Body

While no dengue vaccine has yet been approved for general use, several candidates are in clinical development. Data from the clinical trials can be used in mathematical models to estimate the benefits and risks and of different vaccination strategies. A study published in PLOS NTDs suggests that even a moderately efficient dengue vaccine--if it induces long-lasting immunity--can substantially reduce disease burden. However, if immunity wanes over time, vaccination could cause years with higher numbers of sick people, unless the initial vaccination is followed by regular boosters.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT, May 26, 2016--Scientists at the University of Utah, ARUP Laboratories, and IDbyDNA, Inc., have developed ultra-fast, meta-genomics analysis software called Taxonomer that dramatically improves the accuracy and speed of pathogen detection.

A team led by Oxford University has identified genes that make certain children more susceptible to invasive bacterial infections by performing a large genome-wide association study in African children.

Malnourished children are most likely to die from common infections, not starvation alone, and immune disorder may be part of the cause, according to a review led by Queen Mary University of London.

The paper, published in Trends in Immunology, also indicates that even with a healthy diet, defects in immune system function from birth could contribute to a malnourished state throughout life. These altered immune systems could be passed down from generation to generation regardless of the diet of any offspring.

LA JOLLA, CA - May 26, 2016 - Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have caught a cancer-causing mutation in the act.

A new study shows how a gene mutation found in several human cancers, including leukemia, gliomas and melanoma, promotes the growth of aggressive tumors.

"We've found the mechanism through which this mutation leads to a scrambling of the genome," said TSRI Associate Professor Eros Lazzerini Denchi, who co-led the study with Agnel Sfeir of New York University (NYU) School of Medicine. "That's when you get really massive tumors."

By using the gene editing tool CRISPR to create unique genetic "barcodes," it's possible to track the lineage of cells in a living organism, a new study reveals. The development could accelerate our understanding of an array of cellular processes. While several different methods exist for tracking cell lineages, each has limitations. For example, dyes may be used to track the creation of daughter cells, but do not provide insights into the relationships between the descendent cells.

An important feature for life is what embryos receive from mom and dad upon fertilization. Oddly enough, centrioles, the structures responsible for cell division and flagella movement, are given by the paternal gamete. How oocytes, the maternal gametes, lose centrioles and the importance of doing so for female fertility has been an enigma since the 1930s.

Johns Hopkins researchers report they have inadvertently found a way to make human muscle cells bearing genetic mutations from people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

A report on the feat, published online in the journal Cell Reports on May 26, should shed light on how subtle genetic differences among DMD patients produce symptoms with a wide range of severity and disability. The cells, they say, could also be used to test new therapies.

Scientists using a technology called cryo-EM (cryo-electron microscopy) have broken through a technological barrier in visualizing proteins with an approach that may have an impact on drug discovery and development. They were able to capture images of glutamate dehydrogenase, an enzyme found in cells, at a resolution of 1.8 angstroms, a level of detail at which the structure of the central parts of the enzyme could be visualized in atomic detail.

Women with a high risk of developing breast cancer based on family history and genetic risk can still reduce the chance they will develop the disease in their lifetimes by following a healthy lifestyle, new research led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests.

A model developed to estimate the absolute risk of breast cancer suggests that a 30-year-old white woman in the United States has an 11.3 percent risk, on average, of developing invasive breast cancer by the age of 80, according to a new study published online by JAMA Oncology.

Breast cancer is a common form of cancer diagnosed in women. An improved model for predicting absolute risk (an estimate of the incidence of disease in a population) could help guide public health strategies for breast cancer prevention.

How white blood cells in our immune systems home in on and engulf bacterial invaders--like humans following the scent of oven-fresh pizza--has long been a mystery to scientists.

But biologists from UC San Diego and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have uncovered important clues about this mechanism from an organism commonly encountered in soil, but often unnoticed: the slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum.

In a study published online by JAMA Ophthalmology, Rubens Belfort Jr., M.D., Ph.D., of the Federal University of Sao Paulo and Vision Institute, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and colleagues assessed and identified possible risk factors for ophthalmoscopic (an instrument used to visualize the back of the eye) findings in infants born with microcephaly (a birth defect characterized by an abnormally small head) and a presumed clinical diagnosis of Zika virus intrauterine infection.

As a new generation of gene therapy clinical trials shows promise to cure or halt the progression of several rare diseases, the time has come to explore ways to pay for the cutting edge treatments, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist from Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center argues in a commentary published today by the journal Science.

CHICAGO (May 26, 2016): For uninsured patients who are at a high risk for colorectal cancer (CRC), performing free screening colonoscopies can identify cancer at an earlier stage and appears to be cost neutral from a hospital system perspective, according to study results published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons ahead of print publication.