Cancer cells interact with their neighborhood — which scientists term the tumor microenvironment — in many ways, including obtaining extra resources needed to fuel their unchecked growth. Like a fishing trawler deploying its net, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells reform their cell surfaces to grab additional nutrients from the jelly-like substance between cells called the extracellular matrix.

This cellular scavenging process — known as macropinocytosis — affects the area surrounding the tumor, making the connective tissue stiffer and preventing immune cells from reaching the tumor.

Until today, skin, brain, and all tissues of the human body were difficult to observe in detail with an optical microscope, since the contrast in the image was hindered by the high density of their structures. The research group of the Molecular Microscopy and Spectroscopy Lab at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genoa has devised a new method that allows scientists to see and photograph biological samples in all their complexity, obtaining clear and detailed images. The new technique has been made available to the scientific community in “open science” mode, representing an advantage in the biomedical field, since it allows us to observe active cells, even in the presence of diseases, as well as to understand how drugs interact with living tissues.

It’s tick season, and University of Missouri researcher Roman Ganta is fighting back.

As summer heat fuels the rise of lone star ticks across the Midwest and beyond, so too emerges a microscopic menace: Ehrlichia chaffeensis, the dangerous bacterium behind the disease human monocytic ehrlichiosis (HME).

Like all bacteria, this tick-borne killer has potential to evolve and outsmart the antibiotic currently used to treat HME.

The National Biofoundry Project Team at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), led by Dr. Haseong Kim, has spearheaded an international joint research effort (including institutions from Korea, the U.S., the U.K., Singapore, and others—10 in total) to create a new standard framework that simplifies and enhances the accuracy and efficiency of synthetic biology research.