The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded $3.1 million to the University of Arkansas to study a spectrum of pediatric mitochondrial disorders caused by mutations in the mitochondria. These disorders often impact different organs requiring energy and can lead to mitochondria-induced multiple organ disorder syndromes, or MIMODS. Shilpa Iyer, an associate professor of biological sciences, will serve as the principal investigator on the five-year award. Iyer and her team conduct research on mitochondrial diseases and have received grants from Arkansas ...

Craniosynostosis, the premature fusion of the top of the skull in infants, is caused by an abnormal excess of a previously unknown type of bone-forming stem cell, according to a preclinical study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. Craniosynostosis arises from one of several possible gene mutations, and occurs in about one in 2,500 babies. By constricting brain growth, it can lead to abnormal brain development if not corrected surgically. In complex cases, multiple surgeries are needed. In the study, which appears Sept. 20 in Nature, the researchers examined in detail what happens in the skull of mice with one of the most common mutations found in human ...

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023, NEW YORK – In exploring an aspect of how killer T cells generate the raw materials required for their proliferation, a Ludwig Cancer Research study has uncovered an unexpected link between the immune cells’ metabolism, regulation of gene expression, persistence and functional efficacy that could be exploited using existing drugs to improve cancer immunotherapy. Researchers led by Ludwig Lausanne’s Alison Jaccard and Ping-Chih Ho along with their University of Lausanne colleagues Mathias Wenes and Pedro Romero were exploring how proliferating T cells in the low-oxygen environment of tumors make citrate, a molecule essential to manufacturing membranes, which ...

How do our muscles respond at the molecular level to exercise? Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE) have unraveled the cellular basis and signaling pathways responsible for the positive impact of physical activity on our overall health. Regulatory T cells, a type of immune cell, play a critical role in ensuring proper muscle function. These novel insights are paving the path towards precision medicines targeting metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes, as well as muscle-related illnesses. Their discoveries are published in Cell Metabolism. Obesity and type ...

Scientists have revealed the molecular structure of a type of receptor that’s crucial to brain development and function. Known as Type A GABA receptors, these receptors are already targeted by pharmaceutical anesthetics, sedatives and antidepressants because of their important role in brain function. The discovery, published today in the journal Nature, reveals the dominant assemblies and states of the GABA receptor, a finding that could enable the development of new compounds that more specifically target a range of medical disorders. “It is the main player that balances excitation and inhibition in the ...

Imagine if France, Germany, and Spain were completely blanketed in forests — and then all those trees were quickly chopped down. That’s nearly the amount of deforestation that occurred globally between 2001 and 2020, with profound consequences.  Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, producing between 6 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2009 study. Meanwhile, because trees also absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere, they help keep the Earth cooler. ...

You’re looking at a truck. You’re with a young child and he follows your gaze. He’s interested in the object you’re looking at without you pointing at it. This is called joint attention and it is one of the primary ways children learn to connect words with objects and acquire language. Lack of joint attention is a core feature of autism. Until now, it was thought that stimulating joint attention in people with autism would help them express themselves verbally. But a meta-analysis of 71 studies on autism challenges this assumption and suggests that people with autism spectrum disorders may acquire language differently. The study – by Laurent Mottron, ...

Upgrading, or retrofitting, the world's iron and steel processing plants early could reduce carbon emissions by up to 70 gigatonnes by 2050, roughly equivalent to two years' worth of net global carbon emissions, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. Published in the journal Nature, the researchers found that by upgrading the world’s iron and steel production facilities, carbon emissions can be reduced by 58.7 gigatonnes between 2020 and 2050, roughly equivalent to two years’ worth of net global carbon emissions. ...

One proven method for tracking down the genetic causes of diseases is to knock out a single gene in animals and study the consequences this has for the organism. The problem is that for many diseases, the pathology is determined by multiple genes. This makes it extremely difficult for scientists to determine the extent to which any one of the genes is involved in the disease. To do this, they would have to perform many animal experiments – one for each desired gene modification. Researchers led by Randall Platt, Professor of Biological Engineering at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel, have now developed a method that will greatly ...

About The Study: The results of this study showed sociodemographic-based disparities in geographic clustering of COVID-19 therapeutic drugs, highlighting disparities in access to these drugs. With the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, these findings highlight an important gap in treatment access.  Authors: Kosuke Tamura, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.34763) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that greater ultraprocessed food (UPF; i.e., energy-dense, palatable, and ready-to-eat items) intake, particularly artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened beverages, is associated with increased risk of depression. Although the mechanism associating UPF to depression is unknown, recent experimental data suggests that artificial sweeteners elicit purinergic transmission in the brain, which may be involved in the etiopathogenesis of depression.  Authors: Raaj S. Mehta, ...

About The Study: Waist-to-hip ratio had the strongest and most consistent association with mortality irrespective of body mass index in this study consisting of 387,000 UK adult participants from the UK Biobank. Clinical recommendations should consider focusing on adiposity distribution compared with mass.  Authors: Guillaume Pare, M.D., M.Sc., of the Vascular and Stroke Research Institute in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.34836) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

Among available immunotherapies, the use of «CAR-T» cells is proving extremely effective against certain blood cancers, but only in half of patients. A main reason for this is the premature dysfunction of these immune cells, which have been artificially modified in vitro. A team from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Lausanne (UNIL), the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) and the Vaud University Hospital (CHUV), all part of the Swiss Cancer Center Léman (SCCL), has discovered how to prolong the functionality of CAR-T cells. By inhibiting a very specific metabolic mechanism, the team has succeeded ...

A 455-million-year-old fossil fish provides a new perspective on how vertebrates evolved to protect their brains, a study has found. In a paper published in Nature today (Wednesday 20th September), researchers from the University of Birmingham, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, Netherlands; and the Natural History Museum have pieced together the skull of Eriptychius americanus. The research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, suggests that the ancient jawless fish found in ancient deposits in ...

Brigham researchers reported that gentrified neighborhoods had a 62 percent higher firearm injury incidence rate than non-gentrified communities with comparable sociodemographic characteristics Understanding the reason for this increase is vital to reducing future firearm injuries Gentrification can have a ripple effect on communities. While it can improve certain conditions in typically low-income areas, rising housing costs can displace residents, causing social disruption and other downstream effects. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, conducted a study using national data to examine the relationship ...

Psychoses like schizophrenia cost billions of dollars annually and derail the lives of people struggling with the disease. Now Monash University researchers have modelled how the effects of psychosis spread through the brain, allowing them to isolate areas where these changes may originate from and which could be targeted by therapies designed to reduce the disease’s progression. The study, published today in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, details how the scientists were able to map and model the spread of brain changes in people with different stages of psychoses such as schizophrenia,from people newly ...

Santa Barbara, CA and New York, NY -- The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research (GFMR) and the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) are pleased to announce the inaugural recipients of the  2023 Glenn Foundation Discovery Awards: Ya-Chieh Hsu, PhD, Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, and a Principal Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Xuebing Wu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medical Sciences (in Medicine and in Systems Biology), Columbia University. The Glenn Foundation Discovery Award  was created to support research projects with strong potential to develop pioneering discoveries ...

A team of leading clinicians, engineers, and neuroscientists has made a groundbreaking discovery in the field of treatment-resistant depression. By analyzing the brain activity of patients undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), a promising therapy involving implanted electrodes that stimulate the brain, the researchers identified a unique pattern in brain activity that reflects the recovery process in patients with treatment-resistant depression. This pattern, known as a biomarker, serves as a measurable indicator of disease recovery and represents a significant ...

A research team led by scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has achieved a significant breakthrough by inventing a new class of near-infrared-activated photo-oxidants that can effectively kill cancer cells without requiring oxygen. The photo-oxidants induce a unique form of cancer cell death that can overcome cancer cell resistance. The findings offer a new strategy, called ‘photo-oxidation therapy’, and provide a promising direction for the development of anti-cancer drugs. Photodynamic therapy, an innovative ...

WASHINGTON (September 20, 2023)—The Ann Theodore Foundation Breakthrough Sarcoidosis Initiative (ATF-BSI), in partnership with the Milken Institute, launched its latest round of funding today. Up to $3.4 million in total funding will be made available to researchers from around the world whose work aims to increase scientific understanding of sarcoidosis. The program is accepting applications for two-year research projects and intends to award four to six research grants from doctorate-level investigators at qualifying research-based institutions worldwide. Awardees may be eligible for a third year of funding.  Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory ...

NEW YORK, NY (September 20, 2023)—Columbia will award the 2023 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Zhijian ‘James’ Chen and Glen Barber for discovering the cGAS-STING pathway, a key component of one of the body’s first line of defenses, the innate immune system. When pathogens infiltrate our cells, they leave behind traces of their DNA. These molecular fingerprints are detected by our cGAS-STING pathway, which sounds the alarm and mobilizes the immune system to eliminate invading threats. Research on the cGAS-STING pathway has revealed the ...

The past few decades have witnessed the burgeoning development of on-orbit servicing in light of various meaningful space applications such as repair of malfunctioning satellites, debris removal, on-orbit assembly, and so on. As for the orbit-servicing targets, they are usually divided into 2 categories, i.e., cooperative and non-cooperative ones, based on whether the space targets have active cross-link communication and cooperative identifiers with the servicing spacecraft or not. Before executing the orbit-servicing task, close-range rendezvous and proximity is an inevitable process in which ...

An Australian-first biobank will be established to improve and discover new treatments for children with genetic muscle diseases. The National Muscle Disease Bio-databank, co-led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Monash University and Alfred Health, will advance research into understanding why children develop genetic muscle diseases. The project forms part of a $2.5 million Medical Research Future Fund grant awarded to the team for research into congenital muscle diseases. These diseases, spanning dystrophies and myopathies, are characterised by severe muscle weakness, usually from infancy, that can impact swallowing, ...

Liver cancer is one of the most prevalent and deadly types of cancer worldwide. Most patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage, which leaves them with few treatment options. Unfortunately, the first-line drugs used in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer, are not very effective and offer only modest clinical benefits. Over the past few years, scientists have been trying to develop new therapies for HCC by analyzing specific genetic abnormalities and the ways in which they affect the manifestation and progression of the disease. One of the most common mutations in HCC ...

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) approved Tuesday the creation of an undergraduate major for the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science, a landmark development for the four-year-old school, which was the first of its kind in the nation. Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, undergraduates could obtain a minor in data science, while graduate students could pursue master’s or doctoral degrees. Now, the establishment of the B.S. in Data Science will allow UVA’s undergraduates to focus their studies on this emerging and growing interdisciplinary field. “The B.S. in Data Science major is a major milestone ...