by University of Turku Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The CA125 antigen, a plasma membrane glycoprotein found in the tissues of the female reproductive tract, is commonly used for the detection of ovarian cancer but works poorly on its own in identifying early stage cancers. The cancer specificity can be improved significantly when CA125 detection is combined...
by The Westmead Institute for Medical Research Credit: CC0 Public Domain Researchers hope developing therapies that target CD47 will significantly reduce the impact these health issues have on older individuals and health systems globally. During old age, some of the body’s most important functions, like the formation of new blood vessels, blood flow and metabolism...
by University of North Carolina Health Care The first-ever high-resolution structure of the protein cGAS (teal, top) bound to the nucleosome — the DNA packaging unit inside the nucleus of a human cell. Credit: UNC-Chapel Hill UNC-Chapel Hill researchers have, for the first time, determined the high-resolution structure of a key DNA-sensing protein in the innate...
by University of Chicago Medical Center Human chromosomes (grey) capped by telomeres (white). Credit: PD-NASA; PD-USGOV-NASA Telomere length has long been considered an important biomarker in human aging and disease, but most studies on the relationship between telomere length and health have looked only in a single tissue type: blood. This limitation has raised the question...
UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN Cancer immunotherapy is the manipulation of the immune responses naturally present in the human body to fight cancer. Often, these immune responses are blocked by cells or molecules that prevent them from killing cancer cells, and the tumour is able to establish itself and grow. In 2004, Sophie Lucas, researcher at...
The pupil of the eye allows light to reach the retina, and a number of vision disorders are related to irregularities in the iris that surrounds the pupil. People with aniridia, for example, have some or all of the iris missing, exhibiting a large pupil that results in unfocused vision. Now, a collaboration between Imec,...
ETH researchers have discovered that they can use light-sensitive molecules to switch genetic networks on and off as required. Their finding gives rise to an easy method for dynamically controlling biotechnological substance production. Tetracycline (Tc), an antibiotic, and its derivative anhydrotetracycline (aTc) enjoy widespread use in biotechnology and synthetic biology. Both molecules influence gene expression....
Gut microbes affect human health, but there is still much to learn, in part because they’re not easy to collect. But researchers now report in ACS Nano that they have developed an ingestible capsule that in rat studies captured bacteria and other biological samples while passing through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Currently, researchers obtain gut microbes by...
Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Aug 11 2020 What if you could simply provide a urine sample rather than undergo a painful surgical procedure to find out if your cancer was responding to treatment? It may seem too good to be true, but researchers at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia, have identified fluorescent molecules in...
by European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A new comprehensive analysis on the effect of Mozart’s music on epilepsy has confirmed that listening to his piano music can reduce the frequency of epilepsy attacks. The results of this comprehensive meta-analysis (a study of studies), which may overturn current skepticism about the effect, are presented...
