The SARS-CoV-2 virus may enter and replicate in human cells by exploiting newly-identified sequences within cell receptors, according to work from two teams of scientists. The findings from both groups paint a more complete portrait of the various cellular processes that SARS-CoV-2 targets to not only enter cells, but to then multiply and spread. The results also hint that the sequences could potentially serve as targets for new therapies for patients with COVID-19, although validation in cells and animal models is needed. Scientists know that SARS-CoV-2 binds the ACE2 receptor on the surface of human cells, after which it enters the cell through a process known as endocytosis. Research has suggested that the virus may hijack or interfere with other processes such as cellular housekeeping ...

Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy--CAR T--has revolutionized leukemia treatment. Unfortunately, the therapy has not been effective for treating solid tumors including childhood cancers such as neuroblastoma. Preclinical studies using certain CAR T against neuroblastoma revealed toxic effects. Now, a group of scientists at Children's Hospital Los Angeles have developed a modified version of CAR T that shows promise in targeting neuroblastoma, spares healthy brain tissue and more effectively kills cancer cells. Their study was published today in END ...

Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have detected the first Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze in its observable atmosphere. The END ...

Friends are more than just trusted confidantes, say Michigan State University researchers who have examined the cultural and health benefits of close human relationships in a new study. "Friendships are one of the untapped resources people can draw on to pursue a happier and healthier life. They literally cost nothing and have health and well-being benefits," said William Chopik, an assistant professor of psychology at MSU and the study's senior author. Published in Frontiers of Psychology, the study is the largest of its kind and included 323,200 participants from 99 countries. Prior studies compared only a few specific cultures to one another -- but ...

The year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of a fundamental discovery that's taught in every biochemistry textbook. In 1921, German physician Otto Warburg observed that cancer cells harvest energy from glucose sugar in a strangely inefficient manner: rather than "burn" it using oxygen, cancer cells do what yeast do -- they ferment it. This oxygen-independent process occurs quickly, but leaves much of the energy in glucose untapped. Various hypotheses to explain the Warburg effect have been proposed over the years, including the idea that cancer cells have defective ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Many organizations are looking at effective ways to communicate the importance of wearing a mask, especially as highly transmissible new strains of coronavirus threaten to cause a surge in infections. Experts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggest positive messages are critical to supporting the effort. Their findings, described in a study published in December in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, give public health experts, leaders and communicators critical insight to craft messaging that could potentially increase mask usage during the pandemic. "As science evolved during ...

Abnormally hyperactive areas in the brain may help better predict the onset of Alzheimer's disease, according to findings of a research team led by Université de Montreal psychology professor Sylvie Belleville, scientific Director of the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal research centre. Hyperactivation could be an early biomarker of Alzheimer's disease, the researchers say in their study published today in Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, co-authored by Belleville and Nick Corriveau-Lecavalier, a doctoral student she supervises. Worried about their memory In their research, ...

A new study of Type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Japanese populations has uncovered a previously uncharacterized genetic variant that puts male carriers at greater risk for the disease, as well as the mechanism by which it does so. The impact of the variant was most pronounced in sedentary men; those with the variant had a 65% greater rate of T2D than sedentary men without it. Researchers from the University of Southern California, along with colleagues in Japan, led by Professor Noriyuki Fuku of Juntendo University, found higher rates of harmful belly fat and T2D among Japanese men with a specific mitochondrial gene variant. This variant, in the site of the mitochondrial peptide ...

Researchers from LSTM's Centre for Snakebite Research and Interventions (CSRI) have led an international team investigating the evolutionary origins of a novel defensive trait by snakes - venom spitting - and demonstrated that defensive selection pressures can influence venom composition in snakes in a repeatable manner. In a paper published in the journal Science, the team, which includes authors from the UK, USA, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Brazil and Costa Rica, provide the first example of snake venom evolution being demonstrated to be associated with a role in defence, ...

Scientists have created a highly detailed map of skin, which reveals that cellular processes from development are re-activated in cells from patients with inflammatory skin disease. The researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Newcastle University and Kings College London, discovered that skin from eczema and psoriasis patients share many of the same molecular pathways as developing skin cells. This offers potential new drug targets for treating these painful skin diseases. Published on 22nd January in Science, the study also provides a completely new understanding of inflammatory disease, opening up new avenues for research on other inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. Part of the global ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - A streamlined process for awarding green cards to international STEM doctoral students graduating from U.S. universities could benefit American innovation and competitiveness, including leveling the field for startups eager to attract such highly skilled workers, according to a new study by researchers from Cornell University and the University of California, San Diego. The new Biden administration backs policy reform aimed at achieving that end, which was part of bipartisan legislation proposed more than a decade ago. But progress has been stalled by broader concerns about visas ...

LA JOLLA, CA--A big question on people's minds these days: how long does immunity to SARS-CoV-2 last following infection? Now a research team from La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), The University of Liverpool and the University of Southampton has uncovered an interesting clue. Their new study suggests that people with severe COVID-19 cases may be left with more of the protective "memory" T cells needed to fight reinfection. "The data from this study suggest people with severe COVID-19 cases may have stronger long-term immunity," says study co-leader LJI Professor Pandurangan Vijayanand, M.D., Ph.D. The research, published Jan. 21 in Science Immunology, is the first to describe the T cells that fight SARS-CoV-2 in "high resolution" ...

Vaccinating people over 60 is the most effective way to mitigate mortality from COVID-19, a new age-based modeling study suggests. Although vaccination of younger adults is projected to avert the greatest incidence of disease, vaccinating older adults will most effectively reduce deaths, the analysis shows. Less than one year after SARS-CoV-2 was identified, deployment of multiple vaccines against the virus has been initiated in several countries. Although vaccine production is being rapidly scaled up, demand will exceed supply for the next several months. An urgent challenge is the optimization of vaccine allocation to maximize public health benefit. To quantify the impact of COVID-19 vaccine ...

Vaccinating older adults for COVID-19 first will save substantially more U.S. lives than prioritizing other age groups, and the slower the vaccine rollout and more widespread the virus, the more critical it is to bring them to the front of the line. That's one key takeaway from a new University of Colorado Boulder paper, published today in the journal Science, which uses mathematical modeling to make projections about how different distribution strategies would play out in countries around the globe. The research has already informed policy recommendations by the Centers for Disease ...

It is no secret that over the last few decades, humans have changed nature at an ever-increasing rate. A growing collection of research covers the many ways this is impacting our quality of life, from air quality to nutrition and income. To better understand how which areas are most at risk, scientists have combed through volumes of literature to present global trends in the relationship between human wellbeing and environmental degradation. Their work, which included Fabrice DeClerck from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, was summarized in "Global trends in nature's contributions to people", which was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This systematic ...

WASHINGTON, January 21, 2021 -- Despite cancer being a leading cause of death worldwide, treatment options for many types of cancers remain limited. This is partly due to the in vitro tools used to model cancers, which cannot adequately predict the behavior of a cancer or its sensitivity to drugs. Further, animal models, like mice, biologically differ from humans in ways that play a critical role in immunotherapy, and results from animal studies do not always translate well to human disease. These shortcomings point to a clear need for a better, patient-specific model to improve the understanding of cancer cells and their impacts. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the University ...

Medicated drops may help close small macular holes over a two- to eight-week period, allowing some people to avoid surgery to fix the vision problem, a new study suggests. The findings, based on a retrospective multicenter case series published Dec. 15, 2020, in Ophthalmology Retina, could lead to a better understanding of which patients may benefit from the treatment, as well as the timeline of the treatment's effectiveness. "For certain patients, medicated drops may heal their macular hole by decreasing inflammation and increasing fluid absorption in the retina," said ophthalmologist and retinal surgeon Dimitra Skondra, MD, PhD, senior author of the study. Skondra is an associate professor of ophthalmology and visual ...

WASHINGTON, January 21, 2021 -- Cancer is a major, worldwide challenge, and its impact is projected to escalate due to aging and growth of the population. Researchers recognize that new approaches to diagnose and treat deadly cancers, including identifying new drugs to treat cancer, will be essential to curbing the growing impact of the disease. While decades of investment in research have resulted in substantial improvements in surviving cancer, a key challenge remains in identifying new drugs that improve outcomes for cancer patients, particularly for cancers when tumors have spread throughout the body. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP Publishing, researchers suggest a major hurdle to identifying new drugs is the paucity of models -- organisms ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Jan. 21, 2021 -- Developing economies suffer from a paradox: they don't receive investment flows from developed economies because they lack stability and high-quality financial and lawmaking institutions, but they can't develop those institutions without foreign funds. A study co-authored by Brandon Julio, a professor in the Department of Finance at the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business, found that bilateral investment treaties, commonly known as BITs, can help developing economies overcome this paradox, but only as long as those ...

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues have identified genetic factors that increase the risk for developing pneumonia and its severe, life-threatening consequences. Their findings, published recently in the American Journal of Human Genetics, may aid efforts to identify patients with COVID-19 at greatest risk for pneumonia, and enable earlier interventions to prevent severe illness and death. Despite the increasing availability of COVID-19 vaccines, it will take months to inoculate enough people to bring the pandemic under control, experts predict. In the meantime, thousands of Americans are hospitalized and die from COVID-19 each ...

A new study from researchers at MIT uncovers the kinds of infrastructure improvements that would make the biggest difference in increasing the number of electric cars on the road, a key step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. The researchers found that installing charging stations on residential streets, rather than just in central locations such as shopping malls, could have an outsized benefit. They also found that adding on high-speed charging stations along highways and making supplementary vehicles more easily available to people who need to travel beyond the single-charge range of their electric vehicles could greatly increase the vehicle electrification potential. The findings are reported today in the journal Nature Energy, in a paper by MIT associate ...

DAVIS, Calif., January 21, 2020 - A new peer-reviewed study reveals that the vast majority of U.S. infants may be suffering from a substantial deficiency in an important bacterium key to breast milk utilization and immune system development, as well as protection against gut pathogens linked to common newborn conditions such as colic and diaper rash. According to the study published today in END ...

Sex-specific chromosomes are a dangerous place to be, if you're a gene. Because these chromosomes -- Y chromosomes, in humans -- do not have a matching chromosome with which to exchange genetic information, they are prone to losing non-essential genes left and right in a process called genetic decay. Now, a new study from research scientist Daniel Winston Bellott in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member David Page broadens our understanding of what makes a gene able to survive on a sex-specific chromosome by looking at one especially slithery branch of the evolutionary tree: snakes. Comparing surviving genes on snake ...

PHILADELPHIA -- (Jan. 21, 2021) -- Researchers at The Wistar Institute have discovered a new enzymatic function of the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) protein EBNA1, a critical factor in EBV's ability to transform human cells and cause cancer. Published in Cell, this study provides new indications for inhibiting EBNA1 function, opening up fresh avenues for development of therapies to treat EBV-associated cancers. EBV establishes life-long, latent infection in B lymphocytes, which can contribute to development of different cancer types, including Burkitt's lymphoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and Hodgkin's lymphoma. The Epstein-Barr Nuclear Antigen 1 (EBNA1) serves as an attractive therapeutic ...

Two out of five individuals delayed or missed medical care in the early phase of the pandemic--from March through mid-July 2020--according to a new survey from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The survey of 1,337 U.S. adults found that 544, or 41 percent, delayed or missed medical care during the survey period. Among the 1,055 individuals who reported needing medical care, 29 percent (307 respondents), indicated fear of transmission of COVID-19 as the main reason. Seven percent (75 respondents) reported financial concerns as the main reason for delaying ...