Melbourne, Australia – A Melbourne research team has reproduced and visualised the earliest developmental steps in human immune cell production in the laboratory and are now set to advance our understanding of childhood diseases like leukemia and autoimmune conditions.
Boston, MA, USA – More than 20 years ago, the lab of developmental biologist Olivier Pourquié discovered a sort of cellular clock in chicken embryos where each “tick” stimulates the formation of a structure called a somite that ultimately becomes a vertebra.
Aurora, CO, USA – The red, tube-shaped flowers of the firecracker bush (Bouvardia ternifolia), native to Mexico and the American Southwest, attract hummingbirds. The bush also provides the chemical bouvardin, which the lab of University of Colorado Cancer Center and CU Boulder researcher, Tin Tin Su, PhD, and others have shown to slow a cancer’s ability to make proteins that tell cancer cells to grow and spread. Now a paper based on nearly half a decade of work, published in the journal Cancer Research, shows that the molecule SVC112, based on bouvardin and synthesized by Su’s Colorado-based pharmaceutical startup, SuviCa, Inc. acts specifically against head and neck cancer stem cells (CSCs), resulting in better tumor control with less toxicity to healthy cells than existing, FDA-approved protein synthesis inhibitors. The group hopes these promising preclinical results will lay the groundwork for human clinical trials of SVC112 in head and neck cancer patients.
Nankai District, China – By introducing a chemical cocktail to granulosa cells, researchers in China induced the cells to transform into functional oocytes in mice. Once fertilized, these oocytes were then successfully able to produce healthy offspring, showing no differences from naturally bred mice. The chemical reprogramming method appears December 24 in the journal Cell Reports.
Nankai District, China – By introducing a chemical cocktail to granulosa cells, researchers in China induced the cells to transform into functional oocytes in mice. Once fertilized, these oocytes were then successfully able to produce healthy offspring, showing no differences from naturally bred mice. The chemical reprogramming method appears December 24 in the journal Cell Reports.
Berlin, Germany – Anyone who climbs the 285 steps to the viewing platform of Berlin’s Siegessäule, or Victory Column, will probably have quite a few sore muscles the next day. Out-of-the-ordinary activities such as climbing lots of steps or even normal exercise can put significant strain on muscles. Such activities cause tiny tears in the muscle fibers, which the body then repairs on its own.
The immune system establishes “forward operating bases”, or lymph node-like structures, inside the tumors of some patients with kidney and other urologic cancers, researchers at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University have discovered.
Houston, TC, USA – Led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, a study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell reveals a new mechanism that contributes to adult bone maintenance and repair and opens the possibility of developing therapeutic strategies for improving bone healing.
New York, NY, USA – Given the amount of wear and tear it’s subjected to on a daily basis, the skin has a phenomenal ability to replenish itself. Spread throughout it are small reservoirs of stem cells, nested within supportive microenvironments called niches, which keep a tight rein on this repair process. Too much tissue might cause problems like cancer, while too little might accelerate aging.
Arizona, GA, USA – Research on immune cells “exhausted” by chronic viral infection provides clues on how to refine cancer immunotherapy. The results were published Tuesday, Dec. 3 in Immunity
