The red, tube-shaped flowers of the firecracker bush (Bouvardia ternifolia), native to Mexico and the American Southwest, attract hummingbirds. The bush also provides the chemical bouvardin, which the lab of University of Colorado Cancer Center and CU Boulder researcher, Tin Tin Su, PhD, and others have shown to slow a cancer's ability to make proteins that tell cancer cells to grow and spread.

When a non-scientist tries to imagine a scientist, the image that often arises is one of a somewhat remote, rather idealistic genius sitting alone in their room or laboratory and somehow discovering the most amazing things without every having contact with the 'normal' world. But science is just as much a part of life as any other activity.

The benefits of a daily aspirin may extend beyond heart health to colorectal cancer treatment, say City of Hope researchers who have found aspirin appears to reduce tumor growth and inhibit recurrence of the disease. The trick now, researchers say, is to determine the right dosage of aspirin that can be used as a daily prophylactic without triggering dangerous side effects such as stomach and brain bleeds.

A novel nanoparticle vaccine that combines two major influenza proteins is effective in providing broad, long-lasting protection against influenza virus in mice, showing promise as a universal flu vaccine, according to a study by the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

The world scientific community is waging a difficult and prolonged war on cancer. New research in the field of immunogenic cell death can extend the area of drugs application and ensure patients' protection from relapse after therapy.

Immune checkpoints are surface proteins that cancer cells use to evade immune response. These surface proteins are critical for cancer cell growth and drugs targeting these proteins have revolutionized the management of patients with a wide array of cancers. Finding a mechanism to degrade these immune checkpoints may allow the immune system to kill cancer cells.

Proper disposal of leftover medication, particularly antibiotics and opioids, can help reduce antibiotic resistance, prevent children from being poisoned and stop the misuse of addiction-forming drugs. But a telephone survey conducted by researchers at UC San Francisco found that fewer than half of California pharmacies provided disposal instructions meeting U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines, and