A daily dose of vitamin D3 improves heart function in people with chronic heart failure, a five-year University of Leeds research project has found. Dr Klaus Witte, from the School of Medicine and Consultant Cardiologist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, led the study, known as VINDICATE.

How vascular tubes build, maintain and adapt continuously perfused lumens to meet local metabolic needs remains poorly understood. Recent studies showed that blood flow itself plays a critical role in the remodelling of vascular networks and suggested it is also required for the lumenization of new vascular connections.

Researchers in the group of Prof. Dr. Peter Vandenabeele (VIB/UGent) show that killed tumour cells can serve as a potent vaccine that stimulates the immune system to prevent the outgrowth of cancer cells. This finding opens novel perspectives for the use of necroptosis as a part of immunotherapy and for the screening for novel or existing cancer drugs that induce this type of immunogenic cell death.

The cancer treatment drug Imatinib, otherwise known as Gleevec is approved to treat various forms of cancer, mostly notably chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). However, researchers have stumbled onto another possible use for it, curing type 2 diabetes. The team - made up of scientists from the Scripps Research Institute in United States, South Korea-based company Hyndai Pharm Co., Ltd., the Seoul National University, and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)

Viruses have proven to be wily foes. Attempts to fend off viruses causing even the common cold or flu have failed, and new viral outbreaks such as dengue, Ebola or Zika continue to elude drugs. Given these challenges, a group at Stanford is tackling the problem from a different angle: boosting the human body's ability to resist the virus rather than taking on the virus directly.

Some people infected with HIV naturally produce antibodies that effectively neutralize many strains of the rapidly mutating virus, and scientists are working to develop a vaccine capable of inducing such "broadly neutralizing" antibodies that can prevent HIV infection.

Higher dietary intake of vitamin C has been found to have a potentially preventative effect on cataract progression in the first twin study of cataracts to examine to what degree genetic and environmental factors influence their progression with age. Cataract is a common condition in which the lens of the eye becomes cloudy as a result of oxidation over time.