Lifeboat Foundation

An innovative computer model of a human lung is helping scientists simulate, for the first time, how a burst of radiation interacts with the organ on a cell-by-cell level.

This research, carried out at the University of Surrey and GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, could lead to more targeted treatments for cancer and reduce the damage caused by radiotherapy. The research is published in the journal Communications Medicine.

Dr. Roman Bauer, Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey, said, “Doctors could one day use our model to choose the right length and strength of radiotherapy—tailored to their patient. This is exciting enough—but others could use our technique to study other organs. This could unlock all kinds of medical knowledge and could be great news for doctors and future patients.”

Drugs blocking dopamine transporters may be harmful for healthy teens but helpful for those with pathological dopamine hypofunction.

In a breakthrough finding researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center identified a sensitive developmental period during adolescence that impacts adult impulsivity, aggression, and dopamine function in mice.

As organisms grow from embryo to adult, they pass through sensitive time periods where developmental trajectories are influenced by environmental factors. These windows of plasticity often allow organisms to adapt to their surroundings through evolutionarily selected mechanisms.

Einstein scientist Xingxing Zang, Ph.D., has teamed up with Einstein grad, Elizabeth Stoner, M.D.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine researcher Xingxing Zang, Ph.D., latest cancer research and clinical trial.

New CDC data updated Friday shows 25 states are experiencing ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of respiratory illness activity.

1.6 billion people globally are homeless.

Homelessness has been a growing issue in the United States for decades — it affects millions of people each year. Despite efforts to address the problem, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness continues to rise, with the COVID-19 pandemic and an ongoing lack of affordable housing exacerbating an already difficult situation.

Tufts University School of Medicine researchers developed imaging technology that records neuronal activity throughout the brain during the first weeks of recovery. They discovered that a head injury serious enough to affect brain function, such as that caused by a car accident or sudden fall, leads to changes in the brain beyond the site of impact. In an animal model of traumatic brain injury, the researchers found that both hemispheres work together to forge new neural pathways in an attempt to replicate those that were lost.

Their findings are published in Cerebral Cortex in an article titled, “Traumatic brain injury disrupts state-dependent functional cortical connectivity in a mouse model.”

“Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death in young people and can cause cognitive and motor dysfunction and disruptions in functional connectivity between brain regions,” wrote the researchers. “In human TBI patients and rodent models of TBI, functional connectivity is decreased after injury. Recovery of connectivity after TBI is associated with improved cognition and memory, suggesting an important link between connectivity and functional outcome. We examined widespread alterations in functional connectivity following TBI using simultaneous widefield mesoscale GCaMP7c calcium imaging and electrocorticography (ECoG) in mice injured using the controlled cortical impact (CCI) model of TBI.”

Finding a cure for cancer is a motivating force for many an aspiring doctor. Few get anywhere close to pursuing that goal. Among them is Dr. Catherine Wu, an oncologist at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who has had cancer in her sights since second grade, when a teacher asked her and her classmates what they wanted to be when they grew up.

“That’s when there was a lot of coverage on the war on cancer,” she said. “I think I drew a picture of a cloud, probably a rainbow and drew a picture of (me) like, making a cure for cancer or something like that.”

That childhood scribble was prescient. Wu’s research has laid the scientific foundation for the development of cancer vaccines tailored to the genetic makeup of an individual’s tumor. It’s a strategy looking increasingly promising for some hard-to-treat cancers such as melanoma and pancreatic cancer, according to the results of early-stage trials, and may ultimately be widely applicable to many of the 200 or so forms of cancer.

As part of a nationwide collaboration, Broad Clinical Labs researchers have optimized 10 polygenic scores for use in clinical research as part of a study on how to implement genetic risk prediction for patients.

Researchers have developed a revolutionary biosensor using terahertz (THz) waves that can detect skin cancer with exceptional sensitivity, potentially paving the way for earlier and easier diagnoses. Published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, the study presents a significant advancement in early cancer detection, thanks to the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Glasgow.

“Traditional methods for detecting skin cancer often involve expensive, time-consuming, CT, PET scans and invasive higher frequencies technologies,” explains Dr. Shohreh Nourinovin, Postdoctoral Research Associate at Queen Mary’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, and the study’s first author. “Our biosensor offers a non-invasive and highly efficient solution, leveraging the unique properties of THz waves—a type of radiation with lower energy than X-rays, thus safe for humans—to detect subtle changes in cell characteristics.”

The key innovation lies in the biosensor’s design. Featuring tiny, asymmetric resonators on a flexible substrate, it can detect subtle changes in the properties of cells. Unlike traditional methods that rely solely on refractive index, this device analyzes a combination of parameters, including resonance frequency, transmission magnitude, and a value called “full width at half maximum” (FWHM). This comprehensive approach provides a richer picture of the tissue, allowing for more accurate differentiation between healthy and cancerous cells and to measure malignancy degree of the tissue.