Mice become profoundly anti-social when the creation of new brain cells is interrupted in adolescence, a surprising finding that may help researchers understand schizophrenia and other mental disorders, Yale researchers report. When the same process is interrupted in adults, no such behavioral...
Cells making slippery mucus provide a sticking point for disease-causing bacteria in the gut, according to a study published on October 3 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. A foodborne bacterium called Listeria monocytogenes (sometimes found in stinky cheeses) invades the body by binding...
Johns Hopkins researchers have devised a protein "switch" that instructs cancer cells to produce their own anti-cancer medication. In lab tests, the researchers showed that these switches, working from inside the cells, can activate a powerful cell-killing drug when the device detects a marker...
A new study suggests that blocking cancer cells' access to cholesterol may offer a new strategy for treating glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer, and perhaps other malignancies. The potential treatment could be appropriate for tumors with a hyperactive PI3K signaling...
Controlling diabetes may someday involve mining stem cells from the lining of the uterus, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in a new study published in the journal Molecular Therapy. The team treated diabetes in mice by converting cells from the uterine lining into insulin-producing...
Scientists reveal in more detail than ever before how white blood cells kill diseased tissue using deadly granules, in research published in PLoS Biology. The researchers, from Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, used 'optical' laser tweezers and a super-resolution microscope...
Making use of a new "super resolution" microscope that provides sharp images at extremely small scales, scientists have achieved unprecedented views of the immune system in action. The new tool, a stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscope, shows how granules from natural killer cells pass...
NYU School of Medicine researchers have discovered that dendritic cells in the liver have a protective role against the toxicity of acetaminophen, the widely used over-the-counter pain reliever and fever reducer for adults and children. The study's findings are published in the September issue...
The most common breast cancer uses the most efficient, powerful food delivery system known in human cells and blocking that system kills it, researchers report. This method of starving cancer cells could provide new options for patients, particularly those resistant to standard therapies such as...
Researchers at IRB Barcelona discover a crucial mechanism controlling the segregation of genetic material from parent to daughter cells. A finely tuned process of degradation tightly regulates CenH3 protein levels to ensure the correct function of the cell division machinery in Drosophila. From...
Using a modern version of open-wide-and-keep-this-under-your-tongue, scientists reported that taking the temperature of individual cells in the human body, and finding for the first time that temperatures inside do not adhere to the familiar 98.6 degree Fahrenheit norm. They presented the...
With stem cells so fickle and indecisive that they make Shakespeare's Hamlet pale by comparison, scientists have described an advance in encouraging stem cells to make decisions about their fate. The technology for doing so, reported here at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the...
There are numerous specialized growth factors that are responsible for cells of different tissues of our body to divide and differentiate when needed. These hormone-like factors bind to matching receptors on the surface of their target cells and thus give order for the cell to divide. However, a...
A research team led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists has identified a potential new target for treatment of the childhood eye tumor retinoblastoma. Their work also settles a scientific debate by showing the cancer's cellular origins are as scrambled as the developmental...
In a cancer treatment breakthrough 20 years in the making, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine have shown sustained remissions of up to a year among a small group of advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients treated...
Pancreatic cancer researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have shown, for the first time, that blocking a receptor of a key hormone in the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) reduces cancer cell growth by activating the enzyme AMPK to inhibit fatty acid synthase, the ingredients to support cell...
Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered a type of cell that may contribute to autoimmune disease. The findings also suggest why diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis strike women more frequently than men. The cells, a subset of immune-system B cells...
A report in the August issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism might help to explain why it's so frustratingly difficult to stick to a diet. When we don't eat, hunger-inducing neurons in the brain start eating bits of themselves. That act of self-cannibalism turns up a hunger signal to...
A new study shows that removing lymph nodes due to the presence of occult, or microscopic, cancer cells found in the sentinel lymph node the one closest to the tumor -- has no impact on survival outcomes of women with early-stage breast cancer. The principal investigator of the study is Armando...