Coffee can help reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes - but only filtered coffee, rather than boiled coffee. New research from Chalmers University of Technology and Umeå University, both in Sweden, show that the choice of preparation method influences the health effects of coffee.

Every cell contains a vast number of proteins, each of which has a specific function, for example as a receptor for another molecule or an enzyme that catalyses chemical reactions. Disorders of such mechanisms can seriously affect a cell and cause diseases such as cancer, in which the sick cell functions in a fundamentally different way to a healthy cell.

Neuroscientists at Lund University in Sweden have developed a new technology that engineers the shell of a virus to deliver gene therapy to the exact cell type in the body that needs to be treated. The researchers believe that the new technology can be likened to dramatically accelerating evolution from millions of years to weeks.

Researchers from Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have designed an antimicrobial polymer that can kill bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics, including the superbug Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn's Disease and ulcerative colitis, are linked to abnormalities of the gut microbiota in humans and in animals. Patients generally present reduced bacterial diversity in their intestinal flora along with excessive levels of bacteria that express a protein called flagellin, which favors their mobility.

A team of scientists from Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) together with their colleagues developed a method of targeted drug delivery to cancer cells. The discovery is based on the use of mesenchymal stem cells and microcapsules made of polymeric compounds.

UT Health San Antonio researchers, working with collaborators at the University of Florida, have discovered a safe and potent next generation of drugs to fight multiple types of leukemia and lymphoma in adults and children. The journal Nature Medicine reported the findings Dec. 2.