Category Biology/Biotechnology

Figure 1. Radiologic Images of the Patient’s Liver and Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase (PI3K) Expression in the Patient’s Tumor Cells.

Metastatic Merkel-cell carcinoma is often fatal and there is no effective treatment. Now a researcher is reporting some positive results from treating this illness with a drug called idelalisib. Gao’s 86-year-old female patient was diagnosed in 2013 with stage IIIB Merkel-cell carcinoma of the right temple. She had surgery and received radiation therapy in May 2013 and additional surgery in Jul 2014. In Nov 2014 the cancer had metastasized.

Gao, a dermatologist who treats Merkel-cell carcinoma patients from Arkansas and surrounding states, performed genetics tests on the tumor that revealed multiple mutations, including PI3Kδ...

Human finger touches robotic finger. The transparent plastic and black device on the golden “fingertip” is the skin-like sensor developed by Stanford engineers. This sensor can detect pressure and transmit that touch sensation to a nerve cell. The goal is to create artificial skin, studded with many such miniaturized sensors, to give prosthetic appendages some of the sensory capabilities of human skin. Credit: Bao Lab

Engineers have created a plastic skin-like material that can detect pressure and deliver a Morse code-like signal directly to a living brain cell. The work takes a big step toward adding a sense of touch to prosthetic limbs...

Neural stem cells (green) migrate throughout an injured brain site in DLB mice and begin to differentiate into astrocytes (red), leading to improved motor and cognitive function. Blurton-Jones lab

DLB is the 2nd-most common type of age-related dementia after Alzheimer’s disease and is characterized by the accumulation of a protein alpha-synuclein that collects into spherical Lewy bodies – which also accumulate in related disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. This pathology, in turn, impairs the normal function of neurons, leading to alterations in critical brain chemicals and neuronal communication and, eventually, to cell death.

One day transplantation of neural stem cells into human patients might help overcome the motor and cognitive impairments of DLB...

When a laser triggers an optogenetic switch in neurons in the medulla of a sleeping mouse, the animal goes from non-REM sleep (NREM) into REM or dream sleep. The axons of these neurons (green) reach into distant parts of the primitive brain, such as the hypothalamus, broadly affecting brain function. (Franz Weber image.)

Activating small group of neurons in medulla causes rapid transition to REM sleep. The researchers inserted an optogenetic switch into a group of nerve cells located this area, allowing them to activate or inactivate the neurons with laser light. When the neurons were activated, sleeping mice entered REM sleep within seconds...