Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Diabetes Center have discovered a safe and effective novel therapy to reduce insulin requirements and hypoglycemic episodes in adult subjects with recent onset Type 1 diabetes by promoting the patient's own beta cell function and insulin production - the first such discovery to target diabetes in this manner.

Our bodies consist of many different kinds of cells, each with their own role. The Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka had made earlier the discovery, earning the Nobel Prize in 2012, that cells from adult skin can be converted to cells typical of early embryos, so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). This process is called reprogramming.

The drug overdose epidemic currently gripping the nation is so tenacious in part because it's being driven by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that comes in many forms. Each form has a slightly different chemical structure, and clandestine chemists are constantly cooking up new ones. From a law-enforcement perspective, this makes fentanyl a moving target and very difficult to control.

The innate immune system is the first line of defense, with cells that quickly identify "foreign" motifs from viruses and bacteria and mount up a counterattack to eliminate them. As a key strategy to sense the presence of pathogens, the cells of the innate immune system use receptors that can identify microbial DNA and in turn activate a protein called STING (STimulator of Interferon Genes). Once activated, STING turns on genes that help cells fight off the infecting pathogen.

Researchers are the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer are unraveling a crucial thread that explains why cancer so often becomes resistant to treatment. In a breakthrough finding in 2003, Max S. Wicha, M.D., and colleagues discovered that a small number of cells within a tumor - the cancer stem cells - were responsible for fueling the growth and spread of cancer. Kill the stem cells, and you could master the cancer.

A regimen of low-dose aspirin potentially may reduce plaques in the brain, which will reduce Alzheimer's disease pathology and protect memory, according to neurological researchers at Rush University Medical Center, who published the results of their study today in the July issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Bolstering the notion that RNA should be considered an important drug-discovery target, scientists at Scripps Research have found that several existing, FDA-approved anti-cancer drugs may work, in part, by binding tightly to RNA, the regulators of the basic activities of life within cells. The research offers another approach for tackling diseases that have been considered "undruggable," including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and certain cancers.