Our immune system is capable of a remarkable feat: the ability to remember infections for years, even decades, after they have first been encountered and defeated. While the antibodies we make last only about a month, we retain the means of making them for a lifetime. Until now, the exact...
It's not often that someone can claim that going from a positive to a negative is a step forward, but that's the case for a team of scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and private industry. In a recent paper,* the group significantly extended the reach of...
University of British Columbia scientists may have uncovered a new explanation for how Alzheimer's disease destroys the brain - a profusion of blood vessels. While the death of cells, whether they are in the walls of blood vessels or in brain tissue, has been a major focus of Alzheimer's disease...
The underlying disease process of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS and Lou Gehrig's disease), a fatal neurodegenerative disease that paralyzes its victims, has long eluded scientists and prevented development of effective therapies. Scientists weren't even sure all its forms actually converged...
Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System have received a $25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to lead a 50+-center national clinical trial investigating a promising new treatment that could greatly benefit thousands of acute ischemic stroke patients every...
In a new study published in the August 16th issue of Developmental Cell, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center identified a molecular mechanism that guarantees that new blood vessels form in the right place and with the proper abundance. "We have known for a long time that blood vessels...
A new study finds that a protein key to Parkinson's disease has likely been mischaracterized. The protein, alpha-synuclein, appears to have a radically different structure in healthy cells than previously thought, challenging existing disease paradigms and suggesting a new therapeutic...
We all know one, or think we do: the person whose self-regard seems out of proportion to his or her actual merits. Popular culture labels these folks "narcissists," almost always a derogatory term. But a new study suggests that some forms of narcissism are - at least in the short term -...
While watching this season's political debates, be sure to watch the candidates' eyes. When presidential candidates employ humorous comments during televised primary debates, what they do with their eyes is key to the strength of audience laughter, according to University of Arkansas political...
Researchers from Dr. Woodland's lab at the Trudeau Institute have now identified a previously unknown link between the migration of white blood cells to infected tissues and the ability of these cells to survive and become long-lived memory cells after the infection has been cleared. The new...
For the first time, the ARVO Foundation for Eye Research (AFER) will support AMD and dry eye research projects with two new fellowships for investigators under age 45. Traditionally, AFER's awards programs have recognized researchers' accomplishments rather than funded their research. The...
Scientists have found a potential new mechanism to stimulate the body's own ability to fight cancer using Baculillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) the germ commonly used to inoculate against tuberculosis (TB). The findings are published online in the British Journal of Cancer (Wednesday 10 August 2011)...
Stem cell researchers at UCLA have uncovered for the first time why adult human cardiac myocytes have lost their ability to proliferate, perhaps explaining why the human heart has little regenerative capacity. The study, done in cell lines and mice, may lead to methods of reprogramming a...
If one is good, two can sometimes be better. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have certainly found this to be the case when it comes to a small HIV-fighting protein. The protein, called cyanovirin-N (CV-N), is produced by a type of blue-green algae and has gained...
A high school football player's broken neck from which he's recovered has yielded breakthrough biomechanical data on cervical spine injuries that could ultimately affect safety and equipment standards for athletes. University of New Hampshire associate professor of kinesiology Erik Swartz...
For decades, scientists have known that DNA consists of four basic units - adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. Those four bases have been taught in science textbooks and have formed the basis of the growing knowledge regarding how genes code for life. Yet in recent history, scientists have...
Researchers at New York University's Department of Chemistry and NYU Langone Medical Center have developed a compound that blocks signaling from a protein implicated in many types of cancer. The compound is described in the latest issue of the journal Nature Chemical Biology. The researchers...
Canary Foundation's Canary Prostate Team has been awarded two Department of Defense (DOD) grants issued by the United States Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). Totaling $2.25 million, these grants will help fund prostate cancer research led by Peter Carroll, MD, Ziding Feng...
Researchers characterize biomechanics of ovarian cells in mice according to their phenotype at early, intermediate, and late-aggressive stages of cancer Using ovarian surface epithelial cells from mice, researchers from Virginia Tech have released findings from a study that they believe will...
On rare occasion, the light-sensing photoreceptor cells in the eye misfire and signal to the brain as if they have captured photons, when in reality they haven't. For years this phenomenon remained a mystery. Reporting in the June 10 issue of Science, neuroscientists at the Johns Hopkins...