Research & University News

A study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research concludes that elevated levels of kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1), a transmembrane protein in blood plasma, can predict renal cell carcinoma (RCC) incidence up to five years before a diagnosis.

A study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine by researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the University of Denver in the US suggests that idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) may be related to an increase in extracellular vesicles that relay WNT5A signals to the lungs for an increase in connective tissue.

Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK have reported unexpected genetic changes in mouse embryonic stem cells following the use of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool. They warn that the scientific community may be overestimating the potential for gene editing as a human therapy, and urge that more work be done to better understand the safety profile of the technology.

An international research group has reported promising data from an early clinical trial of a prophylactic vaccine against HIV-1 in healthy volunteers and a parallel study of the same vaccine in rhesus monkeys. The study results were published online in The Lancet on 6 July.

The Wellcome Trust is to use its expertise in life science and financial muscle to launch a new investment fund that will enable high-risk research projects to develop quickly and move towards commercialisation. The Wellcome Leap Fund will have capital of £250 million to be allocated over five years starting in 2020.

Normally, DNA coding is too big to be placed inside a cell. However researchers at ETH Zürich have developed a way of compressing DNA for delivery into a cell after which it is decompressed into its original state. They say the technique could assist the development of new medicines.

Scientists at the University of Tampere in Finland and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have tested a vaccine targeting a pathogenic strain of an enterovirus in mice and found that it protected against Type 1 diabetes. The findings were reported in the 20 November 2017 edition of Diabetologia.

Genomics England has taken the next step towards sequencing the genomes of a large number of patients in the National Health Service (NHS) with the appointment of industry partners to help it explore the potential of liquid biopsy tests to manage cancer.

Three European-born scientists have been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of cryo-electron microscopy, which is a technique for simplifying and improving the images of biomolecules. The award was announced on 4 October.

Novartis has announced a new academic alliance to explore the proteome as a source of new drug leads for cancer and other serious diseases. The collaboration is with the University of California Berkeley, US.