Body

PHILADELPHIA - Vaccines are usually medicine's best defense against the world's deadliest microbes. However, HIV is so mutable that it has so far effectively evaded both the human immune system and scientists' attempts to make an effective vaccine to protect against it. Now, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have figured out how to make a much-improved research tool that they hope will open the door to new and better HIV vaccine designs. George M.

The RNA Molecular Biology Laboratory headed by Professor Denis Lafontaine at the Université libre de Bruxelles has just published a study in Nature Communications revealing essential aspects of the regulation of the anti-tumor protein p53.

A finding by a University of Central Florida researcher that unlocks a means of controlling materials at the nanoscale and opens the door to a new generation of manufacturing is featured online today in the journal Nature.

Using a pair of pliers in each hand and gradually pulling taut a piece of glass fiber coated in plastic, associate professor Ayman Abouraddy found that something unexpected and never before documented occurred -- the inner fiber fragmented in an orderly fashion.

PITTSBURGH, June 6, 2016 - Immunotherapy doubles overall survival and improves quality of life, with fewer side effects, in a treatment-resistant and rapidly progressing form of head and neck carcinoma, reports a large, randomized international trial co-led by investigators at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). The new trial was considered so successful that it was stopped early to allow patients in the comparison group to receive the new drug.

The successful results of a University of Liverpool led drug trial aimed at developing new therapeutic approaches to cancer have been presented at two American medical conferences.

The drug trial (APR-246) aimed to test the effects of a novel compound on a specific protein, p53, found to be mutated in over 50% of all cancers.

The p53 gene is from a class of genes called tumour suppressors which are mutated in all cases of one form of ovarian cancer (high grade serous), but have proved difficult to target in the past.

The testing of nearly 5,000 forgotten and backlogged rape kits in and near Cleveland has led to investigations, indictments, prosecutions -- and, already more than 250 convictions.

But besides bringing justice to long-ignored victims and taking scores of violent offenders off the streets, the efforts of the Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force are also helping to change how law enforcement agencies and the academic community view and prosecute rape.

MAYWOOD, IL - A study led by Loyola Medicine researchers may help reassure patients who worry the breast cancer drug tamoxifen could increase their risk of uterine cancer.

A paper published today in Nature Genetics describes the discovery of a new gene, TMEM230, associated with Parkinson's disease. At the cellular level, Parkinson's disease typically entails the loss of cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in neuron-to-neuron communication. TMEM230 is the first gene associated with the disease that has been linked to the trafficking of vesicles that carry neurotransmitters between neurons and therefore illuminates a possible mechanism to explain the disease.

Mobile phone data may reveal an underlying mathematical connection between how we move and how we communicate that could make it easier to predict how diseases -- and even ideas -- spread through a population, according to an international team of researchers.

(PHILADELPHIA) - Hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer, is increasing in incidence in the United States, and infection with the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes about 50 percent of cases. However, it can be difficult to identify who is most likely to develop this cancer.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new technique for extremely high speed photonic sensing of the mechanical properties of freely flowing particles using an opto-mechano-fluidic resonator (OMFR). This research potentially opens up completely new mechanical "axes of measurement" on micro/nanoparticles and bioparticles.

Recognizing the high research and development costs for drugs to combat cancer, a team of researchers has devised a method to maximize investment into these undertakings by spotting which efforts are the most scientifically viable.

Amsterdam, NL, June 6, 2016 - Raman spectroscopy provides detailed chemical information, and when combined with a microscope, it can non-destructively analyze biological samples. While commercial research-grade Raman microscopes have been available for some time, they have tended to be both inflexible and very expensive. In a paper in the current issue of Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging, researchers from Germany and Serbia describe an inexpensive, versatile micro-Raman system that can be assembled from readily available components at a fraction of the cost of a commercial tool.

Cleveland . . . If "Lucy" wasn't alone, who else was in her neighborhood? Key fossil discoveries over the last few decades in Africa indicate that multiple early human ancestor species lived at the same time more than 3 million years ago. A new review of fossil evidence from the last few decades examines four identified hominin species that co-existed between 3.8 and 3.3 million years ago during the middle Pliocene. A team of scientists compiled an overview that outlines a diverse evolutionary past and raises new questions about how ancient species shared the landscape.

In a meta-analysis of hundreds of clinical trials involving thousands of patients, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that therapeutic approaches using precision medicine, which emphasizes the use of individual genetics to refine cancer treatment, showed improved response and longer periods of disease remission, even in phase I trials.

The findings are published in the June 6, 2016 issue of JAMA Oncology.