News & Commentaries

Aurora, CO, USA – Think of energy metabolism like a party popper: Ripping something apart releases a bang. Most of your cells rip apart sugar to release the “bang” of energy. A University of Colorado Cancer Center (UCCC) study published today in the journal Cancer Cell shows that cancer stem cells switch from metabolizing sugar to metabolizing protein, or more precisely amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein.

San Francisco, CA, USA – Currently, the only therapy for metabolic liver disease is an organ transplant. Tracy Grikscheit, MD, an attending physician and regenerative medicine scientist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, hopes to change that reality. She has been awarded nearly $1.3 million by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to study stem cell therapy for liver failure.

New Brunswick, NJ, USA – Rutgers scientists have created a tiny, biodegradable scaffold to transplant stem cells and deliver drugs, which may help treat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, aging brain degeneration, spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries.

Baltimore, MD, USA – Since Carnegie Institution’s Barbara McClintock received her Nobel Prize on her discovery of jumping genes in 1983, we have learned that almost half of our DNA is made up of jumping genes – called transposons. Given their ability of jumping around the genome in developing sperm and egg cells, their invasion triggers DNA damage and mutations.