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Published on October 7, 2019
Two independent sets of research published in Science Immunology have demonstrated how a subset of immune cells in the gut, known as group 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILC3), are tuned to the body’s daily circadian clock as they sense and interact with gut microbes. Collective results from the research indicate…
Published on July 22, 2019
The mechanisms that underlie the progression of MS are not well understood. Now, an international, multi-institutional team of researchers has studied pathological events at a higher resolution than has been done in the past, describing the gene expression, at the single cell level, of the major cell types found in…
Published on July 17, 2019
CRISPR-Cas9 is best known for its powerful ability to make double-stranded breaks in DNA, allowing scientists to delete and edit genes with relative ease. But switch out Cas9 for another protein, and CRISPR becomes a programmable tool for detecting the presence of certain nucleic acid sequences. This feature has startups…
Published on July 16, 2019
It would be hard to find an area of health where the microbiome has not been implicated as a major player. The microbiome is there even before birth, influencing maternal-child health outcomes, and it lingers, in a fashion, even after death. In between, the microbiome contributes to health, maintaining the…
Published on July 15, 2019
Preterm birth is one of the leading causes of infant mortality. Approximately 10% of babies born in the U.S. in 2018 were born before 37 weeks gestation, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC also reports that the risk of preterm birth in 2016…
Published on July 5, 2019
A potential biomarker has been found for a newly defined autoimmune disease associated with testicular cancer. Scientists at Chan Zuckerberg (CZ) Biohub, the Mayo Clinic, and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) used the Mayo Clinic’s BioBank and a variation of programmable phage display technology to uncover the biomarker. The…
Published on June 21, 2019
Scientists at Uppsala University and the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg say they have developed a blood test that may provide a more precise diagnostic for suspected ovarian cancer that would eliminate the need for exploratory surgery. This could lead to a reduction in unnecessary surgery and to earlier detection…
Published on June 19, 2019
Researchers part of a public-private partnership have identified new targets for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. That’s according to a trio of new studies published in the 18 June 2019 issue of Nature Immunologythat provide new details about how tissue damage occurs in these diseases.…
Published on June 14, 2019
Gene-editing pioneers based at the University of California (UC) are partnering with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to establish a new laboratory that will explore how gene mutations cause disease, and develop new CRISPR-based technologies aimed at speeding up drug discovery. Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., of UC Berkeley, and Jonathan Weissman, Ph.D., of UC…
Published on June 11, 2019
Research from the University of Virginia Cancer Center have found that disrupting the microbiome of mice caused hormone receptor-positive breast cancer to become more aggressive and spread more quickly. “When we disrupted the microbiome’s equilibrium in mice by chronically treating them (with) antibiotics, it resulted in inflammation systemically and within…
Published on March 22, 2019
It seems that two U.S.-based CRISPR research groups—one at U.C Berkeley and the other based at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard—are destined to go head to head well into the future. Yesterday, an all-star cast of researchers and biotech veterans including CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang, launched Sherlock Biosciences,…
Published on February 5, 2019
The gut/brain connection grew much stronger this week with the publication of the first population-level study on the link between gut bacteria and mental health. The research identified specific gut bacteria linked to depression and provides evidence that a wide range of gut bacteria can produce neuroactive compounds. The study,…
Published on February 4, 2019
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has recently become a serious societal concern, as the link between repetitive head traumas and neurodegenerative brain disease has come to light. Yet TBI is signficantly under-reported due to lack of adequate diagnostic tools, sparking great debate about this ‘silent epidemic,’ particularly among professional and youth…
Published on January 21, 2019
The risk of developing diseases such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases has been linked with where in our bodies we tend to accumulate fat. A large-scale genome-wide association study carried out by researchers at Uppsala University has now identified dozens of genetic factors that influence the distribution of fat, and…
Published on January 14, 2019
While current immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies are largely ineffective against pancreatic cancer, scientists in the U.S. have now identified an immune checkpoint molecule that could represent a promising immunotherapeutic target for this tumor type. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center-led team found that V-domain immunoglobulin suppressor of T…