Bioscience News - GEG Tech top picks

Cancer cells obtained from a blood test may be able to predict how early-stage lung cancer patients will fare, a team from the University of Michigan has shown. ANN ARBOR—Cancer cells obtained from

The soaring popularity of gene editing has made celebrities of the principal investigators who pioneered the field — but their graduate students and postdocs are often overlooked.

The obstruction of coronary arteries that can stem from a heart attack, force around five million people to have stent implants every year, according to estimations by diverse sources like the OECD. This small metallic mesh tube enlarges arteries and lets blood flow normally but its implantation also damages the arterial wall. To repair it, the body triggers a coagulation response that can create new blockages or thromboses. To avoid this natural protection, patients must take anticoagulant drugs that can cause side effects if they are administered for too long or too short a duration. As a result, up to 10% of patients have complications related to their stent and one out of every two who suffer a thrombosis can die.

Using video microscopy in the living mouse lung, UC San Francisco scientists have revealed that the lungs play a previously unrecognized role in blood production. As reported online March 22, 2017, in Nature, the researchers found that the lungs produced more than half of the platelets – blood components required for the clotting that stanches bleeding – in the mouse circulation.