A UTHealth Houston neurologist was among a group of two dozen healthcare professionals from across the globe who developed an international certification program designed to improve rehabilitation care among stroke survivors. 

Fungi have given medicine some of its biggest breakthroughs, from penicillin to cholesterol-lowering statins, yet most of the kingdom remains a genetic black box. Now Penn engineers led by Xue ‘Sherry’ Gao have built a gene-editing tool specifically for fungi and used it to switch long-silent drug-producing gene pathways back on. They surfaced eight new molecules—three with promising anti-cancer activity in cell lines.

Detecting infectious disease threats early and responding quickly can dramatically alter the course of an infectious outbreak. Technologies such as wastewater surveillance are transforming how public health officials identify emerging pathogens, monitor community transmission and direct resources where they're needed most. Scripps Research has been at the forefront of this effort, developing computational and laboratory tools that have helped make wastewater disease tracking a reality for global health. Now, with two new grants from the Gates Foundation totaling $2 million, Scripps Research scientists will further expand these capabilities—developing more comprehensive wastewater surveillance technologies while building artificial intelligence systems to integrate diverse data and improve outbreak prediction. 

Cachexia, a syndrome marked by unwanted weight loss, sickness, and loss of appetite that accompanies and amplifies chronic illness, affects roughly half of all cancer patients and is responsible for a quarter of all cancer deaths. Incoming Salk professor discovers that some lung cancer tumors can induce cachexia by communicating directly with the brain using a lipid signaling molecule—hijacking the nervous system and impacting behavior. Findings suggest that tumors affect the peripheral nervous system and dietary changes could be used to treat cachexia and improve outcomes in lung cancer patients.

The children of mothers born with heart defects face a higher risk of being developmentally vulnerable, meaning they face challenges related to physical health, emotional maturity and communication – according to a new study led by Muhammad Zakir Hossin of the Karolinska Institutet, published July 2^nd in the open access journal PLOS Medicine.