A new web-based tool allowing rapid in silico prediction of the ability of candidate antibiotics to accumulate in Gram-negative bacteria should enable subsequent prioritization of new compounds for synthesis and further evaluation, U.S. researchers reported Nov. 18, 2019, in Nature Microbiology.
A study published in the Nov. 27, 2019, advance online issue of Nature manages a rare feat. It is both a vindication of and egg in the face for cardiac stem cell research. The good news is that cardiac stem cell transplantation after a heart attack does improve heart function, although the effect is “mild,” Jeffery Molkentin told BioWorld.
Many pediatric brain tumors occur in specific time windows of childhood. For that reason, such tumors are thought to have their origins in faulty prenatal development. Scientists at McGill University and the University of Toronto have gained new insights into what those faults are in several pediatric tumors.
MELBOURNE, Australia – Researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne are pushing the boundaries on creating kidney tissue from stem cells. For more than two decades, Melissa Little and her team at Murdoch have investigated the molecular and cell development basis of kidney disease and the potential for regeneration. The team has developed approaches for directing the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells to human kidney organoids and is applying that knowledge to disease modeling, drug screening, cell therapy and tissue engineering.
One necessary step to fend off a dystopian future of medical care without antibiotics is the development of new antibiotics. Another is improved deployment of existing ones, a feat which will take, among other things, better antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST). “I’m astounded that we can get men to the moon, and we are using practices [dating] almost back to the age of Robert Koch to identify bacteria,” Deborah Hung told BioWorld MedTech. “The standard practice takes amazingly long.”
Children are more susceptible to developing allergic asthma than adults. An estimated 6 million children have allergic asthma, making asthma one of the most common long-term diseases of childhood. Asthma is potentially life-threatening, yet there is no cure, rather only management of symptoms. Progress in understanding the disease was reported in the Dec 17, 2019, issue of Immunity.
MELBOURNE, Australia – Researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne are pushing the boundaries on creating kidney tissue from stem cells.
Hafnium nanoparticles that home onto microfractures in bone make the tiny cracks visible in spectral or color computed tomography (CT) imaging. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Maryland created the nanotechnology to work in conjunction with spectral molecular imaging developed by New Zealand-based MARS Bioimaging Ltd. (MBI). The research appeared in Advanced Functional Materials.