A new technology can make nanoscale protein measurements - which may mean understanding the effects of therapeutic agents in tumor cells and different cell populations within patients, a key step toward being able to tailor therapy for each patient.

Currently, research on cancer agent activity requires patients to undergo several invasive biopsies to generate enough cells for testing.   A group of researchers have developed a highly sensitive test called the nano-immunoassay (NIA) that can make nanoscale protein measurements in cells from minimally invasive blood draws or fine-needle aspirates. The researchers used a microfluidic instrument called the Nanopro1000.  

Quick, what's the world's favorite beverage?

If you said 'beer', you're wrong, water and tea are way ahead, but it means the most comprehensive deciphering of the beer's proteome (the set of proteins that make beer "beer") ever reported will interest you just the same.   Their report on the beer proteome could give brewers a new way to engineer and even customize the flavor and aroma of beer by experimenting with the proteinaceous components.

Beer is the world's favorite alcoholic beverage, so you needn't feel bad about your beverage answer.

Can crowdsourcing lead to better medicine?   

Crowdsourcing is used in astronomy and protein folding in biology, along with engineering and computer software. But can the 'wisdom of crowds' also help cure disease?

It's certainly possible.  An unheralded clockmaker in England named John Harrison showed that longitude could be determined by using a timepiece, making the study of astronomy by experts overkill and revolutionizing travel by sea

A group at Harvard created The Challenge in February to find out if citizen science could work for diabetes research too, and their results are in.