Although tuberculosis (TB) is commonly thought of as being a disease that mainly affects nineteenth century poets and Victor Hugo characters, it is still the second-most common cause of mortality from an infectious disease in the world, killing nearly three people every minute.
How do neurons become neurons? They all begin as stem cells, undifferentiated and with the potential to become any cell in the body. Until now, however, exactly how that happens has been somewhat of a scientific mystery. New research conducted by UC Santa Barbara neuroscientists has deciphered some of the earliest changes that occur before stems cells transform into neurons and other cell types.
The odor of bobcat urine, if you ever get a chance to take a whiff, is unforgettable — like rotten meat combined with sweat, with something indescribably feral underlying it. To humans, it’s just nose-wrinklingly disgusting. But to mice, it smells like one thing: fear.
A research team headed by scientists at the Institute of Neuroimmunology and the Institute for Multiple Sclerosis Research (IMSF), University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), has gained new insights into the immune function of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). They used real-time microscopy to film the lively trafficking of immune cells between the CSF and the nervous tissue. Here the meninges play the…
A team of investigators from Houston Methodist Research Institute may have transformed the treatment of metastatic triple negative breast cancer by creating the first drug to successfully eliminate lung metastases in mice.
The ongoing debate about breast cancer diagnostics has left many women confused — particularly over what age they should get mammograms and who needs treatment. An issue with current methods is that they often identify lumps but cannot conclusively pinpoint which ones are cancerous. To help resolve this uncertainty, researchers have developed a pill that could improve imaging techniques so that…
It turns out that the type, how frequent, and where new mutations occur in the human genome depends on which DNA building blocks are nearby, found researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
When there is an accident or a house fire, we call the police or the fire services. A control room quickly coordinates emergency operations. The cells in our bodies also have helpers in a crisis; the heat-shock proteins. These are triggered in response to cellular stress, such as high temperature, UV radiation or cancer. Heat-shock proteins help other proteins maintain their functional structure…
Humabs BioMed SA and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) affiliated to the Università della Svizzera italiana announced the identification, isolation and characterization of two Ebola virus neutralizing monoclonal antibodies from the blood of a survivor of an Ebola infection.
Researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and EPFL, Lausanne have succeeded in restoring motor function following spinal cord injury. The researchers were able to show that coordinated muscle movement is the result of alternating activation patterns emanating from the spinal cord. Newly-developed implants, which use electrical stimulation to mimic these signals, were used to…
Dissemination of clinical trial results by leading academic medical centres in the United States remains poor, despite ethical obligations - and sometimes statutory requirements - to publish findings and report results in a timely manner, concludes a study in The BMJ.
Touch a hot stove, and your fingers will recoil in pain because your skin carries tiny temperature sensors that detect heat and send a message to your brain saying, "Ouch! That's hot! Let go!" The pain is real and it serves a purpose, otherwise we'd suffer greater injury. But for many people with chronic pain, that signal keeps getting sent for months or years, even when there is no…
Bioengineers and cognitive scientists have developed the first portable, 64-channel wearable brain activity monitoring system that’s comparable to state-of-the-art equipment found in research laboratories.
Since 2012, at least 1,500 individuals have developed Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), resulting in more than 500 fatalities. Only now are results being reported of the first autopsy of a MERS patient, which was performed in 2014. Not only do these findings, published in The American Journal of Pathology, provide unprecedented, clinically-relevant insights about how MERS progresses, they…
A new study has found a steep decline in the number of scholarly papers about basic science published in leading medical journals in the last 20 years.
In an effort to develop a method for cartilage tissue engineering, researchers at Umeå University in Sweden successfully used cartilage cells from cow knee joints. By creating a successful method with conditions conducive to growing healthy cartilage tissue, the findings could help lead to a new treatment cure for osteoarthritis using stem cell-based tissue engineering. This is according to a…
It’s the dream of many infertile couples: to have a baby. Tens of thousands of children are born by in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a technique commonly used when nature doesn’t take its course. However, embryos obtained when a sperm fertilizes an egg in a test tube often have defects. In a study, researchers at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) discovered an…
A group of researchers from Russia, Australia and the Netherlands have developed a technology that can reduce Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanning times by more than 50 percent, meaning hospitals can drastically increase the number of scans without changing equipment. This extraordinary leap in efficiency is achieved by placing a layer of metamaterials onto the bed of the scanner, which…
École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) scientists have developed a new method that turns cells into stem cells by "squeezing" them. The method paves the way for large-scale production of stem cells for medical purposes.
Merck, a leading science and technology company, today announced it has received two prestigious R&D Magazine 100 awards – one for its lab water purification systems, and the other for a technology that allows researchers to investigate scientific questions they previously couldn’t address.
You’ve probably never heard of “sphingolipids” before. But these curiously named organic compounds play a vital role in one of humanity’s most well-known diseases: cancer.
Mom’s eyes and dad’s tumor? Cancer is due to genetic defects, some of which can be hereditary. The gene variant rs351855, for example, occurs in one in two cancer patients. A team headed by Axel Ullrich from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried identified the gene variant a decade ago. Now, they succeeded for the first time in showing that the variation exposes an otherwise…
Cardiologists from 15 centers in 6 countries have evaluated a new approach for the treatment of Left-Sided Heart Failure under the leadership of Stefan D. Anker, MD, Ph.D., Professor of Innovative Clinical Trials at the Cardiology and Pulmonology Clinic in the Heart Center of the Medical University Göttingen (UMG). The investigators in the clinical evaluation entitled AUGMENT-HF demonstrated…
At the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting 2015, world-leading nanoelectronics research center imec, KU Leuven, and Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders (NERF, set up by VIB/KU Leuven and imec) presented a set of silicon neural probes that combine 12 monolithically integrated optrodes using a CMOS compatible process.
Turns out dads are also eating for two. A study published in Cell Metabolism reveals that a man's weight affects the heritable information contained in sperm. The sperm cells of lean and obese men possess different epigenetic marks, notable at gene regions associated with the control of appetite. The comparisons, which included 13 lean men and 10 obese men, offer one biological explanation for…
