Metastases can develop in the body even years after apparently successful cancer treatment. They originate from cancer cells that migrated from the original tumor to other organs, and which can lie there inactive for a considerable time. Researchers have now discovered how these “sleeping cells” are kept dormant and how they wake up and form fatal metastases.
Some Covid-19 patients develop diabetes in the course of their infection. An international study with participation by the University of Basel has mapped how coronavirus attacks and destroys insulin-producing pancreatic cells. The researchers also identified a way to protect these cells.
The governments of the cantons of Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt yesterday approved the performance mandate and global contribution – amounting to approximately CHF 1.35 billion for the University of Basel for the period 2022 to 2025 – as well as the revised University Agreement.
1.4 million people die of tuberculosis worldwide each year. Multidrug-resistant strains pose a particular problem because they are so difficult to treat. In a study in Georgia, Basel researchers have demonstrated that prisons play a key role in transmission. The consequences ripple out to Switzerland as well.
Mathematician Dr. Gabriel Dill likes things a bit complicated: For the Matura, he wrote a satire on Berlusconi – in Latin. And for his doctoral thesis, he chose a field that is quite exotic even for insiders: Diophantine geometry. His dissertation has now been awarded the Prix Schläfli by the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT).
A blind patient has partially regained visual function. This was achieved through optogenetic therapy, which aims to treat inherited diseases of the photoreceptors within the eye. The accomplishment by the international research team represents an important step in the treatment of genetically determined blindness.
Fields of opium poppies once bloomed where the Zurich Opera House underground garage now stands. Through a new analysis of archaeological seeds, researchers at the University of Basel have been able to bolster the hypothesis that prehistoric farmers throughout the Alps participated in domesticating the opium poppy.
A premature start in life can cause problems even into teenage years. A study by the University of Basel and the University Children's Hospital Basel (UKBB) indicates that training motor skills in these children helps even when they are older.
Some pathogens persist in the body causing chronic infections. Researchers at the University of Basel have now discovered a mechanism of highly selective targeting of host proteins by a bacterial toxin that is critical for the bacteria to establish chronic infection. The study recently published in PNAS provides new insights into the activity and function of bacterial toxins.