Researchers at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute propose a new view of cancer based on Spatial Hallmark Ecosystems and its evolution during cancer progression. This conceptual framework combines the latest spatial single cell technologies with classical genomics and proteomics, to move from a static cancer view towards a more complex, dynamic, phenotype-driven model able to inspire new therapeutical opportunities.

Kyoto, Japan -- Pulmonary arterial hypertension, or PAH, is a rare and severe disease characterized by elevated blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries, which transport blood from the heart to the lungs. This can eventually lead to right heart failure, when the heart's right ventricle becomes too weak to pump sufficient blood through the lungs and to the rest of the body.

Current treatments for PAH have improved the outcome for patients, but the prognosis for this disease is still poor and some patients end up needing lung transplants. C-type natriuretic peptide, or CNP, is a hormone involved in the regulation of vascular function, and a team of researchers at Kyoto University and collaborating institutions wondered whether it might also have therapeutic potential in PAH.

"CNP has been studied mainly in cardiovascular biology, but we wondered whether it might also play an important protective role in pulmonary vascular disease," says first author Hiromu Yanagisawa. The role of this hormone and its receptor GC-B in the pulmonary vasculature and the development of PAH has remained unclear, so the team was motivated to investigate.

Researchers use the Drosophila fly as a model for Mosaic Variegated Aneuploidy (MVA) syndrome.

Errors in chromosome division impair the viability of neural stem cells.

Restoring mitochondrial function makes it possible to restore brain size.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers reconstructed clutches of oviraptors, bird-like but flightless dinosaurs that lived between 70 and 66 million years ago, to simulate heat transfer and infer hatching patterns in their clutches. They found that these dinosaurs didn’t hatch their eggs in the same way modern birds do. In addition to sitting on them, they likely used the sun as a co-incubator. The team pointed out that this method – although less efficient than the brooding of modern birds – wasn’t necessarily better or worse, but may have been a unique adaptation to the environment these dinosaurs lived in and could represent a step between semi-buried and fully-exposed styles of incubation.