Research

News • Triple-negative breast cancer

Target validation for drug development against aggressive breast cancer

At around 30.5 percent, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in countries of the industrialized world. The number of cases has doubled since the 1980s: about 69,000 times a year women are diagnosed with breast cancer. Triple-negative breast cancer is a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. As important receptors are missing here, treatment options and prognosis for such…

Video • Immune system sabotage

SARS-CoV-2 induces shutdown of protein synthesis

Although its name is relatively unspecific and indeed opaque, the Nonstructural Protein 1 (Nsp1) encoded by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which is responsible for the current pandemic, has now been shown to have a devastating effect on host cells. Nsp1 is in fact one of the central weapons used by the virus to ensure its own replication and propagation in human hosts. Nsp1 was identified as a…

News • Cross-presenting dendritic cells

How breast cancer sneaks past local immune defenses

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Mikala Egeblad and her colleagues describe a newly understood way by which breast cancer cells sabotage a key player in the body’s immune system. That key player provides local immune surveillance by activating killer T-cells, but if it cannot mature and do its job, breast cancer cells can escape detection from the immune system,…

News • COVID-19

Scientists uncover SARSCoV-2-specific T cell immunity in recovered patients

The T cells, along with antibodies, are an integral part of the human immune response against viral infections due to their ability to directly target and kill infected cells. A Singapore study has uncovered the presence of virus-specific T cell immunity in people who recovered from COVID-19 and SARS, as well as some healthy study subjects who had never been infected by either virus.

News • Coronavirus research

How type 1 interferon deficiency hints at severe forms of COVID-19

Which patient will develop a severe form of COVID-19? This is an essential question which must be answered in order to improve the individual management and the prognosis of these patients. In a publication in the journal Science, teams from the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), Inserm, Université de Paris, Institut Pasteur and Institut Imagine describe a unique and unexpected…

News • Hidden in our genes

scHOT: Discovering the fate of cell development

As cells develop, changes in how our genes interact determines their fate. Differences in these genetic interactions can make our cells robust to infection from viruses or make it possible for our immune cells to kill cancerous ones. Understanding how these gene associations work across the development of human tissue and organs is important for the creation of medical treatments for complex…

News • Cardiopulmonary resuscitation

Is CPR overrated? Experts argue it might be

Patients and the general public appear to significantly overestimate the success of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and underestimate the negative impact it can have on a person’s health, new research suggests. US researchers have therefore recommended clinicians discuss CPR with patients and their loved ones to clarify the practice’s success rate and the real benefits and risks involved…

News • Surprising find

More than half of heart scans abnormal in hospitalised COVID-19 patients

Half of COVID-19 patients who received a heart scan in hospital showed abnormalities in heart function, according to new research funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). The study, published in the European Heart Journal - Cardiovascular Imaging, found that around one in seven showed severe abnormalities likely to have a major effect on their survival and recovery. It also showed that one…

News • Neurodegeneration research

Developing a rapid drug-testing platform for Alzheimer’s

A gene has been discovered that can naturally suppress the signs of Alzheimer’s Disease in human brain cells, in research led by Queen Mary University of London. The scientists have also developed a new rapid drug-screening system for treatments that could potentially delay or prevent the disease. The main challenge in testing Alzheimer’s drugs in clinical trials is that participants need to…

Article • Human-bacterial symbiosis

The value of the human microbiome

The human species maintains symbiotic relationships with a multitude of microbial organisms that colonise the inside as well as the surface of the body. Scientists, for a long time, underestimated the significance of these organisms for humans.

News • SARS-CoV-2

COVID-19: why do patients immune response differ?

It remains one of the key questions of the current corona pandemic: Why do people infected with SARS-CoV-2 experience varying degrees of COVID-19, the disease which it triggers? Researchers, led by Professor Mascha Binder from University Hospital Halle (Saale), have investigated more than 14 million receptor sequences of B and T cells, i.e. immune cells, obtained from blood samples of COVID-19…

Video • COVID-19 video

Coughing visualization shows benefits of wearing a good mask

Coupling function with fashion, cloth and home-sewn face masks are available in a variety of forms and fabrics. While experts underscore that wearing a mask is effective in helping to prevent the spread of COVID-19, not all masks — or the materials with which they’re made — contain virus particles equally. In a new video, University of Wisconsin–Madison engineer Scott Sanders demonstrates…

News • Blocking coronavirus entry portals

Cell ‘membrane on a chip’ could speed up COVID-19 drug screening

Researchers have developed a human cell ‘membrane on a chip’ that allows continuous monitoring of how drugs and infectious agents interact with our cells, and may soon be used to test potential drug candidates for COVID-19. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, Cornell University and Stanford University, say their device could mimic any cell type - bacterial, human or even the…

News • Coronavirus protection

COVID-19: The best (and worst) materials for masks

It's intuitive and scientifically shown that wearing a face covering can help reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. But not all masks are created equal, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Amanda Wilson, an environmental health sciences doctoral candidate in the Department of Community, Environment and Policy in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of…

News • Coronavirus research

Immunity to COVID-19 is probably higher than tests have shown

New research from Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital shows that many people with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 demonstrate so-called T-cell-mediated immunity to the new coronavirus, even if they have not tested positively for antibodies. According to the researchers, this means that public immunity is probably higher than antibody tests suggest. The article is freely…

News • Airborne droplet travel distance

Why you shouldn't underestimate the reach of COVID-19

A plea issued by 239 scientists from around the world to recognise and mitigate airborne transmission of COVID-19 addressed to international health authorities is published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Led by internationally recognised air quality and health expert Professor Lidia Morawska from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the appeal is to address the overwhelming…

News • Dracula debunked

The medical science behind ancient vampire myths

The vampire myth is likely related to a medical condition with symptoms that may explain many elements of centuries-old folklore. The concept of a vampire predates Bram Stoker’s tales of Count Dracula — probably by several centuries. But did vampires ever really exist? In 1819, 80 years before the publication of Dracula, John Polidori, an Anglo-Italian physician, published a novel called The…

News • Aerosol study

Singing in times of COVID-19: more space to the front than to the side

How high is the risk that aerosol transmission during choral singing could cause infection with the coronavirus? After occurrences of infection among choirs in the USA and Germany, Bavarian Broadcasting carried out a complex series of experiments for its musical ensembles in conjunction with the LMU University Hospital Munich and the Universitätsklinikum Erlangen (FAU).

News • Preeclampsia

Novel biomarker discovery could help mother and baby

The discovery of two novel biomarkers, called FKBPL and CD44, has the potential to change the way preeclampsia is managed according to research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Preeclampsia can cause high blood pressure and organ failure in mothers and lead to preterm births and even stillbirth.

News • Review sheds doubt

Major flaws in evidence base for COVID-19 antibody tests found

Major weaknesses exist in the evidence base for COVID-19 antibody tests, finds a review of the latest research published by The BMJ. The evidence is particularly weak for point-of-care tests (performed directly with a patient, outside of a laboratory) and does not support their continued use, say the researchers. Serological tests to detect antibodies against COVID-19 could improve diagnosis and…

News • NET-like

Clues to COVID-19 complications come from inflammatory response

An overactive defense response may lead to increased blood clotting, disease severity, and death from COVID-19. A phenomenon called NETosi is part of an immune response that becomes increasingly hyperactive in people on ventilators and people who die from the disease.

News • COVID-19

‘Mini-Brains’ suggest SARS-CoV-2 can infect brain cells

Scientists have found that organoids (tiny tissue cultures made from human cells that simulate whole organs) known as “mini-brains” can be infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

News • Anti-inflammation

Can special coatings reduce complications after implant surgery?

New coatings on implants could help make them more compatible. Researchers at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have developed a new method of applying anti-inflammatory substances to implants in order to inhibit undesirable inflammatory reactions in the body. Their study was recently published in the "International Journal of Molecular Sciences".

News • 30 years after reunification, health disparities still exist

Germany: reunited but still divided (in healthcare)

East Germany has many more hospitalisations for heart failure compared to West Germany despite a nationwide healthcare system, according to research presented today on HFA Discoveries, a scientific platform of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Heart failure is the most common reason for hospital admissions and is responsible for a large part of the total health expenditure on…

News • Durable implant

New heart valve could transform open heart surgery

A new polymeric heart valve with a life span potentially longer than current artificial valves that would also prevent the need for the millions of patients with diseased heart valves to require life-long blood thinning tablets has been developed by scientists at the universities of Bristol and Cambridge. The team's latest in-vitro results, published in Biomaterials Science, suggest that the…

1919 show more articles