Researchers Repurpose Classic Chemotherapy Drug to Overcome Cancer Therapy Resistance

Anticancer immunity targeting therapy-resistant leukemia stem cells is activated by low-dose doxorubicin.
Image/Art credit: Mark Miller, Stowers Institute.

Drug resistance is a major obstacle in cancer treatment – leading to relapse for many patients. In a new study, published online April 20, 2020, in Nature Cell Biology, researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Children’s Mercy Kansas City, and The University of Kansas Cancer Center report on a promising new strategy to overcome drug resistance in leukemia, using targeted doses of the widely-used chemotherapy drug doxorubicin.

The study’s researchers found that low doses of the anthracycline antibiotic doxorubicin inhibit the interaction between two molecular pathways that work closely together to promote tumor ...

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Quantum Entanglement offers unprecedented precision for GPS, Imaging and beyond

Graphic of RF waves being transferred to photonic waves and then entangled.
A graphic demonstrating the team’s quantum metrology experiment.

Engineers have demonstrated for the first time that it’s possible to connect a network of sensors through quantum entanglement. The experiment opens a door to unprecedented levels of sensitivity in GPS navigation, medical imaging and astronomy.

Your phone’s GPS, the WiFi in your house and communications on aircraft are all powered by radio-frequency waves, or waves, which carry information from a transmitter at one point to a sensor at another. The sensors interpret this information in different ways. For example, a GPS sensor uses the angle at which it receives an RF wave to determine its own relative location. The more precisely it can measure the angle, the more accurately it can determine location.

In a paper pu...

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Exoplanet apparently Disappears in Latest Hubble Observations

This diagram simulates what astronomers, studying Hubble Space Telescope observations, taken over several years, consider evidence for the first-ever detection of the aftermath of a titanic planetary collision in another star system. The color-tinted Hubble image on the left is of a vast ring of icy debris encircling the star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away. The star is so brilliant that a black occulting disk is used to block out its glare so that the dust ring can be photographed. In 2008, astronomers saw what they thought was the first direct image of a planet orbiting far from the star. However, by 2014, the planet candidate faded below Hubble’s detection...
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Synthetic Scaffolds to Heal Injured Tendons and Ligaments

The research hopes to improve the outcomes of sport injury surgeries. Credit: Pixabay

The research hopes to improve the outcomes of sport injury surgeries. Credit: Pixabay

Top biomedical engineering researcher develops synthetic scaffolds for tendon and ligament regeneration. Australia’s love of sport means it has one of the highest rates of knee anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and reconstruction in the world.

Worldwide, the costs of tendon and ligament rupture repair and surgery revision represent tens of billions of dollars of the clinical orthopaedic market.

A team of biomedical engineering researchers from the University of Sydney, working with Columbia University’s Regenerative Engineering Laboratory and FAU Erlangen-Nurnberg Institute of Medical Biotechnology (Germany), are hoping to improve the outcomes of tendon and ligament repair by developing a new synthe...

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