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Researchers investigate link between the liver’s immune system composition and NASH pathology

Our livers work hard to perform an entire range of activities: helping us digest food, maintaining body temperature and serving as an important checkpoint of the immune system for everything that we eat.

24 May 2021

Genetically engineered intestinal organoids reveal potential treatment targets against SARS-CoV-2

Using CRISPR/Cas9 and human intestinal organoids to study genes implicated in the biology of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), researchers from the Netherlands identified a specific serine protease (TMPRSS2) as an attractive pan-coronavirus therapeutic target. Their exciting findings are available in a study currently available on the bioRxiv* preprint server.

24 May 2021

Researchers uncover differences in itch mechanisms

Chronic skin itching drives more people to the dermatologist than any other condition. In fact, the latest science literature finds that 7% of U.S. adults, and between 10 and 20% of people in developed countries, suffer from dermatitis, a common skin inflammatory condition that causes itching.

21 May 2021

WHO’s new guidance sets essential standards to fight malaria, other vector-borne diseases

New guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) sets essential standards to inform future research and development on genetically modified mosquitoes, particularly in addressing issues relating to ethics, safety, affordability and effectiveness.

20 May 2021

To the bat cave: In search of covid’s origins, scientists reignite polarizing debate on Wuhan ‘lab leak’

Once dismissed as a conspiracy theory, the idea that the covid virus escaped from a Chinese lab is gaining high-profile attention. As it does, reputations of renowned scientists are at risk — and so is their personal safety.

19 May 2021

A potential treatment to prevent obesity-related liver damage

One of the especially dangerous health risks of being extremely overweight occurs when an obese person begins to accumulate fat in their liver.

18 May 2021

Researchers identify new compound that may prevent cardiac arrhythmia risk from common drugs

Dozens of commonly used drugs, including antibiotics, antinausea and anticancer medications, have a potential side effect of lengthening the electrical event that triggers contraction, creating an irregular heartbeat, or cardiac arrhythmia called acquired Long QT syndrome.

14 May 2021

Personalized vaccine can provide effective immunization against cancer

Marie-Claude Bourgeois-Daigneault and her team at the CRCHUM are using mice to show how a combination of peptides and oncolytic viruses, used as an adjuvant, can provide effective immunization against cancer.

11 May 2021

Normalizing cholesterol metabolism in microglia alleviates chronic neuropathic pain

Chemotherapy can induce a painful peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), a chronic condition and common adverse effect for cancer patients undergoing treatment.

10 May 2021

Researchers develop a multivalent vaccine for COVID-19 and influenza

Researchers at Duke University, USA, are looking into the possibility of a combined influenza and COVID-19 vaccine that could be used to simultaneously protect against annual flu strains and the SARS-CoV-2. Preclinical results showed the vaccine protected mice from both SARS-CoV-2 and the flu.

6 May 2021

Embryo gene editing in IVF can have potential major impacts on humanity

A global conference on human fertility has been warned of huge societal and ethical challenges regulating advances in gene editing in assisted reproduction.

6 May 2021

Asthma Awareness: Fighting Asthma in 2021

In light of World Asthma Day, News-Medical interviewed Dr. Samantha Walker from Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation about fighting asthma in 2021.

5 May 2021

Researchers use gene therapy to prevent learning, memory loss in Alzheimer's mouse model

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues elsewhere, have used gene therapy to prevent learning and memory loss in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a key step toward eventually testing the approach in humans with the neurodegenerative disease.

5 May 2021

Ravi Sheth receives 2020 Hertz thesis prize for transforming microbial research

Hertz Fellow Ravi Sheth says his lab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard is "like a Willy Wonka factory of microbes" geared toward improving the taste and safety of food and beverages.

4 May 2021

A new strain of common probiotic can potentially be more effective at protecting infant health

Researchers at the University of Helsinki have created a strain of the Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG probiotic that is able to utilize both lactose and casein as well as reproduce in dairy products.

29 Apr 2021

Researchers receive $3.75 million to study the impact of fluid flow on CAR-T cell therapy for brain cancer

Glioblastoma multiforme is among the most lethal of cancers and the most stubborn in the face of treatment. Fewer than 20 percent of patients survive more than two years after diagnosis, according to the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States.

29 Apr 2021

UCI biologists develop new mouse model to study late-onset Alzheimer's disease

University of California, Irvine biologists have developed a new genetically engineered mouse model that, unlike its predecessors, is based on the most common form of Alzheimer's disease.

27 Apr 2021

Researchers investigate how oxygen radicals protect against cancer

Originally, oxygen radicals - reactive oxygen species, or ROS for short - were considered to be exclusively harmful in the body.

26 Apr 2021

NIH to conduct large trial for COVID-19 polyclonal antibody therapies

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA are to conduct a large-scale clinical trial to evaluate a new fully-human polyclonal antibody therapy targeted at severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative pathogen of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

23 Apr 2021

World Malaria Day 2021: An interview with Sir Brian Greenwood

News-Medical interviews Sir Brian Greenwood about raising awareness for malaria during the COVID-19 pandemic and achieving elimination of the disease.