Research News

(10th November, 2014); All multicellular creatures are descended from single-celled organisms. The leap from unicellularity to multicellularity is possible only if the originally independent cells collaborate. So-called cheating cells that exploit the cooperation of others are considered a major obstacle. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, together with researchers from New Zealand and the USA, have observed in real time the evolution of simple self-reproducing groups of cells from previously individual cells.

(6th November, 2014); New Danish-led research suggests that signs of brain aging can be postponed in mice if placed on a high-fat diet. In the long term, this opens the possibility of treatment of children suffering from premature aging and patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The research project is headed by the Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen and the National Institute of Health.

(15th October, 2014); Harvard researchers announced on last Thursday that they have made a giant leap forward in the quest to find a truly effective treatment for type 1 diabetes, a condition that affects an estimated 3 million Americans at a cost of about $15 billion annually with human embryonic stem cells as a starting point, the scientists are for the first time able to produce, in the kind of massive quantities needed for cell transplantation and pharmaceutical purposes, human insulin-producing beta cells equivalent in most every way to normally functioning beta cells.

Biomedical engineering researchers have developed a drug delivery system consisting of nanoscale “cocoons” made of DNA that target cancer cells and trick the cells into absorbing the cocoon before unleashing anticancer drugs. The work was done by researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

(1st October, 2014); Think before prescribing broad spectrum antibiotics in children below 2 years of age. Researchers from Philadelphia published a report on last Monday states that the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics by children before the age of 24 months was associated with increased risk of obesity in early childhood.

(12th September, 2014); For the first time, scientists have turned human skin cells into transplantable white blood cells, soldiers of the immune system that fight infections and invaders. The work, done at the Salk Institute, could let researchers create therapies that introduce into the body new white blood cells capable of attacking diseased or cancerous cells or augmenting immune responses against other disorders.

(4th September, 2014); Florida Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have considered chemical approach to convert diseased cells to be manufacturing site of a molecule which can treat muscular dystrophy. The promising research was published recently in the international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie.

(3rd September, 2014); The news in July that HIV had returned in a Mississippi toddler after a two-year treatment-free remission dashed the hopes of clinicians, HIV researchers and the public at large tantalized by the possibility of a cure. But a new commentary by two leading HIV experts at Johns Hopkins argues that despite its disappointing outcome, the Mississippi case and two other recent HIV "rebounds" in adults, have yielded critical lessons about the virus' most perplexing - and maddening - feature: its ability to form cure-defying viral hideouts.

(22nd August, 2014); Due to effective vaccination, polio is comletely eradiated from India and World Health Organisation (WHO) presented official certification to India for its ‘Polio Free’ status in March 2014. But it seems like polio itself doesn't want to give up and wants to extend its victims. Researchers alaraming findings notified mutated poliovirus that can resist vaccine protection to a considerable extent was found in victims of an outbreak in the Congo in 2010. The pathogen could also potentially have infected many people in Germany. The results appear now in the magazine PNAS.