A groundbreaking new study by UC Davis researchers has uncovered why obesity both fuels cancer growth and allows blockbuster new immunotherapies to work better against those same tumors. The paradoxical findings, published today in Nature Medicine, give cancer doctors important new information when choosing drugs and other treatments for cancer patients.

Exposure to blue light decreases blood pressure, reducing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, a new study from the University of Surrey and Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf in collaboration with Philips reports. During this study, published in the prestigious European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, participants were exposed to 30 minutes of whole-body blue light at approximately 450 nanometres, a dose comparable to daily sunlight - followed by exposure to a control light on a different day.

Millions of people are living with the long-term consequences of cancer and its treatment, but currently there is very little research on the problems they face and how these can be tackled, according to the UK's National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI). Thanks to successes in research on diagnosing and treating cancer, more people are living longer with cancer and with the lasting side-effects of treatments.

A pioneering technique designed to spot differences between immune cells in tumours could speed the development of cancer treatments, research suggests. Scientists say the approach could be used to help doctors choose the best treatments for individual patients and predict which tumours are likely to respond to a particular therapy.

Ageing and a low life expectancy are caused, at least partly, by oxidative stress. A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Ivana Ivanovi-Burmazovi from the Chair of Bioinorganic Chemistry at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), together with researchers from the USA, have discovered that zinc can activate an organic molecule, helping to protect against oxidative stress.

In November 1998, the world was introduced to human embryonic stem cells, the blank slate cells that arise at the earliest stages of development and that go on to become any of the scores of cell types that make up a human. In a succinct paper published in the journal Science and heralded around the world, University of Wisconsin-Madison developmental biologist James Thomson described the first successful derivation and culturing of the master cells of life.

Three paraplegics who sustained cervical spinal cord injuries many years ago are now able to walk with the aid of crutches or a walker thanks to new rehabilitation protocols that combine targeted electrical stimulation of the lumbar spinal cord and weight-assisted therapy. This latest study, called STIMO (STImulation Movement Overground), establishes a new therapeutic framework to improve recovery from spinal cord injury.