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IMPROVING the worst environments in the US could prevent 39 in every 100,000 cancer deaths.

Understanding how people recognize and control their own bodies could help researchers develop therapies for those who’ve lost their sense of self.

While studying the underpinnings of multiple sclerosis, investigators came across important clues for how to treat a very different disease: cancer. Researchers describe an antibody that can precisely target regulatory T cells which in turn unleashes the immune system to kill cancer cells. The team reports that the antibody decreased tumor growth in models of melanoma, glioblastoma and colorectal carcinoma, making it an attractive candidate for cancer immunotherapy.

Scientists are exploring a central component in glucose regulation. Their findings shed new light on the structure of the glucagon receptor, a highly promising target for diabetes drug development.

A small and preliminary clinical trial has found that injecting a common cold-like virus into the eyes of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) patients - one of the leading causes of blindness in the US - can halt and even reverse the progression of the disease.

The number of cases of an emerging and often multidrug-resistant fungus in the United States has grown from seven to 122 over the past nine months, according to a field report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report issued Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

THE WORLD’S LARGEST genetics research center isn’t at Harvard or Stanford or even the NIH. It’s a 20-mile drive from Hong Kong International Airport, in the bustling Chinese city of Shenzhen. BGI-–formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute—has sequenced the DNA of organisms big and small: millet, rice, the giant panda, 40 types of silkworm, the SARS virus, even a 4,000-year-old man named Inuk. And soon it will add a new name to its genomic guest book: Dubs, the Alaskan Malamute, and mascot for...

Favorable mutations that went along with increased fruit size and other beneficial traits in tomato plants do not always play well together. A study published in Cell found that natural mutations in two important tomato genes that were selected for different purposes in breeding can cause extreme branching and reduce fruit yield when they occur in the same plant. The researchers used those genes to create a tomato plant that grows more tomatoes.

China's food and drug authority has approved a clinical trial of human blood protein cultivated in transgenic rice seeds, which could lead to large-scale production of much-needed blood plasma.

Microbes can control their animal hosts by manipulating the molecular machinery of their cells, triggering patterns of gene expression that consequently contribute to health and disease, new research shows. The work, which was conducted in zebrafish and mice cells, could have implications for human inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.