No matter how they come about, functional impairments in the DNA repair protein BRCA1 will hamper cells' ability to repair their genome, and increase the chances that a cell will become cancerous. However, researchers from the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine reported in the July 6, 2022, issue of Science Translational Medicine that reduced BRCA1 activity that was due to methylation of its promoter differed from BRCA1 mutation in terms of its response to platinum chemotherapy.

SARS-CoV-2 infection caused damage to brain blood vessels via a cascade of immune system reactions that was most likely initiated by antibody-dependent cytotoxicity, researchers from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke reported in the July 5, 2022, online issue of Brain.

Researchers have identified an RNA-binding protein that played a role in colon cancer relapse, offering new insights into how cells persist in the presence of chemotherapy.

The University of Central Florida (UCF) and Orlando Health are testing new medical technology designed to identify blood clots more quickly in surgery. The monitoring device consists of a small optical fiber that uses red blood cells to track the process of blood coagulation in patients so doctors can watch for life threatening blood clot formation.

Researchers at the Institute for Cancer Research have demonstrated that in pancreatic tumors, the balance between a more aggressive mesenchymal and a less aggressive epithelial state is constantly in flux, depending on an interplay of different regulatory proteins.

Investigators at University of British Columbia have reported the precise cellular populations responsible for the inability to regenerate muscle tissues in muscular dystrophy.

Investigators at the Weizmann Institute of Science have identified changes in oligodendrocytes that were shared across multiple dementia types. The team reported its results in the June 27, 2022, online issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Connections, Susan Greenfield told her audience at the 2022 Annual Conference of the European Academy of Neurology, are what the mind is all about. "When you are born, you are born with a fair amount of neurons," she said at the conference's opening plenary on Sunday. But "what characterizes the growth of the brain postnatally is the configurations of connections."

Research led by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center reveals a protein signature that can reliably predict whether patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) are likely to develop hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common form of liver cancer.

A possible route to depleting leukemic stem cells while preserving healthy hematopoietic stem cells has opened up, with the discovery that cyclin-dependent kinase regulatory subunit 1 inhibition suppresses cancer stem cells and at the same time protects healthy stem cells from the toxic effects of chemotherapy.