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Cannibalistic cancer eats itself to survive treatment
Stubborn cancer cells play a cunning trick when faced with treatments designed to kill them—they eat themselves to survive. But Lisa Schafranek has found a way to starve the cancer cells, making them more susceptible to cancer therapy.
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Jetlag skin patch may prevent brain damage in newborns
Melatonin patches could help improve the outcome for babies starved of oxygen at birth, says James Aridas from Monash University.
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Boosting the libido of prostate cancer survivors
Perth researchers have shown that twice-weekly exercise can improve sexual function in prostate cancer patients by 50 per cent.
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Why are cells different?
Genes are not enough to explain the difference between a skin cell and a stem cell, a leaf cell and a root cell, or the complexity of the human brain. Genes don’t explain the subtle ways in which your parents’ environment before you were conceived might affect your offspring.
Another layer of complexity—the epigenome— is at work determining when and where genes are turned on and off.
Ryan Lister is unravelling this complexity. He’s created ways of mapping the millions of molecular markers of where genes have been switched on or off, has made the first maps of these markers in plants and humans, and has revealed key differences between the markers in cells with different fates.
Ocker cells shake up skeletal science
A population of versatile stem cells that snap into action after injury may also be the key to preventing and treating certain cancers.
Reprogrammed stem cells ‘remember’ past life
Stem cells generated from adult cells still retain a memory of their past despite being reprogrammed, Australian scientists have found. Now scientists think they can teach the cells to forget their past.
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Unwrapping brain development
Not satisfied with transforming plant biology and stem cell science, The University of Western Australia’s Ryan Lister is also tacking the human brain.
Your memories in DNA?
A Queensland researcher thinks that long-term memory could be stored in DNA. It’s a radical concept that he’s going to test over the next year.
Repairing the brain with its own stem cells
Kaylene Young believes she can persuade lazy stem cells in our brain to repair brain injuries and even treat diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s.
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