Proliferation News and Research

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Immunity developed by SARS-CoV-2 infection can protect against E484K variants, suggests study

A team of scientists from Japan has recently investigated the neutralizing potency of convalescent sera against currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants with multiple spike mutations.

13 May 2021

Comprehensive blood atlas of COVID-19 identifies hallmarks of disease severity

Researchers in the UK have presented a multi-omics integrated blood atlas that delineates the host immune response in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) of varying severity, providing a unique reference resource for the interpretation of datasets generated from interventional trials.

13 May 2021

Researchers develop a hairpin-shaped bicyclic peptide to fight cancer

The inhibition of pathological protein-protein interactions is a promising approach for treating a large number of diseases, including many forms of cancer.

12 May 2021

Cerebral organoids provide new insight into role of key enzyme in natural brain development

Like many around the world, the lab of Professor Mriganka Sur in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT has embraced the young technology of cerebral organoids, or "minibrains," for studying human brain development in health and disease.

11 May 2021

Vegetarians may have a healthier biomarker profile than meat-eaters, indicates study

Vegetarians appear to have a healthier biomarker profile than meat-eaters, and this applies to adults of any age and weight, and is also unaffected by smoking and alcohol consumption, according to a new study in over 166,000 UK adults, being presented at this week's European Congress on Obesity (ECO), held online this year.

10 May 2021

Study provides a better understanding of the complex interplay of ncRNAs with gene regulation

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have discovered previously unknown non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) involved in regulating the gene expression of vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF), the master regulators of angiogenesis.

6 May 2021

Could stem cells improve the outcome of ARDS in severe COVID-19?

A recent study, published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, explores the safety and efficacy of stem cells, which have been touted as the panacea for a wide range of illnesses, ranging from chronic degenerative conditions to cancer.

6 May 2021

Researchers show how low-protein diet during pregnancy can cause kidney problems in babies

Besides being underweight, babies born to women whose diet lacked sufficient protein during pregnancy tend to have kidney problems resulting from alterations that occurred while their organs were forming during the embryonic stage of their development.

5 May 2021

Stem cell therapy for COVID-19 and ARDS

In a review paper recently uploaded to the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy by Mahendiratta et al. (May 2021) the applicability of stem cells in treating severe SARS-CoV-2 infection is investigated, with regard to ARDS therapy.

5 May 2021

Hopeaphenol inhibits entry of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern into cells

A new study, released as a preprint on the bioRxiv* server, reports promising results with the natural product hopeaphenol, which successfully prevented the entry of the virus into host cells.

3 May 2021

Novel integrative genetic screening platform offers insights into role of DNA accessibility in cancer

In a new resource for the scientific community, published today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers in the lab of Neville Sanjana, PhD, at the New York Genome Center (NYGC) and New York University (NYU) developed CRISPR-sciATAC, a novel integrative genetic screening platform that jointly captures CRISPR gene perturbations and single-cell chromatin accessibility genome-wide.

30 Apr 2021

Researchers create new, open-access tool for assessing infant brain health

Researchers have created a new, open-access tool that allows doctors and scientists to evaluate infant brain health by assessing the concentration of various chemical markers, called metabolites, in the brain. The tool compiled data from 140 infants to determine normal ranges for these metabolites.

29 Apr 2021

Topical therapy can help safely reduce side effect of cancer treatment

Patients with advanced colorectal cancer may be spared from a toxic side effect caused by a type of targeted therapy used to treat the cancer with the help of another drug normally used to treat melanoma, according to a study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

28 Apr 2021

Why do we lose our sense smell/taste with COVID?

The angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) enzyme attached to the membranes of cells is the entry point for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). They are abundantly found all over the body and most prominently in the lungs and nose.

28 Apr 2021

Research opens up the possibility of dietary therapy for cancer

A research group at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) has discovered molecular events that determine whether cancer cells live or die. With this knowledge, they found that reduced consumption of a specific protein building block prevents the growth of cells that become cancerous.

27 Apr 2021

Drug cocktail can effectively activate and expand muscle stem cells

Skeletal muscle – the type of muscle that attaches to bones and enables movement – is the most abundant tissue in the human body.

27 Apr 2021

Scientists decode activation mechanism of SHP2 protein that can trigger cancer

There are many different types of cancer, but they all have one thing in common: errors in the signals that control normal cell behavior can cause uncontrolled cell growth and cell division, leading to a tumor.

23 Apr 2021

Can SARS-CoV-2 host factor protein interactions help identify antiviral drug targets?

In a new study proteomic peptide-phage display is utilized to profile the novel SLiM-based interactions that mediate host factor interactions in 229 RNA viruses, with a special focus on SARS-CoV-2, to reveal mechanistic insights and identify drug targets.

22 Apr 2021

Study evaluates stem cells' ability to prevent major cause of death in preterm infants

A phase 2 clinical trial whose results were released today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine might point to a way to overcome bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), a major cause of death in preterm infants.

20 Apr 2021

Can an immunosuppressive cancer drug promote SARS-CoV-2 entry into host cells?

A new study shows that rapamycin, an immunosuppressive drug used in some cancers, and its analogs, may have an undesirable effect on viral entry into the host cells. This finding could inform their use to treat symptomatic COVID-19.