One of the challenges of fighting pancreatic cancer is finding ways to penetrate the organ’s dense tissue to define the margins between malignant and normal tissue. A new study uses DNA origami structures to selectively deliver fluorescent imaging agents to pancreatic cancer cells without affecting normal cells.

The study, led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign mechanical science and engineering professor Bumsoo Han and professor Jong Hyun Choi at Purdue University, found that specially engineered DNA origami structures carrying imaging dye packets can specifically target human KRAS mutant cancer cells, which are present in 95% of pancreatic cancer cases.

“This research highlights not only the potential for more accurate cancer imaging, but also selective chemotherapy delivery, a significant advancement over current pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma treatments,” said Han, who is also affiliated with the Cancer Center at Illinois. “The current process of cancerous tissue removal through surgical resection can be improved greatly by more accurate imaging of tumor margins.”

Somewhere in the body of a patient, a small clump of cells, growing undetected, has begun to form a tumor. It has yet to cause pain or visible symptoms of illness. Several months from now, or perhaps years, those first signs will prompt a doctor’s inquiry, a referral to a specialist, and an eventual diagnosis. Treatment will depend on how long the cancer has gone unnoticed and how far it has spread.

There were early signs, though not ones the patient or doctor could have noticed. Small fragments of RNA, cast off from dying cells or spit out of the tumor’s twisted transcriptions, floating about in the bloodstream—early signals of a tissue in distress.

A new method developed by Stanford researchers aims to bring the moment of detection much closer to the beginning. They have developed a blood-based method called RARE-seq that detects tumor-derived cell-free RNA with around 50 times the sensitivity of standard sequencing techniques.

We are urgently working to find new treatments and cures for ALS and are currently funding over 168 research projects in 12 countries. We work with many pharmaceutical companies that have attempted to bring new treatments to market.

Breast cancer is becoming increasingly treatable, but in some cases the disease can resurface even decades after a patient has been declared cancer free. This is because of cells that detach from the original tumor and hide in a dormant state in the breast or other organs.

Little is known about the mechanisms responsible for dormancy in cancer cells, and even less is known about what causes these cells to suddenly wake up. A new study from the laboratory of Israel Prize laureate Prof. Yosef Yarden at the Weizmann Institute of Science, published in Science Signaling, reveals the mechanism that puts breast cancer cells to sleep, as well as the reason that they emerge from dormancy more aggressive than they were before they became dormant.

From the earliest stage of embryonic development, through sexual maturation to the production of breast milk during pregnancy and after childbirth, breast tissue changes throughout a woman’s life. These changes are made possible by the metamorphosis that breast tissue cells undergo, from the early developmental stage, known as mesenchymal, when the cells are round, highly mobile and dividing rapidly, to the more mature, epithelial stage, when they are somewhat cubical, less active and dividing slowly.

Typhoid fever might be rare in developed countries, but this ancient threat, thought to have been around for millennia, is still very much a danger in our modern world.

According to research published in 2022, the bacterium that causes typhoid fever is evolving extensive drug resistance, and it’s rapidly replacing strains that aren’t resistant.

Currently, antibiotics are the only way to effectively treat typhoid, which is caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S Typhi). Yet over the past three decades, the bacterium’s resistance to oral antibiotics has been growing and spreading.