Scientists from the UK and China have created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from adult cells using synthetic transcription factors created in the laboratory. They claim the method is safer and more accurate than other means of creating iPSCs.
Japanese researchers have shown that it is possible to create a vascularised and functional human liver from human induced pluripotent stem cells – a finding that has implications both for organ regeneration and the testing of new drugs for toxicity.
What do age-related hearing loss and schizophrenia have in common? Not much, on the face of it. However there is growing evidence that the two disorders may have a link through the dysfunction of certain ion channels in the central nervous system. Ion channels are membrane proteins that help convert chemical or mechanical messages into electrical signals in the cell.
A project to develop biomarker-guided personalised vaccines for patients with glioblastoma has received €6 million in European Union funding under the Framework 7 programme. Immatics Biotechnologies GmbH is the coordinator.
AstraZeneca Plc will invest up to $100 million over five years in its previously-announced collaboration the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden to create a new centre for research into cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Using a unique carbon-dating technique, an international research team has reported that human adults generate about 700 new neurons in each half of their brains per day, and that this capacity declines only modestly with age.
The Institute of Metabolic Science in Cambridge UK is set to receive £24 million from the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council to expand its work in metabolic disease and investigate the causes and consequences of obesity.
Research funded by a Norwegian-based group has recently shown that primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a rare disorder affecting the liver, is a distinct disease with its own genetic architecture. Previously it was thought to be a sub-set of inflammatory bowel disease. Published in Nature Genetics on 21 April, the research associates nine new genetic regions with PSC, raising the total to 16.
A consortium led by Merus BV of the Netherlands is set to receive €5.9 million from the European Union’s FP7 programme to develop a prospective antibody-based therapy and screening tools for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have reported identifying a pathway that generates aberrant forms of proteins said to be at the root of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.