Major data release set for early 2019 as recruitment wraps up for nation’s largest adolescent brain study

Research teams all across the globe are eagerly awaiting a major release of data from the largest study ever attempted on the adolescent brain. FIU is one of 21 sites studying nearly 11,874 participants collectively, including 2,100 twins or triplets. Researchers will follow the children, currently between the ages of 9 and 10, through young adulthood. Recruitment for participants wrapped […]

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To detect new odors, fruit fly brains improve on a well-known computer algorithm

It might seem like fruit flies would have nothing in common with computers, but new research from the Salk Institute reveals that the two identify novel information in similar ways. The work, which appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on December 3, 2018, not only sheds light on an important neurobiological problem—how organisms detect new odors—but […]

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Larotrectinib: Targeting DNA in cancer therapy

While other toddlers her age were fighting naptime, two-year-old Michelle was battling an aggressive, life-threatening cancer. Doctors at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles saved her life in an epic battle, wielding what is being hailed as a “magic bullet” in the fight against certain cancers. CHLA’s Leo Mascarenhas, MD, MS, saw promise in larotrectinib when he helped design the clinical trial […]

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Discovery may lead to safer drugs to save more women in childbirth

Postpartum hemorrhaging is the world’s leading cause of death for women during and after childbirth, and the third-leading cause in the United States alone. Many doctors in developing countries have turned to the drug misoprostol to save more women from deadly bleeding. Misoprostol, although affordable, has dangerous side effects, including uterine cramping, heart attack, toxicity in the brain and spinal […]

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Study discovers 40 new genetic variants associated with colorectal cancer risk

The most comprehensive genome-wide association study, or GWAS, of colorectal cancer risk to date, published today in Nature Genetics, has discovered 40 new genetic variants and validated 55 previously identified variants that signal an increased risk of colon cancer. The study, led by a team of investigators at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, also has identified the first rare protective […]

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Lung cancer survival signal

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) represents up to 25 percent of lung cancer cell deaths and is associated with early metastasis and poor patient survival. Thus, SCLC is in need of better therapeutics and more efficient targeted treatments. Jonathan Lehman, MD, PhD, Pierre Massion, MD,and colleagues have demonstrated that somatostatin receptor 2 (SSTR2), considered to be a cell growth inhibitor, […]

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In vitro cell culture findings could lead to novel interventions for schizophrenia

A study recently published in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature journal, has shown how using cultured cells from patients with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, to investigate abnormalities in nerve connections in the brain could lead to new treatments. Strong correlations were observed between the findings in the cells in culture—grown outside the body in a controlled environment—and findings from brain […]

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Romania shuts hospital after babies diagnosed with superbug

Romanian health authorities on Friday temporarily closed a maternity hospital in the capital after 13 babies born there recently were diagnosed with a drug-resistant superbug. The Health Ministry said the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest would stop admissions after the newborns were diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The hospital said it had canceled dozens of cesarean section operations planned for […]

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Healthy blood stem cells have as many DNA mutations as leukemic cells

Researchers from the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology have shown that the number of mutations in healthy and leukemic blood stem cells does not differ. Rather, the location of DNA mutations is relevant. Using the mutation patterns in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), the team was able to trace the developmental lineage tree of the cells. Van Boxtel, […]

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