Body

Cancer immunotherapies--drugs that work by making a patient's immune system better at spotting and destroying tumor cells--are increasingly generating headlines. A number of these drugs are now being used for the treatment of melanoma, lung, and kidney cancers, and are showing promise in clinical trials with other diseases as well.

But creating drugs that manipulate the immune system presents unique challenges. With several experimental treatments, initial studies done in cells and animals produced encouraging results, yet the drugs didn't work as hoped in clinical trials.

A person's genetic makeup plays a role in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis that develop when the body is attacked by its own immune system. But little is known about how immune cells are pushed into overdrive.

Now, in new research that points to potential therapeutic targets for autoimmune diseases, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified genetic master switches that turn up - or down - the activity of specific types of immune cells.

Each year, influenza causes between 250,000 and half a million deaths around the world. Pregnant women and young infants have a higher risk of complications related to influenza; these complications can easily lead to death. The problem is particularly severe in the developing world, where access to health care is often limited, and health centers and hospitals are scarce and under-resourced. Babies are particularly vulnerable because there is no influenza vaccine approved for infants younger than six months.

Eating walnuts may change gut bacteria in a way that suppresses colon cancer, researchers led by UConn Health report in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

A team of researchers from UConn Health and The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine found that mice that ate 7-10.5 percent of their total calories as walnuts developed fewer colon cancers. The effect was most pronounced in male mice, which had 2.3 times fewer tumors when fed walnuts as part of a diet similar to the typical American's. That's equivalent to a human eating about an ounce of walnuts a day.

Heralded on the cover of Time magazine in 2000 as a genetically modified (GMO) crop with the potential to save millions of lives in the Third World, Golden Rice is still years away from field introduction and even then, may fall short of lofty health benefits still cited regularly by GMO advocates, suggests a new study from Washington University in St. Louis.

In 2014, before the FIFA World Cup opened in Brazil, there were fears that many of the 600,000 foreign visitors expected for the world's largest soccer tournament would acquire dengue fever. Their numbers could reach hundreds or even thousands, according to some predictions.

Amsterdam, NL, June x, 2016 - By using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), researchers at the Center for Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium can greatly increase the amount of information that can be extracted from a protein microarray. In a new report in the current issue of Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging, they show how high-quality spectra can be obtained from spots of protein no larger than the diameter of a human hair.

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - May 31, 2016) St. Jude Children's Research Hospital research related to survivorship and the pediatric solid tumors neuroblastoma, adrenocortical carcinoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma will be presented at the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. The five-day event begins June 3 in Chicago.

(GOODYEAR, Arizona -- June 3, 2016) -- Advances in lung cancer, ovarian cancer and new immunotherapy treatments are among the scientific studies presented this year at ASCO by Dr. Glen Weiss, Director of Clinical Research at Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA) at Western Regional Medical Center (Western).

Testing for metabolic changes in the blood could indicate whether a cancer drug is working as designed, a new study reports.

Scientists have found that measuring how cancer treatment affects the levels of metabolites - the building blocks of fats and proteins - can be used to assess whether the drug is hitting its intended target.

This new way of monitoring cancer therapy could speed up the development of new targeted drugs - which exploit specific genetic weaknesses in cancer cells - and help in tailoring treatment for patients.

In Switzerland alone, more than 5,700 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, and almost 1,400 of those affected die of the disease. In many very invasive forms of breast cancer, the cells have too much of the receptor HER2 on their surface. This leads to uncontrolled growth of the cells. Various antibodies such as trastuzumab and pertuzumab, which recognize the HER2 receptor, have been used in breast cancer therapy for many years now. However, these antibodies do not kill off the cancer cells.

HANOVER, N.H. - Dartmouth College scientists have discovered that marine microalgae can completely replace the wild fish oil currently used to feed tilapia, the second most farmed fish in the world and the most widely farmed in the United States.

Washington, DC - June 6, 2016 - Crows are smart, highly social animals that congregate in flocks of tens of thousands. Such large, highly concentrated populations can easily spread disease -- not only amongst their own species, but quite possibly to humans, either via livestock, or directly.

A competitive economy fuelled by innovation is the ambition of many nations today -- developed and developing alike.

But is there a formula for creating an environment in which innovation and entrepreneurialism is fostered and rewarded, generating sustainable jobs and propelling national prosperity?

Looking to demonstrate the answer is Dr. Hayat Sindi, a medical scientist of growing global renown who founded and leads the Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity (i2institute.org) in her homeland, Saudi Arabia.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Living cells are capable of performing complex computations on the environmental signals they encounter.

These computations can be continuous, or analogue, in nature -- the way eyes adjust to gradual changes in the light levels. They can also be digital, involving simple on or off processes, such as a cell's initiation of its own death.

Synthetic biological systems, in contrast, have tended to focus on either analogue or digital processing, limiting the range of applications for which they can be used.