Category Biology/Biotechnology

A cancer therapy invented at Rice University has crossed a milestone in clinical trials, a major development in a decades long quest to develop a treatment that destroys tumors without the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy, invasive surgery and radiation.

13 of the first 15 prostate cancer patients treated in a clinical trial of the nanoparticle-based, focal therapy showed no detectable signs of cancer a year after treatment, according to a study published this week in the Proceedings...

A new study shows that graphene sheets can block the signals mosquitoes use to identify a blood meal, potentially enabling a new chemical-free approach to mosquito bite prevention. In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers showed that multilayer graphene can provide a two-fold defense against mosquito bites. The ultra-thin yet strong material acts as a barrier that mosquitoes are unable to bite through. At the same time, experiments showed that graphene also blocks chemical signals mosquitoes use to sense that a blood meal is near, blunting their urge to bite in the first place...

Researchers have developed an extremely fast optical method for sculpting complex shapes in stem-cell-laden hydrogels and then vascularizing the resulting tissue. Their groundbreaking technique stands to change the field of tissue engineering.

Tissue engineers create artificial organs and tissues that can be used to develop and test new drugs, repair damaged tissue and even replace entire organs in the human body. However, current fabrication methods limit their ability to produce free-form shapes and achieve high cell viability.

Researchers at the Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices (LAPD), in EPFL’s School of Engineering, working wi...

Strong memories are encoded by teams of neurons working together in synchrony. Why is it that you can remember the name of your childhood best friend that you haven’t seen in years yet easily forget the name of a person you just met a moment ago? In other words, why are some memories stable over decades, while others fade within minutes

Using mouse models, Caltech researchers have now determined that strong, stable memories are encoded by “teams” of neurons all fi...