Category Biology/Biotechnology

Scientists use CRISPR to edit structural gene in organism that causes leishmaniasis. Scientists are planning for Phase 1 human trials of a vaccine they developed by using CRISPR gene-editing technology to mutate the parasite that causes leishmaniasis, a skin disease common in tropical regions of the world and gaining ground in the United States.

“If you assure protection in the sand fly model, then you have a good shot at a real vaccine,” said Abhay Satoskar, a co-lead investigator of the work and professor of pathology and microbiology at The Ohio State University.

The team applied the new technology to the century-old Middle Eastern practice of le...

A newly identified genetic factor allows adult skin to repair itself like the skin of a newborn babe. The discovery by Washington State University researchers has implications for better skin wound treatment as well as preventing some of the aging process in skin.

In a study, published in the journal eLife on Sept. 29, the researchers identified a factor that acts like a molecular switch in the skin of baby mice that controls the formation of hair follicles as they develop during the first week of life. The switch is mostly turned off after skin forms and remains off in adult tissue...

A type of anti-bacterial T cells, so-called MAIT cells, are strongly activated in people with moderate to severe COVID-19 disease, according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden that is published in the journal...

Kidney injury is a dreaded complication in patients hospitalized for COVID-19, with more than a third of patients ending up in need of dialysis. Patients with COVID-19-related kidney injury are also at much higher risk of death.

“We don’t known exactly why patients with severe COVID-19 have a high rate of kidney injury,” says Salim Hayek, M.D., a cardiologist at the Michigan Medicine (University of Michigan) Frankel Cardiovascular Center and senior author of a new observational study.” It is, however, becoming clearer that a hyperactive immune system plays a major role in the morbidity of COVID-19, including kidney-related complications.”

In the multi-center study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Hayek and an international team of experts report th...