Investigators at Pennsylvania State University have described a novel approach to combat Clostridioides difficile infection using a synthetic microbiome therapy, which offers an alternative to antibiotics and fecal microbiota transplant (FMT). C. diff, the main cause of antibiotic-related diarrhea, is responsible for an estimated half a million infections annually in the U.S.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have uncovered a key mechanism underlying the treatment resistance of melanoma with the BRAF V600E mutation through pathways involved in focal adhesion and extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling. These two processes remodel the tumor cell environment in melanoma through the RAF/MEK cell signaling pathway. However, the combined use of FAK inhibitors with a RAF-MEK clamp overcame this resistance.

Too much of a good thing, it turns out, is a concept that applies to oxygen. And researchers at the University of California at San Francisco are working on a small molecule, Hypoxystat, that can lower tissue oxygen levels and prevent damage when oxygen levels are too high. When administered to mice with the rare mitochondrial disorder Leigh syndrome, the molecule more than tripled their average lifespan.

The map of cystic fibrosis (CF) research is being redrawn in the U.K. as improvements in treatment, and in particular the introduction of CF modulator drugs, mean people with the rare inherited disease are living much longer.

Researchers have altered the genetic code in a strain of Escherichia coli, reducing the number of stop codons from three to one and assigning the freed-up stop codons to nonstandard amino acids. They reported on the recoded bacterium, which they named OCHRE, in Nature on Feb. 5, 2025.

The lung and thrombosis may play a key role in cancer and metastasis progression, according to a collaborative study led by Cornell University scientists.

Using ALK+ lung cancer patient-derived cell lines, researchers have performed phosphoproteomic screening and identified guanylate kinase 1 (GUK1) as a TKI sensitive metabolic molecule in ALK-driven lung cancer. They reported their results online in Cell on Feb. 6, 2025.

The scientific establishment has launched a fight back against the Trump administration and the slew of executive orders that threaten to dismantle research funding, with a warning that the next month could be critical for the future of U.S. science.

New research has uncovered a complex interplay between extracellular matrix (ECM) structure and the transcriptional responses of cancer cells, showing how they alter their gene expression to ‘escape’ from ECM. The findings will make it easier to identify tumors that are likely to metastasize at an early stage.

Researchers from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Queensland, Australia and Emory University have shown that a potential new targeted therapy for childhood brain cancer was effective in infiltrating and killing tumor cells in mouse models.