“I’m a professional pin-in-a-haystack seeker,” geneticist Thijn Brummelkamp responds when asked why he excels at tracking down proteins and genes that other people did not find, despite the fact that some have managed to remain elusive for as long as forty years. His research group at the Netherlands Cancer Institute has once again managed to track down one of these “mystery genes” – the gene that ensures that the final form of the protein actin is created, a main component…

Poorly understood compared to bacteria and viruses, the new work opens the door to using tell-tale fungi as a diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic tool. An international team of scientists, co-led by researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, has created the first pan-cancer mycobiome atlas — a survey of 35 types of cancer and their associated fungi. The findings are published September 29, 2022 in the journal Cell. Cancer cells and microbes have a long and…

Researchers have come up with a way to test the efficacy of hundreds of anticancer drug combinations – simultaneously, rapidly, and accurately. Each year, around 10 million lives around the world are cut short by cancer. While the last century of research has seen the number of approved anticancer drugs grow by leaps and bounds, the sheer diversity of disease forms and patient responses often defeats treatment strategies. The next revolution in anti-cancer therapeutics is likely to arrive in the…

Researchers at TU Wien (Vienna) and FHI Berlin succeeded in monitoring a catalytic reaction with three different microscopies under exactly the same conditions in real time. In this way, information is obtained that none of the methods alone could reveal. One has to look very closely to exactly understand what processes take place on the surfaces of catalysts. Solid catalysts are often finely structured materials made of tiny crystals. There are various microscopies to monitor chemical processes on such surfaces…

New research by EMBL scientists shows at atomic detail how antibiotics affect the process of protein production inside bacteria. Every living cell relies on proteins in order to function and the process of protein synthesis – translation – is critical for survival. Bacteria are no exception, with molecular machines involved in translation being one of the most common targets for antibiotics. Now, for the first time, scientists led by Julia Mahamid’s group at EMBL Heidelberg have visualised at atomic detail…

A capsule that tunnels through mucus in the GI tract could be used to orally administer large protein drugs such as insulin. One reason that it’s so difficult to deliver large protein drugs orally is that these drugs can’t pass through the mucus barrier that lines the digestive tract. This means that insulin and most other “biologic drugs” — drugs consisting of proteins or nucleic acids — have to be injected or administered in a hospital. A new drug capsule…

Researchers and entrepreneurs from Jena are winning hearts – literally. Together with the start-up NovaPump from Jena and the Jena University Hospital, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF has developed innovative heart valves and pumps. On the occasion of World Heart Day on September 29, we look back on the history of a long-standing and cordial cooperation. The human heart performs extraordinary feats day after day. It supplies tissues and organs with the necessary amount of…

A new class of small molecule drugs, now in phase 1 clinical trials, is the first to target circadian clock proteins, which play a key role in the recurrence and spread of the deadly cancer. Glioblastoma, the most common cancerous brain tumor in adults, is an aggressive disease—patients survive an average of just 15 months once they are diagnosed. Despite more than two decades of research on the causes and treatments of glioblastoma, that prognosis has hardly improved. But recent…

Researchers say a newly developed lab technique could spark a “paradigm shift” in biopharmaceuticals testing, promising to speed up drug discovery and development of therapeutic proteins and vaccines. New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers have unveiled a new lab technique they say represents a “paradigm shift” in how pharmaceutical laboratories test and produce new protein-based drugs, such as therapeutic monoclonal antibodies being developed to treat a variety of diseases, from cancers to infectious diseases. Researchers say their electrochemistry-based approach, described…

Flour, coffee or spices: Many people know the principle of a mill from the kitchen. But special mills are also used for research purposes in the laboratories of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung. The scientists are convinced that mechanochemistry can make the chemical industry more sustainable. How is it possible to make the production of chemicals less expensive and, above all, more sustainable? This question is playing an important role in the chemical industry and in pharmaceutical companies. Scientists at the…

International Lancet commission with MHH pneumologist Professor Dr Tobias Welte makes recommendations on prophylaxis, diagnosis and therapy. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the most common chronic respiratory disease worldwide and the third leading cause of death. In Germany, about ten percent of the population is affected. Fatigue, coughing and persistent massive shortness of breath are among the predominant symptoms. When these occur, COPD is usually already clearly progressed. There is no cure. However, the disease is preventable. The main…

Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed microscopic robots, called microrobots, that can swim around in the lungs, deliver medication and be used to clear up life-threatening cases of bacterial pneumonia. In mice, the microrobots safely eliminated pneumonia-causing bacteria in the lungs and resulted in 100% survival. By contrast, untreated mice all died within three days after infection. The results are published Sept. 22 in Nature Materials. The microrobots are made of algae cells whose surfaces are…

The fungus Zymoseptoria tritici causes Septoria tritici blotch, the most destructive fungal disease of wheat grown in temperate climates worldwide. This disease reduces wheat yields by 5-10% per year, causing harvest losses worth between three quarters and one and a half billion Euros in France, Germany and the UK alone, and with another billion euros being spent on chemical control of the fungus. Researchers from the University of Exeter achieved a major breakthrough in the understanding of molecular mechanisms underpinning…

An international team involving chemists, physicists and materials scientists implements protection/deprotection strategies for the on-surface synthesis of technologically prominent graphene nanostructures. In the last decades, a new synthetic approach has been developed, generally termed as “on-surface synthesis” that substantially departs from standard wet-chemistry. Instead of the three-dimensional space of solvents in the latter, the environment of the reactants in this new approach are well-defined two-dimensional solid surfaces that are typically held under vacuum conditions. These differences have allowed the successful…

Model animals, such as mice and fruit flies, have provided scientists with powerful insights into how cellular biology works. However, model animals are really just a guide, and it can be risky to generalize findings across animals from studying a selection of model organisms. Cysteine is an important amino acid used in multiple biological processes, including metabolism and protein synthesis. In animals, cysteine biosynthesis was thought to be created exclusively via the transsulfuration pathway, with the cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) enzyme…

Tiny nets woven from DNA strands can ensnare the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID-19, lighting up the virus for a fast-yet-sensitive diagnostic test – and also impeding the virus from infecting cells, opening a new possible route to antiviral treatment, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators demonstrated the DNA nets’ ability to detect and impede COVID-19 in human cell cultures in a paper published in the Journal of the…