […]

We definitely need sleep. However, some people sleep more than others.That oftentimes depends on how busy and healthy people are. Now scientists from the University of Helsinki  quarter of a million nights of sleep to see what factors influence it the most. The age or participants in this study ranged […]

A study of 280,000 U.S. veterans including 56,000 African Americans has identified in greater detail than ever before the “genetic architecture” of kidney function and chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and their colleagues. The report, published recently in the journal Nature Communications, is an important […]

While blood samples can reliably identify people with a low risk of developing severe liver disease, better methods are needed in primary care for identifying people in most need of care. These are some of the conclusions of a large registry-based study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in the […]

Some of the most important tools in the toolbox of modern cell biologists are special chunks of DNA that act like spies, reporting on the cell's function. The markers, known as reporter genes, allow researchers to get a sense for what cells are doing by watching genetic programs embedded in […]

The Queen Mary University of London team applied an artificial intelligence (AI) technique to analyse the heart MRI images of 17,000 healthy UK Biobank volunteers. They found that genetic factors accounted for 22-39 per cent of variation in the size and function of the heart’s left ventricle, the organ’s main […]

Teenagers got 43 more minutes of sleep a night after a four-week intervention that reset their body clocks and helped them go to bed earlier, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has shown. The treatment had two components: brief, early morning flashes of bright, broad-spectrum white light to reset […]

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have developed a platform that uses nanoparticles known as metal-organic frameworks to deliver a promising anti-cancer agent to cells. Research led by Dr David Fairen-Jimenez, from the Cambridge Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, indicates metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) could present a viable platform for delivering […]

In human cell cultures, countering a defect that appears to be nearly universal among patients with Parkinson’s disease prevents death in the cells whose loss causes the disease. Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine have pinpointed a molecular defect that seems almost universal among patients with Parkinson’s disease and those […]

Although there is little evidence that opioids effectively reduce pain from rheumatic diseases, a new study finds nearly one in three patients with lupus uses prescription opioids, often lasting longer than a year. Lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease, often leaves those affected with inflammation and pain throughout the body. “Rheumatic diseases, such […]

In the study, researchers from King’s  and UCL analysed the genetic data from over 250,000 participants of the UK Biobank aged 40-69 years to see which genes were associated with people who had reported having or not having hearing problems on a questionnaire. 44 genes were identified to be linked […]

Break any bone in the human body, and the body can repair the tissue and fix the damage. Yet tooth enamel — the strongest tissue in the human body — cannot repair itself. Still, our teeth last a lifetime. “We apply huge pressure on tooth enamel every time we chew, […]

As you might have noticed by talking to your grandma, people start losing their hearing as they age. One third of 65 year olds report have impaired hearing. Worse still, we don’t know why that happens, although 5 genes have been identified. Now scientists from UCL and King’s College London […]

Immune system becomes weaker as you age – everyone knows that.That is why older people are more susceptible to various bacterial and viral infections. But is is the same with animals? Scientists from the University of Edinburgh conducted a long-term study with a Scottish sheep breed and found out that […]

Over 30 million people worldwide are living with Alzheimer’s disease. It is a debilitating condition, which has no known cure. It is a primary cause of dementia and with ageing population it is expected that we are going to have more and more cases of Alzheimer’s in the coming decades. […]

University of Warwick researchers have developed a superior method to describe the very earliest effects that Alzheimer’s Disease proteins have on the properties of brain cells. In the paper ‘Introduction of Tau oligomers into cortical neurons alters action potential dynamics and disrupts synaptic transmission and plasticity’ published in the journal […]

Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), one of the most common blood cancers, has very few treatment options. Now, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have discovered a new and promising drug target for this deadly condition. “At the moment, only a small portion of patients benefit from the standard therapy for […]

Intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) are exposed to diverse types of environmental stresses such as bacteria and toxins, but the mechanisms by which epithelial cells sense stress are not well understood. New research by the universities of Bristol, Heidelberg and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have found that Nox-ROS-ASK1-MKK3-p38 signaling […]

A new therapeutic being tested by University of Alberta researchers is showing early promise as a more effective treatment that could help nearly half of patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The treatment—a cocktail of DNA-like molecules—results in dramatic regrowth of a protein called dystrophin, which acts as a support […]

Everyone is a mutant but some are prone to diverge more than others, report scientists at University of Utah Health. At birth, children typically have 70 new genetic mutations compared to their parents (out of the 6 billion letters that make both parental copies of DNA sequence). A new study published […]