Boosting an exercise-related gene in the brain works as a powerful anti-depressant in mice—a finding that could lead to a new anti-depressant drug target, according to a Yale School of Medicine report in Nature Medicine.

“The VGF exercise-related gene and target for drug development could be even better than chemical antidepressants because it is already present in the brain,” said Ronald Duman, professor of psychiatry and senior author of the study.

Depression affects 16 percent of the population in the United States, at a related cost of $83 billion each year. Currently available anti-depressants help 65 percent of patients and require weeks to months before the patients experience relief.

A multidisciplinary team of UCLA scientists were able to differentiate metastatic cancer cells from normal cells in patient samples using leading-edge nanotechnology that measures the softness of the cells.

The study in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, represents one of the first times researchers have been able to take living cells from cancer patients and apply nanotechnology to analyze them and determine which were cancerous and which were not. The nano science measurements may provide a potential new method for detecting cancer, especially in cells from body cavity fluids where diagnosis using current methods is typically very challenging. The method also may aid in personalizing treatments for patients.

The compound sulforaphane, whose natural precursors are found at high levels in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, has been hailed for its chemopreventive powers against cancer.

Now sulforaphane has demonstrated new skills in treating a genetic skin blistering disorder called epidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS), Pierre Coulombe and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore report at the American Society for Cell Biology 47th Annual Meeting.

EBS is a rare but devastating inherited condition in which fluid-filled lesions called bullae appear at sites of frictional trauma to the skin. Unfortunately, treatment options for EBS are limited and palliative in nature.

Finally, a win for human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).

Mice whose skulls were made whole again by bone tissue grown from hESCs shows that healing critical-size defects (defects that would not otherwise heal on their own) in intramembraneous bone, the flat bone type that forms the skull, is a vivid demonstration of new techniques to use hESCs for tissue regeneration.

Using mesenchymal precursor cells isolated from hESCs, the Hopkins team steered them into bone regeneration by using “scaffolds,” tiny, three-dimensional platforms made from biomaterials.

Researchers at Wageningen University, Netherlands, have shown that a drop in atmospheric nitrogen deposition will slow down forest growth. Lower tree growth implies less carbon sequestration and thus a decrease in the sequestration of carbon dioxide. This may have a significant impact on the targets set in the Kyoto protocol.

Researcher Wieger Wamelink of Wageningen University showed in model calculations that the carbon sequestration for all forests in The Netherlands, for example, may drop to 27 % of its present value. This reduced sequestration is expected as a result of pollution control policy strategies in all countries with present high nitrogen deposition, mainly located in Europe, North America and Asia.

Carbon dioxide is fixed in wood when a tree is growing.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new x-ray technique that could be used to detect hidden explosives, drugs and human cancers more effectively.

Professor Robert Cernik and colleagues from The School of Materials have built a prototype color 3D X-ray system that allows material at each point of an image to be clearly identified.

The technique developed by the Manchester scientists is known as tomographic energy dispersive diffraction imaging or TEDDI.

It harnesses all the wavelengths present in an x-ray beam to create probing 3D pictures.