An international study led by scientists at the University of Exeter in the U.K. suggests how to combine antibiotic and bacteriophage therapy optimally, in order to reduce antibiotic use and potentially prevent multidrug resistance in bacteria.

Intracranial aneurysms, outwards bulges ballooning out of an artery, are surprisingly common in middle age, with an estimated prevalence of 2% in the general population. While only a small fraction of these common aneurysms actually go on to rupture, one-fourth of these ruptured aneurysms will lead to sudden death before hospitalization.

Attempts to modernize the conceptual framework of brain function and dysfunction are one prerequisite for brain disorders to benefit from precision medicine. For the circuit-based insights that are slowly emerging to benefit patients, though, better targeting methods are needed.

Habituation to repeatedly presented stimuli is a prerequisite to adapting to the environment and is, often, reduced in patients with autism spectrum disorder, which may account for social impairments. However, the brain circuitry, regulators and the molecular mechanisms involved in habituation are poorly understood.

Brain disorders have not yet profited from advances in precision medicine to the same extent that other disorders have. With the advent of magnetic resonance imaging and other technologies, watching the brain at work has made great strides in recent decades. But those data have often been shoehorned into the categories of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Researchers are working to bring diagnostic categories in line with a modern understanding the brain.

Researchers from Monash University in Melbourne have developed a method for determining which genes are "in play" in causing cardiac abnormalities, and the technique not only confirmed well-known congenital heart disease genes, but also discovered 35 new genes not previously suspected in the disease.

An international collaborative study led by Chinese researchers at Wuhan University is the first to have discovered a new small molecule, termed IMA-1, and shown it to be safe and effective for the treatment of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) in mouse and macaque models.

Modulation of a single amino acid in the reprogramming factor Kruppel-like factor 4 (KLF4) has been demonstrated to markedly improve natural transcription factor function and to result in faster and more effective reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells.

Immunotherapeutic targeting of stage-specific embryonic antigen-4 has been shown to inhibit pancreatic cancer growth in animal models and cancer cell lines, indicating that this approach has promise for treating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and possibly other SSEA-4-positive cancers, according to new a Taiwan/U.S. collaborative study.

Australian researchers have developed a new single-cell expressed barcoding strategy termed SPLINTR (Single-cell Profiling and LINeage TRacing), to investigate the key basic nongenetic transcriptional processes underlying malignant clonal fitness in mouse models of leukemia.