Category Biology/Biotechnology

1. BiliScreen is a new smartphone app that is designed to screen for pancreatic cancer by having users snap a selfie. It’s shown here with a 3-D printed box that helps control lighting conditions to detect signs of jaundice in a person’s eye.Dennis Wise/University of Washington
2. BiliScreen provides estimates of bilirubin levels in a person’s blood. Elevated levels can be an early warning sign for pancreatic cancer, hepatitis and other diseases.Dennis Wise/University of Washington
3.The UW team tested two different accessories for BiliScreen: a 3-D printed box to control lighting conditions and glasses that help the app calibrate colors. The goal is to remove the need for additional accessories, potentially by mining data from facial pictures.Dennis Wise/University of Washington

Pancr...

David Chan, MD, PhD, will present “Elimination of paternal mitochondria in mammalian embryos” as part of the “Moving Mitochondria: Networks and Quality Control” symposium on Monday, August 28, from 10:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in the U.S. Grant Hotel.

Mammal embryos shed paternal mitochondria within days of fertilization, perhaps to ensure the offspring a healthy life, a new study shows. Researchers from the California Institute of Technology will present their findings today at the American Physiological Society’s Physiological Bioenergetics: Mitochondria from Bench to Bedside conference in San Diego.

Both parents supply mitochondria – the “energy center” of cells – to form an embryo, but previous research has shown that the father’s contributions are short lived...

Antiinflammatory Therapy with Canakinumab for Atherosclerotic Disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 2017; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1707914

Inflammatory hypothesis confirmed: Landmark randomized clinical trial of high-risk patients finds that a drug targeting inflammation reduced risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital today announced results of a clinical trial culminating from 25 years of cardiovascular research work. Paul M...

Credit: Judy Wu / UCLA Division of Cardiology Image of LeXis (pink dots) inside a cell. The larger blue dots marks the nuclei of liver cells.

Scientists from UCLA and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute successfully used a gene that suppresses cholesterol levels as part of a treatment to reduce plaque in mice with a disorder called familial hypercholesterolemia. In a preclinical study, gene LeXis, lowered cholesterol and blockages in the arteries, and the treatment appeared to reduce the build-up of fat in liver cells. Familial hypercholesterolemia is an inherited condition characterized by extremely high levels of LDL and an increased risk of early heart disease.

The LeXis gene belongs to a unique group of genes that until recently were considered “junk DNA” because scientists believed th...