Sudden Death– A Tale of Cell Suicide

Presented by Marshall Thomas Every day, a program of cell death called apoptosis destroys millions of cells in our bodies. Though it sounds morbid and scary, apoptosis is critical for keeping us healthy by removing old and damaged cells. This staves off cancer and infections. I’m interested in apoptosis because of its obvious applications to human health and disease, but also because the cell death … Continue reading Sudden Death– A Tale of Cell Suicide

Mindfulness meditation: A mental workout to benefit the brain

Meditation has ancient, religious roots, but it has also become a secular practice, implemented to promote wellbeing and to treat depression and anxiety. Skeptics might be wary of this jump from spiritual origins to medical treatment, but mounting evidence suggests that meditation can have tangible effects on the brain. In a practice called mindfulness meditation, people concentrate on the present moment: on breathing, physical sensations, … Continue reading Mindfulness meditation: A mental workout to benefit the brain

Racing CARs against Cancer

You may have recently heard about cases of acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL) being cured in a few adults and children using a new type of cell therapy [1]. In these studies, scientists took a patient’s own immune cells, altered their genetic material so that these cells would attack the leukemia, then put the modified immune cells back into the patient. The immune cells used in … Continue reading Racing CARs against Cancer

Food for Thought: Brain-Body Interactions and the Regulation of Hunger

They say that the key to a man’s heart is through his stomach. A more biologically accurate metaphor would be that your gut holds several keys—not to your heart, but to your brain. Remarkably, the gut is capable of altering the brain’s ability to process sensory information and generate behavior. This is achieved through the release of gut hormones into the bloodstream, which then enter … Continue reading Food for Thought: Brain-Body Interactions and the Regulation of Hunger

Gene Variants of a “Stress” Gene Have Profound Impacts on Health

Scientists can study stress by observing people who suffer from it. What are the physiological changes these people undergo, if any? Is their appetite normal? And what about the heart rate? Lots of observations are possible, meaning there a lot of ways to approach scientific research on stress. But now, researcher Dr. Liesbeth van Rossum of the Erasmus Medical Center (Netherlands) has found another way … Continue reading Gene Variants of a “Stress” Gene Have Profound Impacts on Health