Researchers have uncovered a previously overlooked immune cell that can recognize and kill small cell lung cancer, the most aggressive form of the disease globally. Published in Cancer Cell, the WEHI study found patients with higher levels of these cells lived longer, uncovering a hidden immune defense that could be exploited to attack these hard-to-treat tumors.
By filming skin stem cells in living mice over five months, researchers at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, have discovered that in females these cells renew the skin in a more coordinated way than in males. This difference, controlled by sex hormones, goes hand in hand with faster wound healing in female mice. This research could eventually pave the way for personalized treatments taking into account patients’ sex.
Opioid painkillers are some of the strongest analgesic medicines, but they are also the riskiest owing to a range of side effects, including addiction. An experimental opioid painkiller designed to be reversibly switched on and off with different light frequencies, keeping its action local and out of the brain, may eliminate the dangerous side effects of current opioids, according to a study led by Weill Cornell Medicine and University of Pennsylvania investigators. The findings herald a broad new approach for targeting medicines more precisely and effectively.
A new approach can program these cells inside the body and shows promise against diseases caused by dysfunctional T cells, including lymphoma and autoimmune hepatitis.
Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, in collaboration with the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine and St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research, have developed a new analytical method that reveals which RNA molecules are involved in cancer-promoting cellular structures.
In ion beam therapy, atomic nuclei are accelerated to high energies in a particle accelerator, for example, a synchrotron, and precisely directed at a tumor. There, they damage cancer cells and destroy tumor tissue. This technique is now used at several specialized medical facilities around the world, including MedAustron in Wiener Neustadt, Austria.
New research from scientists at the University of Toronto, the Sloan Kettering Institute, King’s College London (KCL) and the Francis Crick Institute is helping piece together the missing genetics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Cells from rapidly growing, highly metastatic tumors often contain numerous rings of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA). This circular DNA frequently carries oncogenes—genes that promote cancer. Researchers have long sought vulnerabilities in these DNA rings in an effort to stop their harmful activity.
A research team led by Indiana University School of Medicine scientists has discovered a new method for reducing the formation of amyloid plaques, which disrupt brain function in all aging adults but are particularly prevalent in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
A common gut bacterium produces a molecule that slows cholesterol production in the liver. When researchers gave the molecule to mice prone to artery disease, the animals developed roughly half as much fatty plaque as untreated controls.