HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments include a combination therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, new insights into the evolution of anaplastic thyroid cancer, a promising new treatment approach for PTEN/p53-deficient pancreatic cancer, a novel pan-species artificial intelligence model to detect cancer cells, a ...

A new analysis suggests that about one in seven households across the U.S. may face financial hardship in paying for access to water and wastewater services. Lauren Patterson and colleagues at Duke University, North Carolina, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Water. U.S. households pay utilities for access to water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and sanitation, as well as for wastewater services. However, in recent years, the cost of these services has increased alongside a widening income gap, fueling affordability concerns. ...

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a highly contagious disease that affects millions of people each year around the world, resulting in an estimated 160,000 deaths. In the United States, severe RSV causes 6,000 to 10,000 deaths among people 65 years of age or older. On May 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Arexvy, an RSV vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc. It is the first RSV vaccine to be approved in the United States, and according to GSK’s press release, the first for older adults to be approved anywhere in the world. This is a ...

3D printers form objects by layering melted plastic or metal, but this only works on large scales. What you need to fabricate microdevices for which the layering step is not feasible? What if it were possible to print directly into the bulk of an existing three-dimensional material? The research groups of Lynford Goddard and Paul Braun, professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, have been collaborating to develop such a process. They use the technique of multiphoton lithography to print inside an existing ...

Purdue April Consumer Food Insights report explores role of dollar stores in food landscape A market for an expanded grocery selection at dollar stores potentially exists, especially with consumers who live less than 10 minutes away, according to data reported in the April Consumer Food Insights report. The survey-based report out of Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability assesses food spending, consumer satisfaction and values, support of agricultural and food policies, and trust in information sources. Purdue experts conducted and evaluated ...

 As a car travels along a narrow city street, reflections off the glossy paint or side mirrors of parked vehicles can help the driver glimpse things that would otherwise be hidden from view, like a child playing on the sidewalk behind the parked cars. Drawing on this idea, researchers from MIT and Rice University have created a computer vision technique that leverages reflections to image the world. Their method uses reflections to turn glossy objects into “cameras,” enabling a user to see the world as if they were looking through the “lenses” of everyday objects like a ceramic coffee mug or a metallic ...

Artificial intelligence. Gene editing. mRNA vaccines. It’s safe to say the past few decades have felt like the next big wave of medicine. However, what continues to be needed in virtually every field is a personalized approach to care.   That’s certainly needed when it comes to using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to treat depression, said Medical University of South Carolina Distinguished University Professor Mark George, M.D. TMS uses a magnet to increase brain activity in ...

Colorectal cancer is the fourth most common and second deadliest cancer. How colorectal cancer develops is not well understood, but a team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine reports in the Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research that silencing the gene p16, even though the DNA itself does not change, can drive colorectal cancer progression in animal models. The researchers also revealed a strategy that reduced tumor growth and improved survival in tumor-bearing mice, opening new possibilities for future targeted therapies in patients with gene p16 alterations. “Years of research have shown ...

New database offers insight into consequences of language loss Languages, like animal species, can go extinct. More than half of the world’s approximately 7,000 signed and spoken languages are currently endangered. And without intervention they are likely to become extinct, meaning nobody will speak or sign them any longer. While language loss is happening across the world, the costs vary strikingly in different places, according to a new study co-authored by Yale linguist Claire Bowern. Regions where all Indigenous language are endangered — including parts of South America and the United States — ...

Having a large research team isn’t linked to producing higher quality research, finds a new study from the University of Surrey which analysed data from 1.4 million academic papers.   Professor Sorin Krammer, lead author of the study and Professor of Strategy and International Business at the University of Surrey, said:  “Despite the prevalence of large teams in research, there is still a lack of a good understanding of how their size and diversity affects their performance.”   “Our ...

In medicine and science, the term “pathogenesis” describes the origin and development of disease. There is not, however, a broadly accepted term to describe the other half of the equation: the process of healing and recovery. In a new and far-reaching paper, published May 10, 2023 in the journal Mitochondrion, Robert K. Naviaux, MD, PhD, professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, proposes both a term and, more importantly, outlines the array of processes and players, beginning with cellular mitochondria, that drive the healing process – and whose dysfunction underlies chronic illnesses from diabetes ...

“In this review, we describe how aging impacts epigenetics and how nutrition and physical exercise can positively impact the aging process, from an epigenetic point of view.” BUFFALO, NY- May 10, 2023 – A new review paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 8, entitled, “How can we modulate aging through nutrition and physical exercise? An epigenetic approach.” The World Health Organization predicts that by 2050, 2.1 billion people worldwide ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., May 10 – The University of Arizona’s Husain Alqattan is the recipient of the APL Photonics 2022 Future Luminary Award for his work in utilizing pulse shaping and waveform synthesis to control electron motion and open the door for ultrafast electronics that process data at unprecedented speeds. The winning paper, “Attosecond light field synthesis,” was published in the April 2022 issue of APL Photonics. In it, Alqattan and his team used an attosecond light ...

Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of adult death worldwide. The coronary angiography procedure provides the clinical standard diagnostic assessment for nearly all related clinical decision-making, from medications to coronary bypass surgery. In many cases, quantifying left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) at the time of coronary angiography is critical to optimize clinical decision-making and treatment decisions, particularly when angiography is performed for potentially life-threatening acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Since the left ventricle is the heart’s pumping center, measuring the ejection fraction in the chamber provides critical information about the percentage ...

Leesburg, VA, May 10, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in ARRS’ own American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), frequencies of imaging-apparent and palpable hematoma were not significantly different between patients temporarily discontinuing versus maintaining antithrombotic therapy (AT). “The findings support safety of continuing AT during breast core-needle biopsy (CNB),” wrote lead researcher Melissa Reichman, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine at New York-Presbyterian ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An Ohio State University astronomy professor has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors a scientist can receive in the U.S.  David Weinberg, Distinguished University Professor and chair of astronomy, is among 120 new members and 23 international members from 13 countries who were inducted this year in recognition of distinguished and continuing achievement in original research inside their chosen field. “I have been lucky to have great students and great colleagues throughout ...

CLEVELAND - Inhibiting a protein on the surface of immune cells could offer new strategies for treating severe asthma, Cleveland Clinic researchers found. Researchers discovered a new way a protein called MCEMP1 contributes to severe inflammation in the airway and lungs. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, provides critical information for developing therapeutic interventions to treat long-term lung conditions, including asthma, on a biological level.  The study was conducted in a lab led by Jae Jung, PhD, chair ...

A group of researchers led by Andreas Wallraff, Professor of Solid State Physics at ETH Zurich, has performed a loophole-free Bell test to disprove the concept of “local causality” formulated by Albert Einstein in response to quantum mechanics. By showing that quantum mechanical objects that are far apart can be much more strongly correlated with each other than is possible in conventional systems, the researchers have provided further confirmation for quantum mechanics. What’s special about ...

Philadelphia, May 10, 2023 – The dairy industry has seen a revolution over the past two decades in fertility success within herds. Widely adopted fertility programs are at the heart of this leap forward, along with the industry’s increased understanding—and optimization—of the holistic interactions among the body condition, overall health, and fertility of a dairy cow. In a recent mini-review appearing in a special fertility issue of JDS Communications®, published by Elsevier, researchers from the University of ...

Researchers have released a new high-quality collection of reference human genome sequences that captures substantially more diversity from different human populations than what was previously available. The work was led by the international Human Pangenome Reference Consortium, a group funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health.    The new “pangenome” reference includes genome sequences of 47 people, with the researchers pursuing the goal of increasing that number to 350 by mid-2024. With each person carrying a paired set of chromosomes, the current reference actually includes 94 distinct genome ...

Comparing individual cells across corn, sorghum, and millet reveals evolutionary differences among these important cereal crops, according to a new study led by New York University researchers.   The findings, published in Nature, bring researchers closer to pinpointing which genes control important agricultural traits such as drought tolerance, which will help scientists faced with a changing climate adapt crops to drier environments.   Corn, sorghum, and millet provide food for humans and animals around the world. Corn and sorghum are ancient relatives that evolved into two different species roughly 12 million years ago, and millet is a more distant relative.    Despite ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 2023, AT 11AM ET New York, NY (May 10, 2023)—Eimear Kenny, PhD, had just completed undergrad and was working in her first computational genomics job more than 20 years ago when scientists announced the first (nearly) complete sequencing of the human genome—what was considered at the time to be the fundamental blueprint for all humans. The Human Genome Project aimed to map the entire genome in an effort to accelerate the diagnosis and eventual treatment of common and rare diseases. Now, Dr. Kenny, ...

UC Santa Cruz scientists, along with a consortium of researchers, have released a draft of the first human pangenome—a new, usable reference for genomics that combines the genetic material of 47 individuals from different ancestral backgrounds to allow for a deeper, more accurate understanding of worldwide genomic diversity.  By adding 119 million bases—the “letters” in DNA sequences—to the existing genomics reference, the pangenome provides a representation of human genetic diversity that was not possible with a single reference genome. It is highly accurate, more complete and dramatically increases ...

New Haven, Conn. — When it was launched in April 2003, the Human Genome Project helped revolutionize biomedical research by providing scientists a reference map that allowed them to analyze DNA sequences for genetic clues to the origins of a host of diseases. Twenty years later, a team of researchers that includes Yale scientists has created a new “pangenome” that fills in missing sequencing gaps from the original genome project and greatly expands the diversity of genomes represented. The achievement is described in ...

One of the most important advances in palliative care in oncology over the past 15 years has been the recognition that palliative care specialists can improve cancer patients’ outcomes well before their end of life. Palliative care is specialized care provided to individuals with a serious illness that focuses on decision-making support, pain and symptom management, as well as psychosocial interventions to improve quality of life. Several past randomized clinical trials have shown palliative care specialists can improve the quality of life and lengthen the ...