Category Health/Medical

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have developed a DNA enzyme—or DNAzyme—that can distinguish between two RNA strands inside a cell and cut the disease-associated strand while leaving the healthy strand intact. This breakthrough “gene silencing” technology could revolutionize the development of DNAzymes for treating cancer, infectious diseases and neurological disorders.

DNAzymes are nucleic ac...

When you need a bit of motivation, it often has to come from within. New research suggests cancer-fighting immune cells have found a way to do just that.

Scientists at University of California San Diego have discovered a property of T cells that could inspire new anti-tumor therapeutics. Through a previously undescribed form of cell auto-signaling, T cells were shown to activate themselves in peripheral tissues, fueling their ability to attack tumors.

The study, published in Immunity, was led by study first author and postdoctoral fellow Yunlong Zhao, Ph.D., and co-senior authors Enfu Hui, Ph.D., professor in the School of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego and Jack D. Bui, MD, Ph.D...

There’s new hope for potentially restoring vision in patients suffering from degenerative retinal disease, thanks to work by researchers at Université de Montréal.

Published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research was led by UdeM medical professor Michel Cayouette, director of cellular neurobiology research at the UdeM-affiliated Montreal Clinical Research Institute.

His research team discovered that cells that lie dormant in the retina (glial cells) can be induced to tansform into cells sharing some properties with cone photoreceptors, which allow people to do things like perceive c...

A new Nature Immunologystudy led by University of Pittsburgh and National Institutes of Health researchers sheds light on how a rare type of helper T cell, called Th9, can drive allergic disease, suggesting new precision medicine approaches to treating allergies in patients with high levels of Th9.

“Th9 cells are kind of like the black sheep of helper T cells,” said senior author Daniella Schwartz, M.D., assistant professor of rheumatology at Pitt’s School of Medicine. “They need a perfect storm of occurrences to pop up, and they aren’t long-lived, which makes them hard to study. The other weird thing about Th9 cells is that they remain functional without seeing their antigen.”

T cells switch on when they encounter viruses, bacteria or other pathogens, causing them to ramp up pr...