Category Biology/Biotechnology

Patients undergoing long-term treatment with steroids may suffer from metabolic side effects. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU), partners in the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), have now pinpointed a mechanism that leads to so-called steroid diabetes. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications.

“Glucocorticoids such as cortisone have been used to treat inflammatory diseases such as asthma or rheumatism for many decades, and they are the most commonly prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs,” explains Prof...

Researchers at LSTM and Imperial College London have designed drugs which could help combat any potential new flu pandemic, by targeting the receptors of the cells by which the virus gains entry to the human body. In a paper published today in the Journal of Immunology the team, led by LSTM’s Professor Richard Pleass, show that by engineering a part of an antibody they can target the viral proteins that allow flu to mutate and become so deadly to humans.

Last year marked the centenary of the 1918 influenza pandemic that claimed nearly 100 million lives worldwide, thus becoming the deadliest disease outbreak in recorded history...

MoS2 quantum dots synthesized with the new approach can potentially generate cancer-killing properties. NUS Engineers have developed a cost-effective and scalable strategy for designing tiny semiconductor particles known as transition metal dichalcogenide quantum dots (TMD QDs) which can potentially generate cancer-killing properties. The team is also looking to optimise TMD QDs for applications such as the next generation TV and electronic device screens, advanced electronics components and even solar cells.

Two-dimensional (2D) transition ...

Cellular recycling process, thought to fuel cancer’s growth, can actually prevent it. Scientists studying the relationship of telomeres to cancer made a surprising discovery: a cellular recycling process called autophagy – generally thought of as a survival mechanism – actually promotes the death of cells, thereby preventing cancer initiation.

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