In the largest genetic study of osteoarthritis, an international team of scientists including researchers from the University of Sheffield, have uncovered 52 new genetic changes linked to the disease, which doubles the number of genetic regions associated with the disabling condition. Scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, GSK and their collaborators - including Mark Wilkinson, Professor of Orthopaedics at the University of Sheffield - analysed the genomes of over 77,000 people with osteoarthritis.

One day we may be able to ingest tiny robots that deliver drugs directly to diseased tissue, thanks to research being carried out at EPFL and ETH Zurich. The group of scientists - led by Selman Sakar at EPFL and Bradley Nelson at ETH Zurich - drew inspiration from bacteria to design smart, biocompatible microrobots that are highly flexible.

A team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST has recently introduced a novel targeted drug delivery system that can improve the pharmacological and therapeutic properties of conventional cancer treatments. The new technology has dramatically enhanced safety and efficiency through the use of the supramolecularly built protein corona shield as a targeting agent through regulating the interfaces between nanoparticles and biological systems.

People who sleep less than six hours a night may be at increased risk of cardiovascular disease compared with those who sleep between seven and eight hours, suggests a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Poor quality sleep increases the risk of atherosclerosis - plaque buildup in the arteries throughout the body - according to the study.

People with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) can develop an otherwise-rare muscle cancer, called rhabdomyosarcoma, due to the muscle cells' continuous work to rebuild the damaged tissue. However, little is known about how the cancer arises, hindering development of a treatment or test that could predict cancer risk.

For many years, a team of researchers at the University of Copenhagen have been focussing on developing a vaccine that can protect against the disease pregnancy malaria from which 220,000 people die every year. Now they have come a significant step closer to being able to introduce such a vaccine in the market. In a new study published in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases the vaccine has been subjected to so-called phase one clinical trial, and the results are uplifting:

Bone marrow transplants, which involve transplanting healthy blood stem cells, offer the best treatment for many types of cancers, blood disorders and immune diseases. Even though 22,000 of these procedures are performed each year in the US, much remains to be understood about how they work.