Health, Science | featured news

Major academic medical centers in New York and around the country are spending and recruiting heavily in what has become an arms race within the war on cancer. The investments are based on the belief that the medical establishment is moving toward the routine sequencing of every patient’s genome in the quest for “precision medicine,” a course for prevention and treatment based on the special, even unique characteristics of the patient’s genes.

Researchers might have found the Holy Grail in the war against cancer, a miracle drug that has killed every kind of cancer tumor it has come in contact with, the New York Post reported. The drug works by blocking a protein called CD47 that is essentially a "do not eat" signal to the body's immune system, according to Science Magazine.

Scientists in Tanzania turned an iPhone into an amateur microscope to check schoolchildren for intestinal worms.

A baby born with the AIDS virus appears to have been cured, scientists announced Sunday, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who's now 2 1/2 and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection....

Flying increases flatulence, according to an article published Friday in the peer-reviewed New Zealand Medical Journal, and passengers should release the gas -- or risk painful medical consequences.

Cambridge University scientists say they have seen four-stranded DNA at work in human cells for the first time and wonder if it might provide a target for the development of novel anti-cancer treatments.

It has the makings of a science fiction movie: Zap someone's brain with mild jolts of electricity to try to stave off the creeping memory loss of Alzheimer's disease....

A paralyzed woman has been able to feed herself chocolate and move everyday items using a robotic arm directly controlled by thought, showing a level of agility and control approaching that of a human limb.

A pacemaker has been built inside a heart by converting beating muscle into cells which can control the organ's rhythm, US researchers report. The heartbeat is controlled by electrical signals and if these go awry the consequences can be fatal. Scientists injected a genetically-modified virus into guinea pigs to turn part of their heart into a new, working pacemaker.

Scientists have identified a new gene variant that seems to strongly raise the risk for Alzheimer's disease, giving a fresh target for research into treatments for the mind-robbing disorder.