DNA helicopters offer insight into how biological machines power living things BY Caitlin McDermott-MurphyHarvard Correspondent For decades, researchers have chased ways to study how biological machines power living things. Every mechanical movement — from contracting a muscle to replicating DNA — relies on energy-fueled molecular motors that take tiny, near-undetectable steps. Trying to see these movements is like trying to watch…
Glioblastoma is an incurable brain cancer that kills most patients less than two years after diagnosis. The disease is difficult to treat largely because tumors each contain multiple kinds of cells. The aggressive brain cancer can also vastly differ between patients, so much so that researchers debate whether glioblastoma should be considered a single disease. A new study may help…
Throughout the animal kingdom, males and females frequently exhibit sexual dimorphism: differences in characteristic traits that often make it easy to tell them apart. In mammals, one of the most common sex-biased traits is size, with males typically being larger than females. This is true in humans: Men are, on average, taller than women. However, biological differences among males and…
Boehringer Ingelheim has entered into a collaboration and global license agreement for Bridge Biotherapeutics’s autotaxin inhibitor BBT-877 to be developed for fibrosing interstitial lung diseases including IPF With this new partnership Boehringer Ingelheim further expands its commitment to bring new treatments to patients with fibrosing interstitial lung diseases including IPF Bridge Biotherapeutics stands to receive up to more than EUR…
BURLINGTON, Mass. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — MilliporeSigma and the Broad Institute of MITand Harvard today announced an agreement to offer non-exclusive licenses to CRISPR intellectual property (IP) under their respective control for use in commercial research and product development. “Together with the Broad Institute, we are simplifying the path to licensing CRISPR technology, which will make it more widely available to the global research and…
Series A Round Led by Vida Ventures and Omega Funds Company Platform Using Small Molecule Microarray (SMM) Technology has the Potential to Unlock Historically Undruggable Targets July 18, 2019 06:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time SAN MATEO, Calif. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Kronos Bio, Inc. (Kronos), a Two River portfolio company, today announced it has closed a $105 million Series A Preferred…
Woburn-based hearing loss startup Frequency Therapeutics has found its first partner, but it will give up most of its commercial rights in a deal announced this week. Japanese firm Astellas Health will join Frequency Therapeutics as it steers its first treatment for the most common cause of hearing loss through the clinic. In exchange for $80 million upfront and a…
As cancer cells progress, they accumulate hundreds and even thousands of genetic and epigenetic changes, resulting in protein expression profiles that are radically different from that of healthy cells. But despite their heavily mutated proteome, cancer cells can evade recognition and attack by the immune system. Immunotherapies, particularly checkpoint inhibitors that reinvigorate exhausted T cells, have revolutionized the treatment of…
BOSTON – Higher levels of daily physical activity may protect against the cognitive decline and neurodegeneration (brain tissue loss) from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that alters the lives of many older people, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found. In a paper in JAMA Neurology, the team also reported that lowering vascular risk factors may offer additional protection against Alzheimer’s and…
A new study published in Cell Reports found that a transcription factor called Slug serves as ‘command central’ for determining breast stem cell health, regulating both stem cell activity and repair of DNA damage. The research team also discovered that Slug likely functions as a safeguard against age-related decline of breast stem cell function. Transcription factors are proteins that bind…