Category Health/Medical

We become forgetful as we age. This is often seen as a universal truth, but in fact it is far from universal: some people remain incredibly sharp at 100 years old, while others experience memory loss starting in middle age.

While it seems logical that age-related cognitive decline would be blamed on brain aging and degeneration (which, like anything in the brain, is notoriously hard to treat), there’s some evidence that processes elsewhere in the body influence the brain’s abil...

For five decades, scientists have known about a notorious cancer-causing enzyme called SRC. But they always assumed it only appeared on the inside of cells, where it sent signals that fueled tumor growth and stayed hidden from the immune system. But now researchers at UC San Francisco have discovered that the SRC enzyme also appears like a flag on the surface of bladder, colorectal, breast, pancreatic and probably many other tumor cells.

As cancer cells furiously divide, they produce a lot of garbage. In healthy cells, the trash gets broken down. But in tumors, the recycling system gets overwhelmed, and the cells expel some of their trash. This pushes the SRC onto the surface of the cell, where it is visible to potential therapies, like antibodies.

Exhaustion creeps in. Appetite vanishes. Hair thins. The person in the mirror looks gaunt. It’s the paradox of cancer treatment: The same drugs meant to save a life can also wear the body down. Nick Housley, assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences, wants to change that. He studies where cancer drugs go once they’re inside the body, including places they were never intended to reach. Some of the medicine finds the tumor. The rest interacts with healthy tissue.

This approach has saved mill...

Northwestern Medicine scientists led by Joseph Bass, MD, Ph.D., the Charles F. Kettering Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism and director of the Center for Diabetes and Metabolism, have discovered how disruptions in the circadian rhythm impair metabolic function in fat cells, providing new insights into the molecular mechanisms that cause obesity and metabolic disease, according to a recent study published in Nature Metabolism.

“It’s not simply the accrual of excess fat that leads to disease...