Findings could lead to new therapies, prevention strategies. A type of chronic leukemia can simmer for many years. Some patients may need treatment to manage this type of blood cancer — called myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) — while others may go through long periods of watchful waiting. But for a small percentage of patients, the slower paced disease can transform into an aggressive cancer, called secondary acute myeloid leukemia, that has few effective treatment options. Little has been known about how…

Electrochemical CO2 reduction is an effective way to realize the artificial carbon cycle and has attracted more and more attention in recent years. Cu is the only metallic catalyst that can realize CO2 deep reduction to various carbonaceous products, but it suffers from low selectivity. Surface modification is an effective strategy to alter electrochemical CO2 reduction behaviors. Electrochemical CO2 reduction involves multi-step proton-coupled electron transfer processes, so regulating proton transfer has a substantial effect on CO2 reduction pathways. Inspired by…

Smart gadgets in the home might soon be able to tell you what’s wrong with you. But the technology is good news for a lot of other things too. Some people do such smart and difficult things that it’s hard to see what in the world they might have to do with you and me, so we just shrug them off. But that’s often the wrong response. What if you had a simple gadget at home that could tell you…

An enzyme that defends human cells against viruses can help drive cancer evolution towards greater malignancy by causing myriad mutations in cancer cells, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding suggests that the enzyme may be a potential target for future cancer treatments. In the new study, published Dec. 8 in Cancer Research, scientists used a preclinical model of bladder cancer to investigate the role of the enzyme called APOBEC3G in promoting the disease…

… if we can first learn its rules. UC San Diego study reveals critical insights into the complex biology of tissue-specific T cells, paving the way for a new branch of precision therapeutics. Recent pressure to maximize vaccine efficacy has stirred up many new discoveries within immunology, revealing numerous paradigms with untapped therapeutic potential. One growing branch of research is focused on tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM cells), a type of immune cell that provides long-lasting protection against pathogens attacking…

Researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have proposed a new technology, called optical tweezer-assisted pool-screening and single-cell isolation (OPSI) system, which achieves 99.7% purity of sorting target cells, with all done in real-time. The study was published in Lab on a Chip on Nov. 29. Current cell-sorting methods cannot effectively sort cells of various sizes while maintaining their viability for future testing. Compared with the currently used methods,…

A Japanese research group has become the first to reveal that the checkerboard-like arrangement of cells in the inner ear’s organ of Corti is vital for hearing. The discovery gives a new insight into how hearing works from the perspective of cell self-organization and will also enable various hearing loss disorders to be better understood. The research group included Assistant Professor TOGASHI Hideru of Kobe University’s Graduate School of Medicine and Dr. KATSUNUMA Sayaka of Hyogo Prefectural Kobe Children’s Hospital….

Implantable platform provides prolonged treatment of Type 1 diabetes. A quarter-sized device created at Houston Methodist could drastically alter the course of treatment for Type 1 diabetes, a chronic condition that impacts millions of Americans and does not have a cure. In a study published in the Dec. 26 issue of Nature Communications, a research team led by Houston Methodist delivered islet cells and immunotherapy directly into a 3D printed device akin to a bioengineered pancreas, called the NICHE. The…

Grasses have “respiratory pores” (called stomata) that open and close to regulate the uptake of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis on the one hand and water loss through transpiration on the other. Unlike many other plants, stomata in grasses form lateral “helper cells”. Thanks to these cells, the stomata of grasses can open and close more quickly, which optimizes plant-atmosphere gas exchange and thus saves water. For the current study, Prof. Dr. Michael Raissig, Dr. Heike Lindner and co-author Roxane Spiegelhalder…

UC Riverside mouse study could lead to novel therapies for people living with PTSD. A remote fear memory is a memory of traumatic events that occurred in the distant past — a few months to decades ago.  A University of California, Riverside, mouse study published in Nature Neuroscience has now spelled out the fundamental mechanisms by which the brain consolidates remote fear memories. The study demonstrates that remote fear memories formed in the distant past are permanently stored in connections between memory…

Columbia biomedical engineers develop therapeutic strategy to combine bacterial therapies with pharmaceutical drugs. Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the United States and around the world. Many of the currently available therapies have been ineffective, leaving patients with very few options. A promising new strategy to treat cancer has been bacterial therapy, but while this treatment modality has quickly progressed from laboratory experiments to clinical trials in the last five years, the most effective treatment for certain types of…

It has long been known that beyond a certain dose, X-rays damage living tissue, so there are clear medical indications for X-rays to keep radiation exposure to a minimum. In basic research on the properties and characteristics of mineralised tissue samples such as bone, researchers rely on increasingly powerful X-ray sources. Bones from fish and mammals “Until now, the motto has actually been: more flux and higher energy is better, because you can achieve greater depth of field and higher…

Technique provides model for studying genesis of age-related macular degeneration and other eye diseases. Scientists used patient stem cells and 3D bioprinting to produce eye tissue that will advance understanding of the mechanisms of blinding diseases. The research team from the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, printed a combination of cells that form the outer blood-retina barrier—eye tissue that supports the retina’s light-sensing photoreceptors. The technique provides a theoretically unlimited supply of patient-derived tissue…

Inflammation and overactivation of the immune system in the brain can cause loss of synapses and the death of neurons, leading to neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases. In Schizophrenia, increased levels of the immune protein C4 have been measured in patients’ brains and increasing C4 levels due to variations in copy number are associated with an increased risk for developing Schizophrenia. Therapies lowering C4 levels in the brain and reducing inflammation may benefit Schizophrenia patients but are currently not available. Brain…

Pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 and pneumococcus can cause severe pneumonia. If the airways then fill with fluid, the patient risks developing acute respiratory distress syndrome. Researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now discovered the molecular mechanisms that trigger fluid accumulation in the lungs. This also led them to discover a potential new therapy: A cystic fibrosis drug proved effective in their laboratory experiments, raising hope that this could be used to treat pneumonia regardless of the pathogen that caused it. The study has…

A newly developed rapid test needs only a few seconds to reliably detect pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2. It is based on specially designed magnetic nanoparticles. The current rapid tests for diagnosing infectious diseases are speedy, but not really fast. For example, antigen self-tests, PCR tests or ELISA tests for coronavirus take 15 minutes to several hours before a reliable result is available. In contrast, a new and very sensitive rapid test developed by a team from the universities of Würzburg…