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Study identifies a promising new strategy for combating malaria

Researchers have discovered a promising new strategy for combating malaria, a mosquito-borne parasite that claims nearly a half-million lives each year.

22 Apr 2020

Have we found a new malaria vaccine?

A new study published in the journal Nature in April 2020 reports on a malaria protein antibody that appears to protect resistant children from severe disease, showing promise in the fight against malaria, a new study found. Almost 500,000 people die of malaria every year.

22 Apr 2020

Researchers uncover how cancer cells don their invisibility cloaks

Immunotherapy drugs that target a protein called programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) on the surface of cancer cells have quickly become a mainstay to treat many forms of cancer, often with dramatic results. But exactly how cancer cells turn on this protein was not completely understood.

22 Apr 2020

Ultrasound-assisted molecule delivery looks to preserve blood for years

Researchers have demonstrated using ultrasound to create pores in blood cells, preventing degradation when dried for preservation.

21 Apr 2020

Screening blood samples for COVID-19 using artificial intelligence

A promising new study published in the preprint online journal medRxiv in April 2020 shows the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) for developing a patient classifier that can separate patients likely to be negative for COVID-19 from among a pool of suspected patients visiting an emergency room (ER).

15 Apr 2020

Study looks into how malaria parasite evades the immune system

The parasite causing the most severe form of human malaria uses proteins to make red blood cells sticky, making it harder for the immune system to destroy it and leading to potentially fatal blood clots. New research at the Crick has identified how the parasite may control this process.

13 Apr 2020

Personalized biohybrid microswimmers for therapeutic cargo delivery

Tiny biohybrid robots on the micrometer scale can swim through the body and deliver drugs to tumors or provide other cargo-carrying functions. The natural environmental sensing tendencies of bacteria mean they can navigate toward certain chemicals or be remotely controlled using magnetic or sound signals.

7 Apr 2020

Houston Methodist receives FDA approval to transfuse donated plasma into a COVID-19 patient

Houston Methodist received FDA approval Saturday to become the first academic medical center in the nation to transfuse donated plasma from a recovered COVID-19 patient into a critically ill patient.

30 Mar 2020

Fast-acting anti-malarial compound shows promise in first clinical trial

A fast-acting anti-malarial compound discovered at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital was well tolerated and showed promising anti-malarial effects in the first study in humans.

27 Mar 2020

Asthma patients found to have higher levels of iron in their lungs

New research has suggested that people with asthma have a greater build-up of iron in their lung tissue.

17 Mar 2020

PrEP drug levels found to lower among pregnant African adolescent girls and young women

Among African adolescent girls and young women who took HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) daily, levels of the PrEP drug tenofovir were more than 30% lower in those who were pregnant than in those who had recently given birth.

9 Mar 2020

Researchers uncover creeping, crawling origin of MYH9-related blood disorders

Ouch, you've cut your finger! As you fumble to grab a tissue, the paramedics in your blood are already rushing to the scene.

9 Mar 2020

Collaborative project aims to study red blood cells under physiological flow conditions

Red blood cells (erythrocytes) are the pack animals of the human circulatory system. They transport oxygen to the places in the body where it's needed: to the cells that make up our muscles and organs.

27 Feb 2020

Levitating human blood may lead to faster, more reliable disease detection

New research from the UBC's Okanagan campus, Harvard Medical School and Michigan State University suggests that levitating human plasma may lead to faster, more reliable, portable and simpler disease detection.

20 Feb 2020

How malaria evades the body’s immune response

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. In 2018, there were over 200 million cases of malaria worldwide. Now, a team of researchers found evidence that the malaria parasite can detect a molecule released by approaching immune cells, using it to protect itself and evade the attack by the body’s immune system.

19 Feb 2020