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“4 get cancer from donated organ,” blared the headline above a news story. It described the case of a woman in Europe who died in 2007. Her undetected breast cancer was transmitted via transplant to four individuals who received her lungs, liver and kidneys. Only one recipient is alive today, after […]

New research from the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethicsshows 30 Canadian businesses are marketing unproven stem cell treatments directly to consumers at 43 clinics across the country. Without new regulations and guidance, researchers say the Canadian direct-to-consumer marketplace for these purported treatments could result in patients making health-related decisions informed solely […]

Imagine a situation where one child is teasing another. While the child doing the teasing means it playfully, the other child views it as hostile and responds aggressively. Behavior like this happens all the time with children, but why some react neutrally and others act aggressively is a mystery. In a new […]

In Greek mythology, Zeus punishes the trickster Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and sending an eagle to eat a portion of his liver every day, in perpetuity. It was the right organ to target – the liver has the ability to regenerate itself, though not overnight nor for […]

In the wake of media and public reports about increased mortality linked to a new drug for treating Parkinson’s disease psychosis (PDP) — a symptom of the progressive nervous system disorder in which patients experience hallucinations and delusions — researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine conducted […]

Patients undergoing cancer treatment confront a number of well-documented side effects. Chemotherapy and other cancer therapies can wreak havoc on the taste buds and olfactory senses, depriving recipients of the intricate interplay between taste and smell that is critical to grasping flavors and enjoying foods. Over time, taste and smell […]

Six years ago, Donna Poole was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm during a follow-up exam for a stroke she had suffered three years earlier. Due to unusual symptoms — including pain behind her right eye and ocular migraines — Poole was referred by her family doctor to a specialist who […]

Scientists with the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute say a gene involved in the body’s sleep cycle is a potential target for therapies to help patients with a deadly form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma. This discovery, published in the journal Scientific Reports, points to a subtype of a particular […]

Persistent lung inflammation may be one possible explanation for why having asthma during childhood increases your risk for developing anxiety later in life, according to Penn State researchers. In a study with mice, researchers found that childhood exposure to allergens was linked with persistent lung inflammation. It was also connected […]

A team of Caltech researchers has developed a biological toolkit of proteins that can be assembled together in different ways, like Legos, to program new behaviors in cells. As a proof-of-concept, they designed and constructed a circuit that can be added to human cells growing in a laboratory dish, detect […]

A decade-long effort led by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists has been rewarded with the identification of the human skeletal stem cell. The cell, which can be isolated from human bone or generated from specialized cells in fat, gives rise to progenitor cells that can make new bone, the spongy stroma […]

For the first time, researchers have shown in preclinical models that it’s possible to treat cancer by delivering a gene that naturally suppresses tumors. Although no two tumors are alike, most cancer cells do a combination of two things: overexpress genes that drive tumor growth and lose normal genes that […]

Testicular cancer survivors have a markedly better chance of staving off cardiovascular disease caused by the cancer treatment and report a higher quality of life if they undertake some kind of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) as part of their recovery, according to new University of Alberta research. Testicular cancer is […]

One of the drawbacks of chemotherapy is that cancer patients can build up resistance to treatment over time, increasing their chances of possible relapse. Finding a way to suppress that resistance would be a major step toward boosting the therapeutic effects of some cancer-fighting drugs. UConn medicinal chemist M. Kyle […]

Researchers have developed a new way to target the toxic particles that destroy healthy brain cells in Alzheimer’s disease. Academics at the University of Cambridge and at Lund University in Sweden have devised the first strategy to ‘go after’ the cause of the devastating disease, which could eventually lead to […]

Researchers have developed a genome-editing tool for the potential treatment of mitochondrial diseases: serious and often fatal conditions which affect 1 in 5,000 people. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, applied an experimental gene therapy treatment in mice and were able to successfully target and eliminate the damaged […]

Sometimes, the body's otherwise intelligent immune system mistakenly attacks the body's healthy tissue by responding to infections that do not exist. This causes chronic inflammation and leads to diseases including e.g. Lupus (SLE), when the immune system overreacts, and this is what happens when the body activates the STING protein. […]

Scientists have been working on making eggs and sperm from stem cells for a long time, and it seems like they have finally reached a tipping point. Last Thursday in the leading journal Science, a group of Japanese researchers announced they’ve created immature human eggs from stem cells, which have […]

Twenty years after the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s James Thomson derived the first human embryonic stem cell lines (ESC), his revolutionary discovery is just beginning to emerge on the clinical landscape. To date, a handful of clinical trials of ESC-derived therapies have been completed, with approximately 16 more now underway worldwide. […]

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Timothy Nelson, associate professor of psychology, is studying how certain cognitive processes that develop throughout childhood affect health behaviors during adolescence and beyond. His research could lead to novel interventions to prevent and treat obesity. Nelson received a five-year, $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes […]

About a quarter of women treated for breast cancer experience moderate to severe pain for many years after their treatment ends. Sometimes, there’s no obvious reason why. “Are there people, before cancer therapy, who are more likely to develop chronic pain later?” asks Ellen M. Lavoie Smith, Ph.D., a researcher at […]

She once saw a father look into the eyes of his adult daughter and say, “I love you so much,” then die seconds later. A hospitalized man with an aggressive cancer worked diligently to settle his affairs, then after he finished, paused for a few seconds and whispered in her […]

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Biomolecular Design and Discovery (IBD) and Center for Nucleic Acids Science and Technology (CNAST), Chemistry Professor Danith Ly and postdoctoral associate Shivaji Thadke, have developed a two-faced synthetic nucleic acid that shows promise as a treatment for Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases […]

Body organs such as the intestine and ovaries undergo structural changes in response to dietary nutrients that can have lasting impacts on metabolism, as well as cancer susceptibility, according to Carnegie’s Rebecca Obniski, Matthew Sieber, and Allan Spradling. Their work, published by Developmental Cell, used fruit flies, which are currently […]

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have discovered how to quickly and accurately predict which lung cancer patients will benefit from chemotherapy by analyzing how immune cells the body sends out to fight the disease are arranged. The scientists—aided by smart-imaging computers and machine-learning methods—were able to swiftly analyze hundreds […]

They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, but new research shows you can teach an old rat new sounds, even if the lesson doesn’t stick very long. Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) of McGill University examined the effects of aging on neuroplasticity in […]

A new report, published today in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke, reveals that a diet high in fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts and beans, and lower in meat and dairy, reduces stroke risk among white adults who are at high risk of cardiovascular disease. The study is one of the largest […]

Cancer immunotherapy — efforts to boost a patient’s own immune system, allowing it to better fight cancer cells on its own — has shown great promise for some previously intractable cancers. Yet immunotherapy doesn’t work for everyone, for reasons that aren’t always clear. Most research and new therapies in this […]

A protein linked to both Alzheimer’s disease and a form of dementia caused by damage to blood vessels in the brain increases the risk of cognitive impairment by reducing the number and responsiveness of blood vessels in the organ, a study by Weill Cornell Medicine researchers suggests. The study, published […]

Few treatments exist for neurodegenerative diseases that progressively rob a person’s ability to move and think, yet the results of a new study are opening additional approaches for exploration. S­­cientists at University of Utah Health report for the first time that a protein, called Staufen1, accumulates in cells of patients […]