Hybrid immunity (vaccination plus infection) is the most robust and long-lasting protection against COVID-19, according to a new study of Catalonian patients. The researchers also found antibodies were no longer detectable almost a year after non-vaccinated people had COVID-19, particularly people older than 60 years and smokers. The researchers’ final…

Sudhakaran PrabakaranFounder, NonExomics Editor in Chief Damian Doherty spent some time speaking with Sudhakaran Prabakaran about his company NonExomics and how he hopes to unravel the complexity of how cells achieve signalling specificity and subsequently translate these learnings into a better understanding of disease mechanisms.  …

Researchers from various academic institutes in China and the University of Birmingham in the U.K. discovered fine particles from air pollution in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with brain diseases, providing new evidence to support a link between air pollution and poor brain health. The research team investigated how the…

While the influence of epigenetic changes are now well known in diseases such as cancer, or Fragile X symdrome, epigenetic influences on the development of neurological or psychological disorders is less well understood. Now, in an effort to bolster this emerging research area, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount…

University of California, San Diego (UCSD), School of Medicine scientists used human brain organoids to reveal how a genetic mutation associated with a profound form of autism disrupts neural development. The scientists used gene therapy  tools to recover the gene’s function. Their study is published in Nature Communications. “Transcription Factor…

Researchers based at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) have developed an app that can scan people’s pupils to search for early signs of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other cognitive disorders. The app makes use of the near-infra red camera, which is installed in…

Narayanan “Bobby” Kasthuri Narayanan “Bobby” Kasthuri combines the power of electron microscopy and supercomputing to construct connectomes—comprehensive wiring diagrams of the neurons and synapses in the brain. In 2015, Kasthuri joined Argonne National Laboratory, becoming the first neuroscientist to be hired at the U.S. Department of…

Fifteen “hotspots,” or loci, in the genome that either speed up brain aging or slow it down have been identified by researchers from a University of Southern California (USC)-led consortium. This finding  could provide new drug targets for Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative brain disorders, as well as developmental delays.…

Research led by scientists at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. shows that higher expression of the inflammatory biomarker interleukin (IL)-6 can influence brain structure in regions of the brain linked to conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. The results support earlier findings showing high levels of…

Using one of the largest-ever samples of post-mortem brains, scientists have identified significant differences in gene expression in two specific regions of the brain—the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sACC) and amygdala—in patients who had bipolar disorder. Their findings suggest that this condition may stem from chemical and structural changes in…

Clinical-stage biopharma company Cyclerion Therapeutics and artificial intelligence (AI) drug developer Ariana Pharma announced on Wednesday a collaboration to identify biomarkers of therapeutic response aimed at boosting Cyclerion’s investigational therapeutics program in neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases associated with cognitive impairment leveraging Ariana’s AI technology. “Ariana integrates disease biology, mechanism information,…

The European Society for Human Genetics (ESHG) has made a strong statement against the use of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for pre-implantation genetic testing of embryos generated for use in in vitro fertilization (IVF). In a viewpoint paper published in the European Journal of Human Genetics and presented to the…

The largest and most thorough high-resolution microglial genomic atlas of its kind has been created by scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Their results, published in Nature Genetics, support the idea that microglia may play critical roles in some cases of brain disease, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s…

By the time many couple’s get to the point of an IVF pregnancy, they have already had extensive medical testing and often unpleasant medical procedures, often at a considerable cost. For this reason, prenatal and preimplantation tests to ensure the maximum chance of a healthy pregnancy are popular in this…

Artificial intelligence (AI) was perhaps overhyped when it was first applied for improving diagnostics, clinical decision support, and therapeutic target identification. Its reputation as a game-changer was likely sullied by the promise—and subsequent lack of meaningful results—of IBM’s Watson. Nevertheless, AI today is used in myriad ways to improve diagnostic…