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Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain tumor in adults. The disease is 100% fatal and there are no cures, making it the most aggressive type of cancer. Such a poor prognosis has motivated researchers and neurosurgeons to understand the biology of tumors with the goal of creating better therapies.

To date, the search for effective treatments for dementia has yielded only disappointments. Many recent drug candidates target the tau protein, which aggregates and forms tangles in patients’ brain tissue and is involved in 75% of all dementias. While tau-targeting drugs have looked promising in mouse models, they’ve failed in clinical trials.

For patients with advanced bladder cancer who are medically unfit for standard treatment, a new intravesical (inside the bladder) chemotherapy delivery system called TAR-200 is safe and shows initial evidence of effectiveness, reports a study in The Journal of Urology.

Home is where the heart is, but it’s also where air pollutants, allergens, and other irritants can make breathing difficult for children with the chronic lung disease bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD).

The United States government is considering a national ban of TikTok, a social media application used by over 150 million Americans. Although the primary reason for the ban is privacy concerns, it presents an opportunity to consider other potential risks.

Millions of people worldwide are suffering from often debilitating symptoms of long COVID that can persist weeks, months, or even years following an acute infection. But researchers are still in the dark on the mechanisms underlying and how to treat the mysterious post-viral syndrome. A new clinical trial using the oral antiviral Paxlovid will provide urgently needed insights for COVID long-haulers and their providers.

A team of researchers led by Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, has found a less-intensive way to promote bone marrow transfusion success. In their paper, “Selective Bcl-2 inhibition promotes hematopoietic chimerism and allograft tolerance without myelosuppression in nonhuman primates,” published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers detail how a currently FDA-approved drug for the treatment of chronic lymphocyte leukemia (CLL) can be used to make hematopoietic stem cell transplantation conditioning regimens less toxic.

How our families express feelings, talk about feelings and react to feelings can have ripple effects into the next generation.

A new chip that holds different cell types in tiny, interconnected chambers could allow scientists to better understand the physiological and disease interactions between organs. The integrated-gut-liver-on-a-chip (iGLC) platform was designed by scientists at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), to improve understanding of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The researchers, together with colleagues in Japan, published their findings in the journal Communications Biology.

By CHARLES MUSONDA

A PROSECUTION witness has conceded that she was still fishing evidence after trial in a case a female is accused of forging a grade 12 certificate and obtaining pecuniary advantage amounting to over K498,000 had already started.

This is in a case Rhodah Ng’uni Trigain Kansembe is   accused of the subject offences while her two co -accused persons have been accused of aiding and abetting a crime.

When the matter came up for continued trial before Lusaka Magistrate Irene Wishimanga yesterday, Ministry of Education Lusaka district accounts assistant Ruth Phiri testified that in January 2020 she received Ng’uni’s file from the registry with an instruction to compute the latter’s salary progression from 2001, her year of appointment, to 2018 when she was removed from the payroll.

Ms. Phiri, 52, then produced a copy of Ng’uni’s salary progression bearing two date stamps; one indicating January 9, 2020 and the other showing January 20, 2023.  In cross- examination by defence lawyer Osborne Ngoma, the admitted that she was not aware that trial in the case had already started in court on September 22, 2022 before she stamped the document on January 20, 2023.

Ms. Phiri further admitted that she was fishing for evidence after the matter had already started in court and that she signed on the document last week but in her evidence- in – chief she told the court that Anti- Corruption Commission (ACC) officers visited the ministry’s offices in January 2020 to investigate the case.

She also said she did not know how Ng’uni became a member of the Professional Teachers Union of Zambia (PROTUZ) where she served as deputy general Secretary on secondment before she resigned, adding that she would not dispute that the accused person was elected to serve in the said position.

Earlier, Mr. Ngoma put it to another witness, Bernadette Kayombo, a senior human resource officer at the ministry’s Lusaka district office, that she was fabricating her evidence against the accused person due to a number of questions surrounding her letter of appointment.

Ms. Kayombo said she was not there when the form was being filled and that she did not see the accused person fill part of the form.

She said she would not know who wrote on the form because she was not there and that she did not subject the document to forensic science examination. She further told the court she is neither the appointing authority (Teaching Service Commission) nor part of the Teaching Council of Zambia. Trial continues on May 17, 2023.