The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 to Emmanuelle Charpentier from the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany, and Jennifer A. Doudna from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, “for the development of a method for genome editing”, more commonly known as the 'gene scissors' CRISPR/Cas9.
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice made seminal discoveries that led to the identification of a novel virus, Hepatitis C virus.
As people get older they often jump from disease to disease and carry the burden of more chronic diseases at once. But is there a system in the way diseases follow each other? Danish researchers have for the past six years developed a comprehensive tool, the Danish Disease Trajectory Browser, that utilizes 25 years of public health data from Danish patients to explore what they call the main…
Our immune system can efficiently fend off viral diseases. Two types of immune cells play an important role in this process: The T-cells, which firstly can directly destroy virus-infected cells and secondly enable the formation of efficient, virus-neutralizing antibodies by B-cells. These two cell types also play a crucial role in the immune defense against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Whereas antibody…
Breast cancers that are detected in the interval between national screening programme mammograms have a worse prognosis than those detected at the time of a screening, even if they have the same biology, according to research presented at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference. Analysis of results from over eight years’ follow-up of the international MINDACT randomised phase III clinical…
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a flood of potentially substandard research amid the rush to publish, with a string of papers retracted or under a cloud and a surge in submissions to pre-print servers where fewer quality checks are made, a leading ethicist has warned in the Journal of Medical Ethics. This has implications for patients, clinicians, and potentially government policy, says…
A new mobile app has made it possible to analyse the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on a smartphone in less than half an hour.
Ventilation systems in many modern office buildings, which are designed to keep temperatures comfortable and increase energy efficiency, may increase the risk of exposure to the coronavirus, particularly during the coming winter, according to new research.
How do cells in our bodies ask for directions? Without any maps to guide them, they still know where to go to heal wounds and renew our bodies. Edouard Hannezo and his group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) together with Tsuyoshi Hirashima and his group at Kyoto University just published a new study in Nature Physics that shows how mechanical and chemical waves…
Human cells need to work like well-oiled machines to keep our bodies running as they should. Waste products such as misfolded proteins, damaged cellular components, and carbohydrates get in the way and must be quickly disposed of. Dealing with this cellular “trash” are spherical, membrane-bound organelles called lysosomes filled with a mixture of potent enzymes. In a process called autophagy,…
An analysis by ECRI, the U.S.’s largest patient safety organization, shows that up to 70 percent of KN95 masks it tested do not meet its standards for effectiveness, raising risks of contracting Covid-19 for care providers and patients at hospitals and other healthcare organizations that imported masks from China.
Adequate levels of vitamin D reduces complications and deaths among COVID-19 patients, reveals new research performed at the Boston University School of Medicine. Hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were vitamin D sufficient, with a blood level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D of at least 30 ng/mL (a measure of vitamin D status), had a significant decreased risk for adverse clinical outcomes including…
Scientists from Texas A&M University, Hewlett Packard Labs and Stanford University have developed a new nanodevice that acts almost identically to a brain cell.
Researchers have found a surprising effect of the stem cell-regulating growth factor R-spondin in intestinal cancer.
Researchers at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have identified highly effective antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and are now pursuing the development of a passive vaccination. In this process, they have also discovered that some SARS-CoV-2 antibodies bind to tissue samples from various organs, which could potentially…
Scientists have unearthed a possible link between the severity of COVID-19 and air quality. The preliminary study – looking at whether areas with higher levels of air pollutants in England are associated with a larger number of cases/deaths from COVID-19 – was conducted by a team from the University of Cambridge. Aware of the effects that air pollutants have on human health – and that…
Around 550 million people have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to two University of Manchester medical students. The figure more than doubles the previous estimate of 251 million people with the illness linked to smoking by the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Burden of Disease Study. The University of Manchester students, Emily Hammond and Charles McDonald, made the…
People with ‘silent’ COVID-19 infection have as much coronavirus in their noses and throats as those with symptoms, reveals research published online in the journal Thorax. Given how many of these people there are---a fifth of those infected, the study findings show--they may have a key role in driving the spread of COVID-19, warn the researchers, who go on to suggest that this warrants…
A deadly combination of two mosquito-borne viruses may be a trigger for stroke, new research published in the The Lancet Neurology has found. University of Liverpool researchers and Brazilian collaborators have been investigating the link between neurological disease and infection with the viruses Zika and chikungunya. These viruses, which mostly circulate in the tropics, cause large outbreaks of…
Although the name may suggest otherwise, Parkinson's disease is not one but two diseases, starting either in the brain or in the intestines. Which explains why patients with Parkinson’s describe widely differing symptoms, and points towards personalised medicine as the way forward for people with Parkinson's disease. This is the conclusion of a study which has just been published in the leading…
Scientists have generated accurate replications of human retinas in culture that can be used to pinpoint the specific types of cells affected by genetic eye diseases. The culmination of a six-year effort, this achievement will accelerate progress in developing new therapies and was reported in Cell by a team led by Botond Roska at the Institute for Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB)…
Researchers have shown why hospital germs adhere strongly to surfaces from which water simply rolls off, but bind so poorly to surfaces that are easily wetted by water.
Researchers predict that COVID-19 will likely become seasonal, waning in the summer and prevalent in the winter. But, only once herd immunity is achieved through natural infection or vaccinations. Until then, COVID-19 will be here year-round.
Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Bern have discovered a mechanism by which the coronavirus manipulates human cells to ensure its own replication. This knowledge will help to develop drugs and vaccines against the coronavirus.
A study of almost 400,000 British participants has identified a new link between raised levels of the growth factor IGF-1 and increased thyroid cancer risk and has confirmed associations with breast, prostate and colorectal cancer. This could lead to new preventative strategies, including diet and lifestyle interventions.