Immunotherapy using checkpoint inhibitors is effective in around a quarter of patients with liver cancer. However, to date, physicians have been unable to predict which patients would benefit from this type of treatment and which would not. Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center have now discovered that liver cancer caused by chronic inflammatory fatty liver disease does not respond to this treatment. On the contrary: in an experimental model, this type of immunotherapy actually promoted the development of liver cancer, as now reported in the journal Nature. Liver cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer in the world, ...

The heart of any computer, its central processing unit, is built using semiconductor technology, which is capable of putting billions of transistors onto a single chip. Now, researchers from the group of Menno Veldhorst at QuTech, a collaboration between TU Delft and TNO, have shown that this technology can be used to build a two-dimensional array of qubits to function as a quantum processor. Their work, a crucial milestone for scalable quantum technology, was published today in Nature. Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are impossible to address with classical computers. Whereas current ...

HOUSTON ? Overcoming previous technical challenges with single-cell DNA (scDNA) sequencing, a group led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has developed a novel method for scDNA sequencing at single-molecule resolution. This technique revealed for the first time that triple-negative breast cancers undergo continued genetic copy number changes after an initial burst of chromosome instability. The findings, published today in Nature, offer an accurate and efficient new approach for sequencing hundreds of individual cancer cells while also providing novel insights into cancer evolution. These insights may explain why treatments are ...

Joint press release by the German Cancer Research Center, University Medicine Mannheim, Heidelberg University Hospital, and the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg Tumor vaccines can help the body fight cancer. Mutations in the tumor genome often lead to protein changes that are typical of cancer. A vaccine can alert the patients' immune system to these mutated proteins. For the first time, physicians and cancer researchers from Heidelberg and Mannheim have now carried out a clinical trial to test a mutation-specific vaccine against malignant brain tumors. The vaccine proved to be safe and triggered the desired immune response in the tumor tissue, as the team now reports in the journal Nature. Diffuse ...

Researchers have developed experimental flu shots that protect animals from a wide variety of seasonal and pandemic influenza strains. The vaccine product is currently being advanced toward clinical testing. If proven safe and effective, these next-generation influenza vaccines may replace current seasonal options by providing protection against many more strains that current vaccines do not adequately cover. A study detailing how the new flu vaccines were designed and how they protect mice, ferrets, and nonhuman primates appears in the March 24 edition of the journal Nature. This work was led by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Vaccine Research Center part of the National Institute of Allergy ...

Many children of low-income families across the country do not have access to quality health care. Lack of health care can have a domino effect, affecting educational outcomes in the classroom. School-based telehealth could offer a sustainable and effective solution, according to a new report in the Journal for Nurse Practitioners by Kathryn King Cristaldi, M.D., the medical director of the school-based telehealth program, and Kelli Garber, the lead advanced practice provider and clinical integration specialist for the program. The program through the MUSC Health Center for Telehealth has effectively served over 70 schools across the state of South Carolina. Evaluating a child at school via telehealth ...

Probiotics -- those bacteria that are good for your digestive tract -- are short-lived, rarely taking residence or colonizing the gut. But a new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, finds that in breast milk-fed babies given the probiotic B. infantis, the probiotic will persist in the baby's gut for up to one year and play a valuable role in a healthy digestive system. The study was published in the journal Pediatric Research. "The same group had shown in a previous study that giving breast milk-fed babies B. infantis had beneficial effects that lasted up to 30 days after supplementation, but this is the first study to show persistent colonization up to 1 year of age," said lead author Jennifer Smilowitz with the UC Davis Department ...

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), often called 'fatty liver hepatitis', can lead to serious liver damage and liver cancer. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has discovered that this condition is caused by cells that attack healthy tissue - a phenomenon known as auto-aggression. Their results may help in the development of new therapies to avoid the consequences of NASH. Fatty liver disease (NASH) is often associated with obesity. However, our understanding of the causes has been very limited. A team working with ...

Rich false memories of autobiographical events can be planted - and then reversed, a new paper has found. The study highlights - for the first time - techniques that can correct false recollections without damaging true memories. It is published by researchers from the University of Portsmouth, UK, and the Universities of Hagen and Mainz, Germany. There is plenty of psychological research which shows that memories are often reconstructed and therefore fallible and malleable. However, this is the first time research has shown that false memories of autobiographical events can be undone. Studying how memories are created, identified ...

Infants prefer baby talk in any language, but particularly when it's in a language they're hearing at home. A unique study of hundreds of babies involving 17 labs on four continents showed that all babies respond more to infant-directed speech -- baby talk -- than they do to adult-directed speech. It also revealed that babies as young as six months can pick up on differences in language around them. "We were able to compare babies from bilingual backgrounds to babies from monolingual backgrounds, and what seemed to matter the most was the match between the language they ...

A new study is the first to identify how human brains grow much larger, with three times as many neurons, compared with chimpanzee and gorilla brains. The study, led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, identified a key molecular switch that can make ape brain organoids grow more like human organoids, and vice versa. The study, published in the journal END ...

Scientists have genetically engineered immune cells, called myeloid cells, to precisely deliver an anticancer signal to organs where cancer may spread. In a study of mice, treatment with the engineered cells shrank tumors and prevented the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body. The study, led by scientists at the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Center for Cancer Research, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was published March 24, 2021, in Cell. "This is a novel approach to immunotherapy that appears to have promise as a potential treatment for metastatic cancer," said the study's leader, Rosandra Kaplan, M.D., of NCI's Center for Cancer Research. Metastatic cancer--cancer that has spread from its original location to other parts of the body--is notoriously ...

What The Study Did: Researchers evaluated the association between a recent diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or dementia and the risk of attempting suicide among older adults. Authors: Amy L Byers, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of California, San Francisco, 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/jamapsychiatry.2021.0150) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding and support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

What The Study Did: This comparative effectiveness research study that included a high proportion of non-White individuals assesses whether remdesivir administered alone or with corticosteroids is associated with time to clinical improvement or time to death in patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19. Authors: Brian T. Garibaldi, M.D,. M.E.H.P., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, 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.2021.3071) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. ...

What The Study Did: This survey study investigated the frequency and nature of sexist and racial/ethnic microaggressions against female and racial/ethnic-minority surgeons and anesthesiologists and the association with physician burnout. Authors: Neha T. Sudol, M.D., of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Irvine, 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/jamasurg.2021.0265) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

Female adult sockeye from the Fraser River are dying at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts on the journey back to their spawning grounds, finds new UBC research. For every male salmon that doesn't make it to their natal stream, at least two, sometimes three female salmon die. "This is causing skewed sex ratios in their spawning grounds, something that has been observed in recent years," says lead researcher Dr. Scott Hinch, a professor in the faculty of forestry and head of the Pacific Salmon Ecology and Conservation Laboratory at UBC. "The implications on the health of Fraser River stocks are concerning, particularly as Pacific ...

Three-dimensional or "volumetric" images are widely used in medical imaging. These images faithfully represent the 3D spatial relationships present in the body. Yet 3D images are typically displayed on a two-dimensional monitor, which creates a dimensionality mismatch that must be resolved in a clinical setting where practitioners must search a 2D or a 3D image to find a particular trait or target of interest. To learn more about this problem, Craig K. Abbey, Miguel A. Lago, and Miguel P. Eckstein, of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at University of California Santa Barbara, used techniques from the field of vision science to examine how the observers use information in images to perform a given task. Their research, published in the Journal of ...

Syracuse, N.Y. - As opioid use disorders and overdoses continue to skyrocket in the United States, a study by researchers from Syracuse University and Pennsylvania State University shows that unmarried young adults who do not have children are mostly likely to misuse opioids. The growing number of these "disconnected" young adults may also result in continued rises in substance use disorders and overdoses, the researchers say. The study, "Opioid misuse and family structure: Changes and continuities in the role of marriage and children over two decades," was published ...

Living tissue can heal itself from many injuries, but giving similar abilities to artificial systems, such as robots, has been extremely challenging. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have developed small, swimming robots that can magnetically heal themselves on-the-fly after breaking into two or three pieces. The strategy could someday be used to make hardier devices for environmental or industrial clean up, the researchers say. Watch a video of the self-healing swimmers here. Scientists have developed small robots that can "swim" through fluids ...

Today, Cochrane, a global independent network that gathers and summarizes the best evidence from research to help informed health decision-making, publishes an updated systematic review assessing rapid tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19). The review shows that rapid antigen tests are better at correctly identifying cases of COVID-19 in people with symptoms than in people without symptoms. There are large differences in the accuracy of different brands of test, with very few meeting the World Health Organization (WHO) minimum acceptable performance standards. During the COVID-19 pandemic, swift diagnosis of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 is important. Then decisions ...

The more nitrate there is in mothers' drinking water, the smaller the babies they give birth to. But alarmingly, the declining birth weight can also be registered when the women are exposed to nitrate levels below the EU's threshold of 50 milligrams of nitrate per litre. This is shown by a register-based study of more than 850,000 births in Denmark carried out in a Danish-American partnership led by Professor Torben Sigsgaard from the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University and Professor Leslie Stayner and Dr. Vanessa Coffman from the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health. On the ...

March 24, 2021 - For premature infants who can't breastfeed on their own, "mother's own milk" (MOM) is by far the best nutrition. There's an urgent need for effective ways to increase the relatively low rates of MOM feeding for preterm infants born to Black and Hispanic mothers. But so far, research has offered little or no specific guidance, concludes an evidence-based review in Advances in Neonatal Care, official journal of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. Until studies of targeted, culturally appropriate interventions are performed, available evidence points to some promising approaches to overcoming obstacles and facilitating ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Nearly 2,000 active landfills are spread across the U.S., with the majority of garbage discarded by homes and businesses finding its way to a landfill. The resulting chemicals and toxins that build up at these sites can then leach into soil and groundwater, and this "leachate" can present serious hazards to the environment and to the people who live nearby. To help environmental agencies battle the toxic threats posed by landfills, researchers at the University of Missouri -- in partnership with the USDA Forest Service -- have developed a system ...

HOUSTON - (Mar 24, 2021) -The mammalian center for learning and memory, hippocampus, has a remarkable capacity to generate new neurons throughout life. Newborn neurons are produced by neural stem cells (NSCs) and they are crucial for forming neural circuits required for learning and memory, and mood control. During aging, the number of NSCs declines, leading to decreased neurogenesis and age-associated cognitive decline, anxiety, and depression. Thus, identifying the core molecular machinery responsible for NSC preservation is of fundamental importance if we are to use neurogenesis to halt or reverse hippocampal age-related pathology. While there are increasing number of tools available to study NSCs and neurogenesis in mouse models, one of the major ...

Sickle cell disease is the most prevalent inherited blood disorder in the world, affecting 70,000 to 100,000 Americans. However, it is considered an orphan disease, meaning it impacts less than 200,000 people nationally, and is therefore underrepresented in therapeutic research. A team led by Abhishek Jain from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University is working to address this disease. "I'm trying to create these new types of disease models that can impact health care, with the long-term goal of emphasizing on applying these tools ...