Utilizing CRISPR for better antibiotics

Drug screening with Mobile-CRISPRi

15-Jan-2019 - A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher and his collaborators at the University of California, San Francisco have repurposed the gene-editing tool CRISPR to study which genes are targeted by particular antibiotics, providing clues on how to improve existing antibiotics or develop new ...

First-of-its-kind biofabrication research lab opens at University of Illinois

03-Jul-2018 - Enabled by a generous gift from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust , the BioMaker Lab at the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Lab (MRL) will be the first state-of-the-art interdisciplinary biofabrication hub in the world. This new facility will enable non-specialists and specialists alike from ...

New dyes detect disease through heartbeat signals

18-Sep-2017 - Vibrant tones of yellow, orange, and red move in waves across the screen. Although the display looks like psychedelic art, it's actually providing highly technical medical information -- the electrical activity of a beating heart stained with voltage-sensitive dyes to test for injury or ...

Shooting the achilles heel of nervous system cancers

24-Jul-2017 - Virtually all cancer treatments used today also damage normal cells, causing the toxic side effects associated with cancer treatment. A cooperative research team led by researchers at Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer Center devised a strategy to target cancer cells while sparing normal cells. ...

New hope for Zika treatment found in large-scale screen of existing drugs

31-Aug-2016 - Scientists report that a specialized drug screen test using lab-grown human cells has revealed two classes of compounds already in the pharmaceutical arsenal that may work against mosquito-borne Zika virus infections. In a summary of their work the investigators say they screened 6,000 existing ...

UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Janssen R&D collaborate to treat Chagas disease

Team will seek new therapeutic targets and treatments for this neglected tropical disease

11-Jan-2016 - Researchers at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego have entered into a research collaboration with Janssen Research & Development, LLC (Janssen R&D), one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, to identify new ...

A cheap, disposable device for diagnosing disease

04-Dec-2015 - The development of a reusable microfluidic device for sorting and manipulating cells and other micro/nano meter scale objects will make biomedical diagnosis of diseases cheaper and more convenient in regions where medical facilities are sparse or cost is prohibitive. Researchers at Penn State ...

New way to prepare molecules for drug testing

Metal-catalyzed cross-couplings of carbon bonds could enable creation of libraries of drug candidates to accelerate drug discovery

21-Aug-2013 - James Bond had his reasons for ordering his martinis “shaken, not stirred.” Similarly, drug manufacturers need to make sure the molecules in a new drug are arranged in an exact manner, lest there be dire consequences. Specifically, they need to be wary of enantiomers, mirror-image molecules ...

New insights into how stem cells determine what tissue to become

03-Aug-2010 - Within 24 hours of culturing adult human stem cells on a new type of matrix, University of Michigan researchers were able to make predictions about how the cells would differentiate, or what type of tissue they would become. Their results are published in the Aug. 1 edition of Nature ...

Watching drug activity in single molecule

17-Feb-2010 - Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) researchers have developed a new technology that allows them to directly visualize functional motions of individual enzymes in nearly real time. That means that, for first time, researchers can see how molecular movements are affected by antibiotic binding. ...