At ASN Kidney Week 2016 in Chicago, investigators showed progress toward creating a functional bioartificial kidney that could replace the need for dialysis or transplantation in the millions of patients with kidney failure.

A key requirement for such a device is the formation of a "living membrane" that consists of a tight kidney cell layer on artificial membrane surfaces and can transport molecules from one side to the other. In their presentation, Dimitrios Stamatialis, PhD from University of Twente in The Netherlands, Roos Masereeuw, PhD  from University of Utrecht in The Netherlands discussed achieving this using conditionally immortalized human renal proximal tubular epithelial cells (ciPTECs) on polyethersulfone-based hollow fiber membranes.

Our most beloved works of fiction hide well-trodden narratives - people want them, people expects them by now - and big data analysis can determine them. And most fictions is based on far fewer storylines than you might have imagined.

How cancer can suddenly reappear months, or years after treatment is complete is an ongoing mystery in incology.

A new study finds dormant tumor cells might have become latent because they cannibalized—basically ate—the body’s own stem cells. The team had been working on teaching adult stem cells from bone marrow, called mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs), to fight cancer when they noticed that the MSCs were disappearing from the cell cultures. The team was working on teaching adult stem cells from bone marrow, called mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs), to fight cancer when they noticed that the MSCs were disappearing from the cell cultures.

Around 65 million years ago, a massive asteroid crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, causing an impact so huge that the blast and its aftermath wiped out about 75 percent of all life on Earth, including most of the dinosaurs. It’s known as the Chicxulub impact and it may possibly have created habitats for our early life on Earth because the asteroid hit the Earth’s surface with such force that it pushed rocks – at the time about 6 miles beneath the surface – farther downward and then outward.

In a 2015 analysis, antibiotic resistance continued to increase for most bacteria and antibiotics under surveillance. It is worrying to see increased resistance to last-line antibiotics, but we still have time to turn the tide and ensure that antibiotics remain effective.

In particular, the EU average percentage of carbapenem resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae increased from 6.2% in 2012 to 8.1% in 2015, and combined resistance to carbapenems and polymyxins (e.g. colistin) was sometimes reported. These two groups of antibiotics are considered last-line antibiotics as they usually are the last treatment options for patients infected with bacteria resistant to other available antibiotics.

You should not smoke cigarettes and if you already do, you should stop. Though the U.S. FDA has damaged the smoking cessation possibilities for current users, and California has outright subsidized cigarette companies with punitive taxes on vaping, there may still be ways to limit the destructive potential of cigarettes: Red wine.