IN BRIEF A revolutionary technique in oncology research that requires just a simple blood draw shows great promise in detecting cancers early. A trial that included 100 lung cancer patients proved the technique to be 92 percent accurate in predicting that a patient’s cancer would relapse. FINDING CANCER Cancer is terrifying since the disease manifests...
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Scientists unravel how protein impacts intellectual disability
Caenorhabditis elegans. Your brain needs just the right balance between excitatory “on” signals and inhibitory “calm down” signals. Now scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown that a protein helps balance nerve cell communication. The new study, published today online in the journal Cell Reports, could have implications for...
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Low levels of ‘memory protein’ linked to cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease
Diagram of the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s Disease. Working with human brain tissue samples and genetically engineered mice, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers together with colleagues at the National Institutes of Health, the University of California San Diego Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Columbia University, and the Institute for Basic Research in Staten...
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‘Silent seizures’ discovered in patients with Alzheimer’s disease
On the left is Dr. Alica Goldman and on the right is Dr. Jeffrey Noebels. Deep in the brains of two patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the main memory structure, the hippocampus, displays episodic seizure-like electrical activity. These non-convulsive hippocampal seizures are the first signs of ‘silent’ brain electrical network dysfunction described in patients with...
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Combination approach may boost social interactions in autism
The hormone oxytocin, the so-called hug hormone or cuddle chemical, has more nicknames than proven medical uses. However, oxytocin may benefit children with autism spectrum disorders if receptors for opioids—brain chemicals activated by drugs such as heroin that tend to disconnect people socially—are also blocked, Yale researchers report the week of May 1 in...
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New type of cell that clears waste from the brain discovered
Scientists have found a previously unknown type of cell that clears waste away from the brain. They suggest that their findings will increase our understanding of the brain’s biology and of diseases such as dementia and stroke. Researchers have found a new type of cell that removes waste from around the brain. The researchers...
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Scientists make see-through bones
A view of the transparent bone as seen through a light-sheet microscope specially built to not damage the fluorescent signal from the stem cells inside, which appear red in this image First came transparent brain tissue, then mostly transparent mice. Now, researchers at Caltech have applied a tissue-clearing technique to make bones see-through. The process provides valuable insight...
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Regulatory and Exhausted T Cell Responses to AAV Capsid
Recombinant adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are quickly becoming the preferred viral vector for viral gene delivery for the treatment of a wide variety of genetic disorders. However, since their use in a clinical trial targeting hemophilia B patients 10 years ago, immune responses to the AAV capsid appear to have hampered some of the early clinical...
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Scientists uncover interactions between bacteria that infect the lungs in cystic fibrosis
Substances produced by a harmful bacterium in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients may enhance the growth of other bacteria that, in turn, inhibit the harmful bacterium’s biofilm, according to new research published in PLOS Pathogens. Substances produced by a harmful bacterium in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients may enhance the growth of other...
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More multiple sclerosis-causing mutations found in Canadian families
Carles Vilarino-Guell is an Assistant Professor of Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia. Less than a year after publishing research identifying a single genetic mutation that caused multiple sclerosis (MS) in two Canadian families, scientists at the University of British Columbia have found a combination of two other mutations in another family that made...