Research News

Therapeutic nanocarriers engineered from adult skin cells can curb inflammation and tissue injury in damaged mouse lungs, new research shows, hinting at the promise of a treatment for lungs severely injured by infection or trauma.

Researchers conducted experiments in cell cultures and mice to demonstrate the therapeutic potential of these nanoparticles, which are extracellular vesicles similar to the ones circulating in humans’ bloodstream and biological fluids that carry messages between cells.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a fatal motor neuron disease that causes people to gradually lose control of their muscles. There is no cure, and current treatments focus on reducing symptoms and providing supportive care. Reporting June 1 in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers from Japan show in an early clinical trial that the Parkinson's disease drug ropinirole is safe to use in ALS patients and delayed disease progression by 27.9 weeks on average.

An international team, led by UBC Okanagan researchers, suggests a simple tweak to the first meal of the day might help people living with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) better control their blood sugar levels.

The early stages of embryonic development contain many of life’s mysteries. Unlocking these mysteries can help us better understand early development and birth defects, and help develop new regenerative medicine treatments.

Researchers based at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University have characterised a critical time in mammalian embryonic development using powerful and innovative imaging techniques, with their work published in Nature Communications.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people in West Africa become infected with Lassa virus, which can cause Lassa fever and lead to severe illness, long-term side effects or death. There are currently no widely approved treatments or vaccines for the disease. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have determined the structure of the critical protein complex that lets Lassa virus infect human cells.

New research from Oregon Health & Science University is helping explain why at least five people have become HIV-free after receiving a stem cell transplant. The study’s insights may bring scientists closer to developing what they hope will become a widespread cure for the virus that causes AIDS, which has infected about 38 million people worldwide.

Antiretroviral cocktails can make human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, undetectable and untransmittable, but both the virus and its treatment can also accelerate aging of bone and muscle.

Now Medical College of Georgia scientists are looking at drugs already being studied in clinical trials for cancer to help put the brakes on these classic indicators of aging that can lead to falls, fractures and early frailty.

A major challenge in human genetics is understanding which parts of the genome drive specific traits or contribute to disease risk. This challenge is even greater for genetic variants found in the 98% of the genome that does not encode proteins.

A new approach developed by researchers at New York University and the New York Genome Center combines genetic association studies, gene editing, and single-cell sequencing to address these challenges and discover causal variants and genetic mechanisms for blood cell traits.