Category Health/Medical

Drs. Esteban Celis and Hussein Sultan in the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University laboratory. Credit: Phil Jones, Senior Photographer, Augusta University

New research published in Cancer Immunology Research by Drs. Esteban Celis and Hussein Sultan of the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University could serve as the stepping-stone in constructing vaccines with a greater likelihood of finding and attacking tumors in the human body. According to Celis and Sultan, the key in this vaccine strategy is increasing the amount of time a cytokine called interleukin 2 (IL2) stays in the body. IL2 is a molecule in the immune system responsible for regulating the activity of some white blood cells known as killer T cells.

“After administering peptide-based vaccines in mouse models of cancer, we ...

Calibrated Severity Scores (CSS), part of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), measure ASD symptom severity based on clinical assessment. This figure illustrates the CSS scores that were predicted for each of the participants, based on machine learning algorithms applied to EEG data. Credit: William Bosl, Ph.D.

Early diagnosis by ‘digital biomarkers’ may allow early intervention, better outcomes. Autism is challenging to diagnose, especially early in life. A new study in the journal Scientific Reports shows that inexpensive EEGs, which measure brain electrical activity, accurately predict or rule out autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in infants, even in some as young as 3 months.

“EEGs are low-cost, non-invasive and relatively easy to incorporate into well-baby checkups,” says C...

This “Manhattan plot” shows the locations of the 44 major depression loci on the human genome. The vertical axis shows statistical significance. The higher the more significant. Everything shown above the red horizontal line is statistically significant.

A new meta-analysis of more than 135,000 people with major depression and more than 344,000 controls has identified 44 genomic variants, or loci, that have a statistically significant association with depression. Of these 44 loci, 30 are newly discovered while 14 had been identified in previous studies. In addition, the study identified 153 significant genes, and found that major depression shared six loci that are also associated with schizophrenia.

Results from the multinational, genome-wide association study were published April 26 ...

Histological sections of liver from control mice treated with saline (left) and the CRISPR/Cas9 epigenetic repression system in which cholesterol levels were lowered (right) show generally normal and healthy tissue. Credit: Charles Gersbach, Duke University

Technique allowed researchers to reduce blood cholesterol levels in adult mice for six months following a single treatment. Biomedical engineers at Duke University have used a CRISPR/Cas9 genetic engineering technique to turn off a gene that regulates cholesterol levels in adult mice, leading to reduced blood cholesterol levels and gene repression lasting for six months after a single treatment.

This marks the first time researchers have delivered CRISPR/Cas9 repressors for targeted therapeutic gene silencing in adult animal models...