A new study by investigators from Mass General Brigham analyzed data from participants who have been followed for over 50 years, starting before their births. Researchers found that maternal immune activity during a critical period of sex-dependent brain development in pregnancy affected the offspring’s long-term memory circuitry and function in childhood and midlife, with different patterns for males and females.

In work published today in Nature, researchers’ structural insights help reveal weak spot in malaria’s plan of attack which could help guide vaccine design. Contributors hailed from Fred Hutch, the Scripps Research Institute, the University of Copenhagen and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, as well as the Tanga Research Centre, the Infectious Disease Research Collaboration in Uganda, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), BC Cancer, Harvard Medical School and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have pinpointed what could be the early genetic origins of breast cancer—cancer-like mutations appearing in the cells of healthy women.

In a new study, the international collaborators analyzed the genomes of more than 48,000 individual breast cells from women without cancer, using novel techniques for decoding the genes of single cells. While the vast majority of cells appeared normal, nearly all of the women harboured a small number of breast cells—about 3 per cent—that carried genetic alterations commonly associated with cancer.

The findings, published today in Nature Genetics, suggest that these rare genetic anomalies may represent some of the earliest steps in a series of events that could culminate in breast cancer development.