All posts by : Felistas

Northwestern University biophysicists have developed a new computational tool for identifying the gene combinations underlying complex illnesses like diabetes, cancer and asthma.

Just as folds are important in the ancient art of origami, they are also vital for the function of many proteins. Mutations in a protein associated with conditions such as seizures and autism spectrum disorder prevent it from folding correctly and hinder its movement to the cell surface, where it would normally do its job.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is highly associated with the development of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), with a diagnosis requiring the presence of steatotic liver disease (SLD) along with at least one of five cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRFs), including obesity, arterial hypertension (HTN), type 2 diabetes (T2D)/prediabetes, and dyslipidemia.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of blindness, especially in older adults. A key feature of early AMD is the formation of drusen, clumps of debris made of lipids and proteins that collect between two layers at the back of the eye—the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and Bruch’s membrane (BrM).

Researchers from the Biostatistics Unit at the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) have led a study, published in BMJ Open, which analyzes how in-hospital mortality evolved during four waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Catalonia, taking into account the patients’ ceiling of care.

Using a modern imaging technology known as cryo-electron microscopy, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have determined the structure of a protein called midnolin that’s crucial to the survival of malignant cells in some leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myelomas. Their findings, published in PNAS, provide insight into how this protein functions in cells and could inform the design of new pharmaceuticals that avoid the serious side effects of current therapies.

Exercising during chemotherapy and before surgery may help the body send more immune cells into cancerous tumors, according to a first-of-its-kind pilot study from the University of Surrey and Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust.

A salmonella outbreak tied to a major egg recall has sickened nearly 80 people and sent at least 21 to the hospital, health officials have said.

A new study from The University of Texas at Arlington details a novel strategy for how the body clears out dead cells during stress, revealing unexpected roles for well-known stress-response genes—a discovery that could help scientists better understand diseases affecting the immune system, brain and metabolism.

Cancer cannot be understood as a single, uniform disease. The more we delve into studying each type of tumor, the more we recognize the need to subclassify the disease. This concept has led to what we now call precision oncology, characterizing the molecular features of a patient’s specific cancer to determine the most effective treatment.