Health Sciences

PHILADELPHIA — Toilets may not make for a glamorous subject, but they’re critical to global health. On Monday, Nov.

PHILADELPHIA — Passing one’s genes on to the next generation is a mark of evolutionary success. So it makes sense that the body would work to ensure that the genes the next generation inherits are exact replicas of the originals.

PHILADELPHIA — Several fatal brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease, are connected by the misfolding of specific proteins into disordered clumps and stable, insoluble fibrils called amyloid. Amyloid fibrils are hard to break up due to their stable, ordered structure. For example, a-synuclein forms amyloid fibrils that accumulate in Lewy Bodies in Parkinson's disease.

PHILADELPHIA — Just north of Philadelphia, the communities of West and South Ambler are working to recover from the ramifications of their town’s long-closed asbestos factory.

PHILADELPHIA — Fifty years ago, UK researcher John Gurdon demonstrated that genetic material from non-reproductive cells could be reprogrammed into an embryonic state when transferred into an egg.

PHILADELPHIA — Understanding how any disease progresses is one of the first and most important steps towards finding treatments to stop it. This has been the case for such brain-degenerating conditions as Alzheimer's disease.

PHILADELPHIA — The cancer-causing form of the gene Myc alters the metabolism of mitochondria, the cell’s powerhouse, making it dependent on the amino acid glutamine for survival. In fact, 40 percent of all “hard-to-treat” cancers have a mutation in the Myc gene.

PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine has received a $1.5 million grant for student scholarships from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

PHILADELPHIA — Fat cells store excess energy and signal these levels to the brain.

PHILADELPHIA — When a virus such as influenza invades our bodies, interferon proteins are among the first immune molecules produced to fight off the attack. Interferon can also play a role in suppressing tumor growth and the effects of autoimmune diseases, and doctors may use an artificial form of interferon to treat patients with certain cancers or multiple sclerosis.