Category Biology/Biotechnology

One specific protein may be a master regulator for changing how cancer cells consume nutrients from their environments, preventing cell death and increasing the likelihood the cancer could spread, a study from the University of Notre Dame has shown.

The study, published in Cell Reports, was completed in the laboratory of Zachary Schafer, the Coleman Foundation Associate Professor of Cancer Biology in the Department of Biological Sciences.

Schafer and collaborators found a protein called SGK1, known to be activated in a variety of cancer cell types, signals the cell to take up nutrients...

Researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a new way of using nanomaterials to identify and enrich skeletal stem cells — a discovery which could eventually lead to new treatments for major bone fractures and the repair of lost or damaged bone.

Working together, a team of physicists, chemists and tissue engineering experts used specially designed gold nanoparticles to ‘seek out’ specific human bone stem cells — creating a fluorescent glow to reveal their presence among other types of cells and allow them to be isolated or ‘enriched’.

The researchers concluded their new technique is simpler and quicker than other methods and up to 50-500 times more effective at enriching stem cells.

The ...

A pilot human clinical trial conducted by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine reveals that supplementation with GlyNAC — a combination of glycine and N-acetylcysteine as precursors of the natural antioxidant glutathione — could improve many age-associated defects in older humans to improve muscle strength and cognition, and promote healthy aging.

Published in the journal Clinical and Translational Medicine, the results of this study show that older humans taking GlyNAC for 24 weeks saw improvements in many characteristic defects of aging, including glutathione deficiency, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, insulin resistance, endothelial dysfunction, body fat, genomic toxicity, muscle strength, gait speed, exercise capacity and cognitive function...

Australian researchers have discovered a new way to target an aggressive childhood cancer, neuroblastoma, one of the most common and dangerous cancers in young children.

The discovery may also have important implications for some other aggressive cancers in children, including certain brain tumours, as well as some adult cancers, including ovarian and prostate cancer.

The new research, led by scientists at Children’s Cancer Institute and published in Nature Communications, has discovered that a cellular protein called ALYREF plays a crucial role in accelerating the effects of the cancer driver gene, MYCN, in neuroblastoma.

Scientists have known for some time that the one third of children with neuroblastoma who have very high levels of MYCN in their cancer cells have a much p...