Synthetic biology is seeing rapid advances, but the medical applications have thus far remained largely elusive. But now researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have developed a tool that can track specific populations of bacteria in the gut of living organisms and document population changes over time.

Australian researchers have developed the first potent new small-molecule inhibitors capable of blocking the activation of apoptotic cell death before it causes damage to mitochondria, they reported in a study published in the Oct. 7, 2019, issue of Nature Chemical Biology. Those first-in-class inhibitors will be useful tools for evaluating the mechanisms underlying apoptosis, assessing the impact of the pharmacological blockade of apoptosis in experimental models and potentially have multiple clinical indications.

There's a yin and yang to neoantigens, Alberto Bardelli told the audience at the 2019 annual conference of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Barcelona, Spain, last month. They contribute to tumorigenesis, resistance and tumor heterogeneity. But they are also often specific to tumor cells but not normal cells and "some," he said, "are actionable targets."

William Kaelin, Peter Ratcliffe, and Gregg Semenza have jointly won the 2019 Nobel Prize "for their discoveries of how cells sense oxygen," the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced today.

The leucine-repeat rich kinase 2 (Lrrk2) gets most of its attention in the context of Parkinson's disease (PD). Variants in Lrrk2 are a major cause of familial PD (though familial PD makes up only a small fraction of overall PD cases).

Arm and hand prosthetics have long been the focus for researchers aiming to offer sensation as well as more precise and easily controlled movement by connecting patient nerves to sensors in the prosthetic. But now that effort has been extended to leg prosthetics as well.

A fast response with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for cardiac arrest victims can save their lives, but older adults often are alone in their home or a bedroom when symptoms strike. Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a machine learning-based system that listens to ambient audio via dedicated smart speakers or smartphones for agonal breathing, the distinctive sound that a person in cardiac arrest makes.