90-day dapivirine ring for women's HIV prevention passes its first test in Phase I study

Researchers from the group of Hans Clevers identified and characterized rare cell types in the upper gastrointestinal tract. Using single cell RNA sequencing, they studied the cellular composition of the esophagus, stomach and upper part of the small intestine. They provide detailed gene expression analyses for all epithelial cells in these organs. Furthermore, they identified a rare cell type that is most likely responsible for the secretion of high volumes of water in humans. This cell type provides a link to gastrointestinal defects in patients with cystic fibrosis. The paper was published in Cell Reports on the 9th ...

What The Study Did: Researchers compared traffic volume and motor vehicle crash injuries before, during and after COVID-19-related state-of-emergency and stay-at-home orders in Ohio from January to July last year with the same period in 2019. Authors: Motao Zhu, Ph.D., of the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2020.25770) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article ...

Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University have discovered a key feature that allows cancer cells to break from typical cell behavior and migrate away from the stiffer tissue in a tumor, shedding light on the process of metastasis and offering possible new targets for cancer therapies. It has been well documented that cells typically migrate away from softer tissue to stiffer regions within the extracellular matrix-- a process called durotaxis. Metastatic cancer cells are the rare exception to this rule, moving away from the stiffer tumor tissue to softer tissue, and spreading ...

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2021 -- Spinal cord injuries can be life-changing and alter many important neurological functions. Unfortunately, clinicians have relatively few tools to help patients regain lost functions. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP Publishing, researchers from UCLA have developed materials that can interface with an injured spinal cord and provide a scaffolding to facilitate healing. To do this, scaffolding materials need to mimic the natural spinal cord tissue, so they can be readily populated by native cells in the spinal cord, essentially filling in gaps left by injury. "In this study, we demonstrate that incorporating a regular network of pores throughout these materials, where pores are sized similarly to normal cells, increases infiltration of cells from spinal cord tissue ...

Astronauts face many challenges to their health, due to the exceptional conditions of spaceflight. Among these are a variety of infectious microbes that can attack their suppressed immune systems. Now, in the first study of its kind, Cheryl Nickerson, lead author Jennifer Barrila and their colleagues describe the infection of human cells by the intestinal pathogen Salmonella Typhimurium during spaceflight. They show how the microgravity environment of spaceflight changes the molecular profile of human intestinal cells and how these expression patterns are further changed in response to infection. In another first, the researchers were also able to detect ...

PORTOLA VALLEY, CA, March 9, 2021 -- Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the U.S., today announced the publication of new data finding that five herbal medicines had potent activity compared to commonly-used antibiotics in test tubes against Babesia duncani, a malaria-like parasite found on the West Coast of the U.S. that causes the disease babesiosis. Published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, the laboratory study was funded in part by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation. Collaborating researchers were from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, California Center for Functional Medicine, and FOCUS Health Group, Naturopathic. "This research is particularly important ...

A study published in the journal eLife made all the possible mutations in the amyloid beta peptide and tested how they influence its aggregation into plaques, a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The comprehensive mutation map, which is the first of its kind, has the potential to help clinical geneticists predict whether the mutations found in amyloid beta can make an individual more prone to developing Alzheimer's disease later in life. The complete atlas of mutations will also help researchers better understand the biological mechanisms that control the onset of the disease. "The genetic sequencing of individuals is increasingly common. As a result, we are ...

While it's an unfair reality that women who develop gestational diabetes are ten times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes later in life, only a third of these women realise that they're at high risk, according to new research by the University of South Australia. Conducted in partnership with the University College Dublin, the research examined the views of 429 Australian women with a history of gestational diabetes to establish their perceived risks of developing type 2 diabetes, potential barriers to losing weight, and useful strategies for supporting a healthy weight. Lead researcher, UniSA's Kristy ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Producing high-value pharmaceutical proteins in plants--sometimes called "molecular pharming"--offers advantages over some other manufacturing methods, notably the low cost and ease of scaling up production to meet demand. But expressing large quantities of "foreign" proteins in plants can also sometimes lead to problems, such as dehydration and premature cell death in the leaves. Now a team led by Professor Kenji Miura of the University of Tsukuba has discovered that spraying leaves with high concentrations of the antioxidant ascorbic acid (vitamin C) can increase protein production three-fold or even more. They recently published their findings in Plant Physiology. The team worked with a close relative of tobacco, ...

The fossil in question is that of an oviraptorosaur, a group of bird-like theropod dinosaurs that thrived during the Cretaceous Period, the third and final time period of the Mesozoic Era (commonly known as the 'Age of Dinosaurs') that extended from 145 to 66 million years ago. The new specimen was recovered from uppermost Cretaceous-aged rocks, some 70 million years old, in Ganzhou City in southern China's Jiangxi Province. "Dinosaurs preserved on their nests are rare, and so are fossil embryos. This is the first time a non-avian dinosaur has been found, sitting on a nest of eggs that preserve embryos, in a single ...