Body

A team from the University of Leicester has for the first time published a detailed description of a protein linked to many types of cancer.

The lab-based study from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology now provides an opportunity for scientists to develop drugs to target this protein.

Dr Cyril Dominguez who led the work at Leicester said: "My research field is structural biology. The proteins that we have studied, called Sam68 and T-STAR, are very similar and overexpression of Sam68 has been shown to correlate with poor prognosis in many types of cancers.

In an article published New mechanism of antitumor action identified in Clinical Cancer Research, a team of researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Ability Pharmaceuticals describes a new mechanism of anti-tumour action, discovered during the development of the drug ABTL0812. This drug

In the newly identified cellular pathway PPAR-TRIB3-Akt, activation of the TRIB3 gene causes the death of tumour cells by autophagy. This pathway might be used to design safer and more effective anti-tumour drugs.

New research findings from Lund University, Sweden show that a simple analysis of chromosomal breaks in sperms can help guide choice of fertility treatment and, thereby, increase chances of successful assisted reproduction for involuntary childless couples.

WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW: Simple sperm test offers help for involuntarily childless couples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeiMnVM_SFo

The 2016 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a Yale-based initiative that evaluates how 180 countries protect ecosystems and human health, finds cause for both optimism and serious concern. The world's nations have expanded access to water and sanitation while creating more protected areas than ever before, yet countries have failed to reverse degradation of air quality and decline in fisheries, the report finds.

Viruses infect more than humans or plants. For microorganisms in the oceans -- including those that capture half of the carbon taken out of the atmosphere every day -- viruses are a major threat. But a paper to be published Jan. 25, 2016 in the journal Nature Microbiology shows that there's much less certainty about the size of these viral populations than scientists had long believed.

Researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered the mechanism by which immune cells called regulatory T cells keep themselves intact and functional during their demanding task of holding the immune system in check. Such T cells are key to preventing the immune system from attacking the body in autoimmune disease.

The researchers said their findings suggest that drugs influencing this protective mechanism could be used to alert the immune system to fight cancers.

An international coalition of researchers led by Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientist Swapan Nath, Ph.D., has identified 10 new genes associated with the autoimmune disease lupus. The findings were published in the Jan. 25, 2016 issue of Nature Genetics.

Nath and his colleagues analyzed more than17,000 human DNA samples collected from blood gathered from volunteers in four countries: South Korea, China, Malaysia and Japan. Of those samples, nearly 4,500 had confirmed cases of lupus, while the rest served as healthy controls for the research.

A new report examines global and national trends in the fatal and nonfatal burden of diseases and injuries among children and adolescents in 188 countries based on results from the Global Burden of Disease 2013 study, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

Data for estimates in the report by the Global Burden of Disease Pediatrics Collaboration come from vital records registration, verbal autopsy studies, maternal and child death surveillance and other sources.

Among the key findings:

Mailing free nicotine patches to smokers without providing behavioral support was associated with higher rates of tobacco cessation than not offering the patches, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Smoking is a leading cause of preventable disease worldwide. There is a need for randomized clinical trials on the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) where there is no additional behavioral support.

A new study used electronic medical records from the Department of Veterans Affairs to examine factors that influence the timing of the initiation of dialysis, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. The article by Susan P.Y. Wong, M.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle, and coauthors suggests interrelated processes were at play, including physician practices, the momentum for the initiation of dialysis including precipitating clinical events, and patient-physician dynamics, which were sometimes adversarial.

The first-ever global nitrogen footprint, encompassing 188 countries, has found the United States, China, India and Brazil are responsible for 46 percent of the world's nitrogen emissions.

The international collaboration, led by the University of Sydney's Integrated Sustainability Analysis team in the Faculty of Science, found developing countries tend to embody large amounts of nitrogen emissions from their exports of food, textiles and clothing. Australia is one of the few wealthy nations that is a net exporter of nitrogen, because of the substantial agriculture industry.

In November 2015, Brazil experienced an unparalleled environmental disaster. When two dams broke at an iron ore mine, a poisonous cocktail of heavy metals was sent pouring into the Rio Doce, reaching the Atlantic some days later. The consequences were devastating for nature and humans alike: countless fish, birds and animals died, and a quarter of a million people were left without drinking water.

Healthcare practitioners may one day be able to physically screen for breast cancer using pressure-sensitive rubber gloves to detect tumors, owing to a transparent, bendable and sensitive pressure sensor newly developed by Japanese and American teams.

If current trends continue, domestic and industrial water demand would more than double by the year 2050, and continue to increase after that, according to a new study published in the journal Geoscientific Model Development. The study introduces the first scenarios from the IIASA Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative, a multi-year interdisciplinary research project focusing on global water challenges and solutions, and explains the methodology and models used by the research initiative.

Biomedical engineering researchers have developed a technique for creating microscopic "depots" for trapping drugs inside cancer tumors. In an animal model, these drug depots were 10 times more effective at shrinking tumors than the use of the same drugs without the depots.

Some anti-cancer drugs are most effective outside of cancer cells. For example, the anti-cancer drug TRAIL attacks a cancer cell's cell membrane, while another drug, cilengitide, inhibits the growth of blood vessels around a tumor, starving it of nutrients.