Category Health/Medical

Researchers have reached a breakthrough in understanding how fructose is transported into our cells. This could be a potential benefit for the development of novel treatments against some forms of cancer, obesity and diabetes. The research deals with how fructose, one of the major sugars in our diet, is taken up by our cells from the blood. The researchers have been able to show how the protein GLUT5, at atomic level, transports fructose through the cell membrane.

“By revealing how the fructose transporter functions at the atomic level, we can now begin to understand other things about it. For example, how this gate-keeper is selective to fructose from all other thousands of other molecules our cells are constantly bombarded by,” says Dr...

More than a century ago, scientists demonstrated that sleep supports the retention of memories of facts and events. Later studies have shown that slow-wave sleep, often referred to as deep sleep, is important for transforming fragile, recently formed memories into stable, long-term memories. Now, it has been shown deep sleep may also strengthen immunological memories of previously encountered pathogens.

Studies in humans have shown that long-term increases in memory T cells are associated with deep slow-wave sleep on the nights after vaccination. Taken together, the findings support the view that slow-wave sleep contributes to the formation of long-term memories of abstract, generalized information, which leads to adaptive behavioral and immunological responses...

New prosthesis aims to help people living with memory loss. It includes a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain, has performed well in laboratory testing in animals and is currently being evaluated in human patients. It relies on a new algorithm created by Dong Song. The development also builds on more than a decade of collaboration with Sam Deadwyler and Robert Hampson of the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology of Wake Forest Baptist who have collected the neural data used to construct the models and algorithms.

When your brain receives the sensory input, it creates a memory in the form of a complex electrical signal that travels through multiple regions of the hippocampus...

On the left is the schematic design of the TRAIL/Dox loaded platelet membrane-coated nanogel delivery system. The TRAIL is attached on the surface of membrane and Dox is loaded in the core of nanogel. On the right is a transmission electron microscope image of the drug delivery system. Black is the synthetic core nanogel, the outside shell is the platelet membrane. Credit: Quanyin Hu

It allows the drugs to last longer in the body and attack both primary cancer tumors and circulating tumor cells that can cause a cancer to metastasize. The work was tested successfully in an animal model. “There are two key advantages to using platelet membranes to coat anticancer drugs,” says assistant Prof Zhen Gu. “First, the surface of cancer cells has an affinity for platelets – they stick to each other...