Cambridge, Mass. – A rare but potent genetic mutation that alters a protein in the brain’s immune cells, known as microglia, can give people as much as a three-fold greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. A new study by researchers in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT...
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San Francisco, CA – For Paul Bresge, getting into biotech wasn’t fulfilling a career goal. It was fulfilling a promise. One of his daughters, Tamar, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in 2010 at the age of 15, when the family was living in Toronto. “We were basically told—in the whole...
NEW YORK – A Ludwig Cancer Research study has found that the circadian clock—which synchronizes physiological and cellular activities with the day-night cycle and is generally thought to be tumor suppressive—in fact has a contextually variable role in cancer. “A lot of evidence suggests that the biological clock is broken...
Collectively rare diseases are anything but rare – they impact 30 million people in the US and ten times that amount globally. And 1 in 3 children suffering from a rare disease will not survive beyond the age of five. One of the biggest challenges facing clinicians is making a...
Raleigh, North Carolina – A canine gallbladder disease that involves the accumulation of abnormal mucus similar to that seen in human cystic fibrosis (CF) patients is caused by improper expression of the gene associated with CF in humans. The finding could have implications for human CF patients as well as...
Sydney, Australia – UNSWmedical researcher Dr David Jacques and his team have discovered how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) breaches the cell nucleus to establish infection, a finding that has implications beyond HIV biology. To infect cells, HIV must enter the target cell and make its way to the nucleus...
Paris , France – Maternal-fetal listeriosis is a severe disease that can lead to miscarriage, premature birth or serious neonatal infection. But what are the long-term consequences of neonatal listeriosis on the health of surviving infants? For the first time, a team of scientists and physicians from the Institut Pasteur,...
Geneva, Switzerland – As they grow, children increasingly focus their attention on social elements in their environment, such as faces or social interactions. However, children with autism are often more interested in non-social stimuli, such as textures or geometric shapes. By tracking where children look while viewing a cartoon, a...
LA JOLLA, CA —Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers—only about one in eight patients survives five years after diagnosis. Those dismal statistics are in part due to the thick, nearly impenetrable wall of fibrosis, or scar tissue, that surrounds most pancreatic tumors and makes it hard for drugs...
Sydney, Australia – Researchers examining the data on opioids for pain caused by cancer have found surprisingly large gaps in evidence regarding the true benefits of these medicines for cancer pain. The review challenges the commonly held view that opioids are the most powerful pain relievers. The University of Sydney-led...