News & Commentaries

Philadelphia, PA, USA – The self-eating process in embryonic stem cells known as chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) and a related metabolite may serve as promising new therapeutic targets to repair or regenerate damaged cells and organs, Penn Medicine researchers show in a new study published online in Science.

Cambridge, MA, USA – Scientists at the Sloan Kettering Institute, the Koch Institute at MIT, and the Klarman Cell Observatory at the Broad Institute have identified an unusual cell state that emerges early in tumor evolution and supports a cancer’s ability to outwit chemotherapy.

Cambridge, MA, USA – If you’ve ever wondered why we get goosebumps, you’re in good company – so did Charles Darwin, who mused about them in his writings on evolution. Goosebumps might protect animals with thick fur from the cold, but we humans don’t seem to benefit from the reaction much – so why has it been preserved during evolution all this time?

Klosterneuburg, Austria – Without stem cells, human life would not exist. Due to them, a lump of cells becomes an organ, a fertilized egg develops into a baby, and tissues of our body can be continuously renewed. But what actually makes a stem cell? How do they know when to divide to replace a dying cell? Are these a stable population of specially gifted cells? Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria discovered that instead, stem cells might emerge due to the collective behavior of cells within the organs. They saw that the shape of the surrounding tissue, jointly to the pattern of seemingly random movements of the cells determined the cell’s role. The scientists published their study in the journal PNAS on July 1, 2020. Their results could lead to a deeper understanding of organ renewal and development.