Body

In the late 1970s, a new drug held the promise of wiping out a disease that currently affects more than 250 million people. Nearly 40 years later, the drug, praziquantel, has yet to make a dent in the global burden of schistosomiasis, an infestation of parasitic flatworms that can cause liver failure, bladder cancer and lasting cognitive impairment. A new Stanford-led analysis of national health interventions over the past century shows that controlling the snail populations through ecological interventions keeps the disease in check more effectively than drugs alone.

DALLAS - July 21 2016 - Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a new way that tuberculosis bacteria get into the body, revealing a potential therapeutic angle to explore.

For all the anxiety today about the bacteria in our gut being under constant assault by antibiotics, stress and bad diets, it turns out that a lot of the bacteria in our intestines have been with us for at least 15 million years, since we were pre-human apes.

A new comparison of the gut microbiomes of humans, chimps (our closest ancestor), bonobos and gorillas shows that the evolution of two of the major families of bacteria in these apes' guts exactly parallels the evolution of their hosts.

Approximately 25 to 50 percent of a living tree is made up of water, depending on the species and time of year. The water stored in trees has previously been considered just a minor part of the water cycle, but a new study by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists shows otherwise.

A University of Toronto scientist has developed a new method for identifying the raw ingredients necessary to build 'biologics', a powerful class of medications that has revolutionized treatment of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and some cancers.

It has remained frustratingly difficult to develop a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, in part because the virus, once in our bodies, rapidly reproduces and evolves to escape being killed by the immune system.

"The viruses are constantly producing mutants that evade detection," said Joshua Plotkin, a professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Biology in the School of Arts & Sciences. "A single person with HIV may have millions of strains of the virus circulating in the body."

DALLAS - July 21, 2016 -- UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified a protein termed ASCL1 that is essential to the development of small cell lung cancer and that, when deleted in the lungs of mice, prevents the cancer from forming.

The new findings identify ASCL1 as an important therapeutic target for small cell lung cancer, for which there have been few changes in treatment for the past 30 years.

Over a century of research has shined light on the once-murky innards of our cells, from the genes that serve as our "blueprints" to the proteins and other molecules that are our cellular taskmasters.

For the first time Japanese researchers discovered that the extracellular domain of taste receptor proteins undergoes a change in structure by binding together taste substances. This structure change is thought to transmit the extracellular binding of taste substances to taste cells. The findings will contribute to our basic understanding of taste mechanisms and the development of a new taste evaluation system that makes use of the screening and detection of taste receptor structure changes.

However you're using the word however, be aware you might be getting it wrong.

A new analysis of more than a century of books, newspapers, magazines and online writings has revealed the life and journey of the word however, but particularly its common misuse as a synonym for but.

University of Melbourne researcher Dr Andrew Hamilton has dubbed the erroneous trend Conjunctive Howeveritis, a phenomenon that peaked in the 1980s and 1990s.

Autophagy (literally "eating of self") is one of the most important process by which cells renew themselves and eliminate components no longer functional. In short, they recycle.

The current view of autophagy portaits two completely separated processes, each one dedicated to remove specific elements. Now a research from the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Movement Disorders, in the Mediterranean Neurological Institute "I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed", Pozzilli (Italy), shows that the two paths converge in a single cell component (organelle): the autophagoproteasome.

Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in men. Tumor growth is critically regulated by the androgen receptor, and treatment strategies to lower androgens, such as testosterone, are a mainstay of clinical treatment. Over time, however, resistance frequently develops and the disease may progress to a castration-resistant form that expresses a variant of the androgen receptor, which evades blockade by drugs that dampen androgen receptor signaling.

Patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) suffer from chronic respiratory infections, primarily caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which lead to airway inflammation and damage. Several recent studies have suggested that a specific type of immune cell, known as Th17 cells, produce the factor IL-17 to drive the inflammatory response in the setting of CF lung infection.

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered a potential and novel way of preventing asthma at the origin of the disease, a finding that could challenge the current understanding of the condition.

The research, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) Insight, analysed the impact of the gene ADAM33, which is associated with the development of asthma.

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