Varying aspects of pregnancy have been linked to a decreased risk of developing breast cancer. Having a full-term pregnancy at an early age, an increased number of births, a history of preeclampsia, and a longer duration of breastfeeding have all been associated with a smaller risk of breast cancer. But,…

The potential that gene-editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 hold for eliminating disease and genetic disorders is immense. The ability to excise a mutant gene and replace it with an unaltered version may become the gold standard by which physicians treat patients in the near future. Leading up to these potential…

Scientists in the Netherlands, U.K., and U.S. report on study results suggesting that a common strain of Escherichia coli gut bacteria could be contributing directly to bowel cancer by releasing a toxin, colibactin, that causes mutations in cells lining the gastrointestinal tract. The studies showed that cells in cultured human…

Tau has long been implicated in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases but it is not yet clear how this protein converts from its normal, functional form into a misfolded, harmful one. Now, researchers at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and Mayo Clinic in Florida have used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) along with mass spectrometry to provide…

Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have identified a gene that acts as a master regulator of schizophrenia during early human brain development, using computational tools designed to investigate gene transcription networks in large collections of brain tissues. The study represented one of the first successful examples of combining…

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) say they have found a way to tackle the problem of drug resistance and stop the growth of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) tumors in mice. Their findings (“Identification of Resistance Pathways Specific to Malignancy Using Organoid Models of Pancreatic Cancer”) are published in…

Using single-cell RNA sequencing, researchers led by Dominic Grün, PhD, group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics have constructed a comprehensive cell atlas of the healthy human liver. Based on the analysis of 10,000 cells from nine human donors, the cell atlas maps all of the…

The possibility of metabolomics playing a role in cancer diagnostics and treat- ment seems, to many metabolomicists, a question of when rather than if. After all, metabolomics is a powerful platform to measure the endpoint of human physiology—a direct readout of physiological changes—and is easily sampled in blood. Despite its…

Precision cancer treatments have improved patient survival rates by targeting underlying molecular drivers of disease, but only for those with commonly known mutations like BRCA1/2. Now researchers at Harvard Medical School have devised an algorithm to target such treatments to patients without these telltale mutations. The algorithm examines patterns of…

Using miniature laboratory-grown tumors known as patient-derived organoids (PDOs) as models of colorectal cancer (CRC), researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in the U.K. have found that CRC tumors can switch off expression of a cell surface molecule that is a key…

SEngine Precision Medicine, a spinoff of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has received a $3.1 million grant for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study its PARIS assay which can test hundreds of potential therapeutics at a time on living 3D cancer tumors grown directly from patients’ tissues.…

The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) today said it has published a glossary designed to standardize the language in the field of precision medicine, and thus improve communication between oncologists, researchers and patients. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Precision Medicine Glossary was published today in the journal…

As if unlocking the secrets to effective cancer treatment isn't challenging enough, new research from scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has released new information showing that a gene previously known to be critical for tumor growth in a range of human cancers is also critical to…

A collaboration with researchers at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo (UB) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has produced findings supporting the hypothesis that a common genomic pathway lies at the root of schizophrenia. The results of this new…