HOUSTON ? The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recently published studies in basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts. Current advances include a new combination therapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a greater understanding of persistent conditions after AML remission, the discovery of a universal biomarker for exosomes, the identification of a tumor suppressor gene in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and characterization of a new target to treat Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) infections. Utilizing combination therapy for AML While a majority of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) respond favorably ...

Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a computational technique that greatly increases the resolution of atomic force microscopy, a specialized type of microscope that "feels" the atoms at a surface. The method reveals atomic-level details on proteins and other biological structures under normal physiological conditions, opening a new window on cell biology, virology and other microscopic processes. In a study, published June 16 in Nature, the investigators describe the new technique, which is based on a strategy used to improve resolution in light microscopy. To study proteins and other biomolecules at high resolution, investigators have long relied on two techniques: X-ray crystallography ...

A new rubber band stretches, but then snaps back into its original shape and size. Stretched again, it does the same. But what if the rubber band was made of a material that remembered how it had been stretched? Just as our bones strengthen in response to impact, medical implants or prosthetics composed of such a material could adjust to environmental pressures such as those encountered in strenuous exercise. A research team at the University of Chicago is now exploring the properties of a material found in cells which allows cells to remember and respond to environmental pressure. In a paper published on May 14, 2021 in Soft Matter, they teased ...

PHILADELPHIA - Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that strikes nearly 5,000 people in the U.S. every year. About 10% of ALS cases are inherited or familial, often caused by an error in the C9orf72 gene. Compared to sporadic or non-familial ALS, C90rf72 patients are considered to have a more aggressive disease course. Evidence points to the immune system in disease progression in C90rf72 patients, but we know little of what players are involved. New research from the Jefferson Weinberg ALS Center identified an increased ...

While crop yield has achieved a substantial boost from nanotechnology in recent years, alarms over the health risks posed by nanoparticles within fresh produce and grains have also increased. In particular, nanoparticles entering the soil through irrigation, fertilizers and other sources have raised concerns about whether plants absorb these minute particles enough to cause toxicity. In a new study published online in the journal END ...

Although each organism has a unique genome, a single gene sequence, each individual has many epigenomes. An epigenome consists of chemical compounds and proteins that can bind to DNA and regulate gene action, either by activating or deactivating them or producing organ- or tissue-specific proteins. As it is a highly dynamic material, it can provide a large amount of information to shed light on the evolution of the various tissues and organs that make up the body. Now, a team from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Pompeu Fabra University, has carried out the largest study to date on the regulatory ...

By repurposing common ingredients in hair conditioner, scientists have designed an inexpensive, transparent coating that can turn surfaces like windows and ceilings into glue pads to trap airborne aerosol droplets. This new strategy is described June 16 in the journal Chem. "Facing a pandemic, we need to proactively leverage all of the different layers of defense mechanisms, including the physical barriers," says corresponding author Jiaxing Huang, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University. "After all, these viruses must travel through physical space before reaching and eventually infecting people." The ...

Small modeling errors may accumulate faster than previously expected when physicists combine multiple gravitational wave events (such as colliding black holes) to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, suggest researchers at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The findings, published June 16 in the journal iScience, suggest that catalogs with as few as 10 to 30 events with a signal-to-background noise ratio of 20 (which is typical for events used in this type of test) could provide misleading deviations from general relativity, erroneously pointing to new physics where none exists. Because this is close to the size of current catalogs used to assess Einstein's ...

Human babies do even more than we thought while sleeping. A new study from University of Iowa researchers provides further insights into the coordination that takes place between infants' brains and bodies as they sleep. The Iowa researchers have for years studied infants' twitching movements during REM sleep and how those twitches contribute to babies' ability to coordinate their bodily movements. In this study, the scientists report that beginning around three months of age, infants see a pronounced increase in twitching during a second major stage of sleep, called quiet sleep. "This was completely surprising and, for all we know, ...

When Betelgeuse, a bright orange star in the constellation of Orion, lost more than two-thirds of its brightness in late 2019 and early 2020, astronomers were puzzled. What could cause such an abrupt dimming? Now, in a new paper published Wednesday in Nature, an international team of astronomers reveal two never-before-seen images of the mysterious darkening --and an explanation. The dimming was caused by a dusty veil shading the star, which resulted from a drop in temperature on Betelgeuse's stellar surface. Led by Miguel Montargès at the Observatoire de Paris, the new images were taken in January and March of 2020 using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Combined with images previously taken in ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL 11 A.M. ET WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 2021 MADISON, Wis. -- Quantum computers could outperform classical computers at many tasks, but only if the errors that are an inevitable part of computational tasks are isolated rather than widespread events. Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found evidence that errors are correlated across an entire superconducting quantum computing chip -- highlighting a problem that must be acknowledged and addressed in the quest for fault-tolerant quantum computers. The researchers report their findings in a study published June 16 in the journal Nature, Importantly, their work also points to mitigation strategies. "I think people have been approaching the problem of error correction in an overly optimistic ...

It is possible to re-create a bird's song by reading only its brain activity, shows a first proof-of-concept study from the University of California San Diego. The researchers were able to reproduce the songbird's complex vocalizations down to the pitch, volume and timbre of the original. Published June 16 in Current Biology, the study lays the foundation for building vocal prostheses for individuals who have lost the ability to speak. "The current state of the art in communication prosthetics is implantable devices that allow you to generate textual output, writing up to 20 words per minute," said senior author Timothy Gentner, a professor of psychology and neurobiology ...

When Betelgeuse, a bright orange star in the constellation of Orion, became visibly darker in late 2019 and early 2020, the astronomy community was puzzled. A team of astronomers have now published new images of the star's surface, taken using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), that clearly show how its brightness changed. The new research reveals that the star was partially concealed by a cloud of dust, a discovery that solves the mystery of the "Great Dimming" of Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse's dip in brightness -- a change noticeable even to the ...

What The Study Did: Researchers examined to what extent cannabis use is associated with thickness in brain areas measured by magnetic resonance imaging in a study of adolescents. Authors: Matthew D. Albaugh, Ph.D., of the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine in Burlington, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.1258) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The ...

What The Study Did: Survival among people with early-onset (diagnosed before age 50) colorectal cancer compared with later-onset colorectal cancer (diagnosed at ages 51 through 55) was compared using data from the National Cancer Database. Authors: Charles S. Fuchs, M.D., M.P.H., of the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut, 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.2021.12539) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and ...

What The Study Did: This study demonstrated an association between receiving the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccine and a reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infection in health care workers beginning eight days after the first dose. Authors: Michael E. Charness, M.D., of the VA Boston Healthcare System in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, 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.2021.16416) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest ...

A ball of 4,000-year-old hair frozen in time tangled around a whalebone comb led to the first ever reconstruction of an ancient human genome just over a decade ago. The hair, which was preserved in arctic permafrost in Greenland, was collected in the 1980s and stored at a museum in Denmark. It wasn't until 2010 that evolutionary biologist Professor Eske Willerslev was able to use pioneering shotgun DNA sequencing to reconstruct the genetic history of the hair. He found it came from a man from the earliest known people to settle in Greenland ...

Stimulation of the nervous system with neurotechnology has opened up new avenues for treating human disorders, such as prosthetic arms and legs that restore the sense of touch in amputees, prosthetic fingertips that provide detailed sensory feedback with varying touch resolution, and intraneural stimulation to help the blind by giving sensations of sight. Scientists in a European collaboration have shown that optic nerve stimulation is a promising neurotechnology to help the blind, with the constraint that current technology has the capacity of providing only simple visual signals. Nevertheless, the scientists' vision (no pun intended) is to design these simple visual signals to be meaningful in assisting the blind with daily living. Optic nerve stimulation ...

Although plexiglass barriers are seemingly everywhere these days -- between grocery store lanes, around restaurant tables and towering above office cubicles -- they are an imperfect solution to blocking virus transmission. Instead of capturing virus-laden respiratory droplets and aerosols, plexiglass dividers merely deflect droplets, causing them to bounce away but remain in the air. To enhance the function of these protective barriers, Northwestern University researchers have developed a new transparent material that can capture droplets and aerosols, effectively ...

New York, NY (June 16, 2021) -- Immune cells that normally repair tissues in the body can be fooled by tumors when cancer starts forming in the lungs and instead help the tumor become invasive, according to a surprising discovery reported by Mount Sinai scientists in Nature in June. The researchers found that early-stage lung cancer tumors coopt the immune cells, known as tissue-resident macrophages, to help invade lung tissue. They also mapped out the process, or program, of how the macrophages allows a tumor to hurt the tissues the macrophage normally repairs. This process allows the tumor to hide from the immune system and proliferate into later, deadly stages of cancer. Macrophages play a key ...

June 16, 2021, CLEVELAND: New findings from Cleveland Clinic researchers show for the first time that the gut microbiome impacts stroke severity and functional impairment following stroke. The results, published in Cell Host & Microbe, lay the groundwork for potential new interventions to help treat or prevent stroke. The research was led by Weifei Zhu, Ph.D., and Stanley Hazen, M.D., Ph.D., of Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute. The study builds on more than a decade of research spearheaded by Dr. Hazen and his team related to the gut microbiome's role in cardiovascular health and disease, including the adverse effects of TMAO (trimethylamine N-oxide) - a byproduct produced when gut bacteria digest certain nutrients abundant in red meat and other animal ...

Our eyes move three times per second. Every time we move our eyes, the world in front of us flies across the retina at the back of our eyes, dramatically shifting the image the eyes send to the brain; yet, as far as we can tell, nothing appears to move. A new study provides new insight into this process known as "visual stabilization". The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our results show that a framing strategy is at work behind the scenes all the time, which helps stabilize our visual experience," says senior author Patrick Cavanagh, a research professor in psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth ...

A joint paper went out in Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering. Petroleum, being a liquid compound, has very good migratory properties, and recovery methods take account of that - using various methods, oilers displace petroleum through cavities and vugs and extract it. However, sometimes oil is "locked" in low-permeability reservoirs, and water displacement used in such cases poses a high risk of reservoir flooding and workplace emergencies. Many teams work on blocking high-permeability areas in order to make extraction a more controlled and safe process. In particular, there have yet been no efficient agents for reservoirs with high temperatures (up to 140 C) and mineralization (up to 250 grams ...

Professor Hermann Ehrlich places a piece of sponge in an alkaline, copper-containing ammonia solution that simulates a copper bath from the manufacture of circuit boards for electronic components. About 12 hours later the sponge has turned blue - when dry it is stronger than before, but still very light. "At a pH value of 9 the fibers of the spongin open and the organic compounds of the protein change," explains Prof. Hermann Ehrlich. The copper contained in the ammonia solution reacts immediately with the organic components of the spongin, especially with the amino acid residues, and forms the mineral atacamite. "Like a string, nanometer-sized crystals grow along with the spongin fiber," explains the scientist. ...

Olives, well-known for their characteristic bitter taste, are in high demand owing to the popularity of the oil that's derived from them. The health benefits of olive oil are well known, ranging from antiviral, anti-cancer, to even anti-hypertensive effects. These benefits are attributed to "oleuropein," the most abundant olive secoiridoid found in olives. An efficient method to enhance the quality of plant products is by using molecular methods to manipulate their genes and enhancing their yield. With olives, however, this is still a challenge, because of a lack of sufficient genome data. So far, the genomes of two European olive varieties have been sequenced. But to fully decipher ...