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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 […]