A stroke is a medical emergency. Quick intervention may increase a person’s chance of survival and reduce the risk of long-term disability. Strokes occur when the blood supply to the brain is blocked or limited. Each year, over 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke – that’s about one every 40 seconds. If someone is having...
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Smartphone apps—memory aids for people with brain injuries
During Brain Injury Awareness Week, new research has emerged from Monash University showing that smartphone apps may actually help people with memory impairment from brain injuries, debunking earlier concerns that technology makes our brain’s memory capacity worse. Over two studies, Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences (MICCN) Dr Dana Wong set out to explore...
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A new method for the 3-D printing of living tissues
Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed a new method to 3D-print laboratory- grown cells to form living structures. The approach could revolutionise regenerative medicine, enabling the production of complex tissues and cartilage that would potentially support, repair or augment diseased and damaged areas of the body. In research published in the journal Scientific Reports,...
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Spaser can detect, kill circulating tumor cells to prevent cancer metastases, study finds
A nanolaser known as the spaser can serve as a super-bright, water-soluble, biocompatible probe capable of finding metastasized cancer cells in the blood stream and then killing these cells, according to a new research study. The study found the spaser can be used as an optical probe and when released into the body (possibly through...
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Scientists discover vitamin C regulates stem cell function, curbs leukemia development
Not much is known about stem cell metabolism, but a new study from the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) has found that stem cells take up unusually high levels of vitamin C, which then regulates their function and suppresses the development of leukemia. “We have known for a while that people...
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New tool for cell-free therapy based on artificial membrane vesicles
Scientists at Kazan Federal University’s Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology, led by Professor Albert Rizvanov, have shown that artificial membrane vesicles generated by Cytochalasin B treatment of human cells retain angiogenic activity. Vesicles are small packages of material released from cells and act to deliver cargo and messages to adjacent and distant cells. Vesicles are known...
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New strategy to treat aggressive lung cancer
Research conducted by a team of Norton Thoracic Institute scientists on a novel therapeutic avenue for an aggressive and difficult to treat subgroup of lung cancer was published in the August 15, 2017 issue of Cancer Research. The research was led by assistant professors at Norton Thoracic Institute, Timothy Whitsett, PhD, and Landon Inge, PhD. The...
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Novel approach to track HIV infection
HIV infecting a human cell. Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a novel method of tracking HIV infection, allowing the behavior of individual virions—infectious particles—to be connected to infectivity. The findings could help lead to the development of novel therapies for HIV prevention and treatment by providing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of HIV’s...
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Is it really Lyme disease? New test may be able to tell
Tick bites can transmit Lyme disease. WASHINGTON — Diagnosing if a tick bite caused Lyme or another disease can be difficult but scientists are developing a new way to do it early — using a “signature” of molecules in patients’ blood. It’s still highly experimental, but initial studies suggest the novel tool just might uncover early-stage Lyme disease more accurately...
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Is it really Lyme disease? New test may be able to tell
Tick bites can transmit Lyme disease. WASHINGTON — Diagnosing if a tick bite caused Lyme or another disease can be difficult but scientists are developing a new way to do it early — using a “signature” of molecules in patients’ blood. It’s still highly experimental, but initial studies suggest the novel tool just might uncover early-stage Lyme disease more accurately...