Cancer remains a leading cause of mortality worldwide. The therapeutic options to treat cancer are often limited, which reduces the chance to successfully treat patients. To tackle this health problem, interventions are developed such as immunotherapies to target or influence the immune system. For example, cancer vaccines that are potentially able to initiate anti-tumour responses.
Science Digest
By: Milo Molleson
From house mouse to laboratory mouse
The relationship between humans and mice has a long and captivating history. The house mouse, scientifically known as Mus musculus domesticus, has shared our narrative since its beginning; eating our grain and scurrying around our floors at night since before we left our nomadic lifestyles…
Looking back at mankind’s history, we can see how the concept of circularization influenced the development of our society. Wheels, for example, are one of the most important first human inventions. Yet the concept of circularity is also prevalent naturally in biology. Molecules such as RNA, proteins, and nucleotides are more stable when circularized. But…
Scientists have been speculating for over 50 years about RNA’s role at the beginning of life. They debate that before depending on DNA, primitive cells relied on RNA. This so-called RNA world would have existed some 4 billion years ago. But could primitive molecules have really depended on RNA before DNA?
When Sars-CoV-2 spread at the beginning of 2020, scientists started screening libraries full of drugs for possible treatments. This was the moment when the general public was introduced to drug repurposing.
Precision medicine can be seen as tailoring a suit. Just a tailor takes individual measurements from an individual to ensure a good fit, precision medicine incorporates a patient´s genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors to develop targeted treatments.
DCIS is a potential breast cancer precursor lesion that occurs in 20-25% of diagnosed breast cancers.
The risk factors for DCIS include obesity, lifestyle choices such as smoking, and rarely familial mutation such a BRCA mutations. Not every DCIS progresses to an invasive disease.
Cilia are highly specialised structures that belong to the list of ancestral eukaryotic compartments together with nuclei and mitochondria. They protrude from the surface of nearly all human cells, acting as cellular antennae, sometimes more than one on each cell. Some cilia are involved in motility where they are found in specialised epithelia to facilitate…
By: Feline Velthuis
During the COVID-19 pandemic, all eyes were on the mathematical models that would tell us how we could control the outbreak, how occupied hospitals would be and if we could celebrate Christmas together. Worldwide, lots of different models were used to make predictions on the development of the outbreak and the impact…
2001- a breakthrough year for geneticists: the year in which the most important biological code was published. Groups from the US, UK, Japan, Germany and China collaborated to publish the first draft sequence of the human genome [1] based on the sequences of anonymous volunteers. And so, the first pieces in the human genetics puzzle…