October 2022

Anti-oxidants, omega-3, calcium and vitamins etc, have been linked to health benefits. Producers of foods containing these nutrients highlight these health-giving properties to promote sales. Might exosomes soon be added to the list? A growing understanding of the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) points to the remarkable potential of food-derived exosomes (FDEs) as a distinct dietary component with nutritional benefits.

Chromosomal alterations underlie numerous medical conditions, with clinical detection of chromosome changes being a key feature of genetic diagnostics. Chromosomal alterations are also important in research, affecting the behaviour of cells and impacting the interpretation of data generated with them.

The goal of precision medicine is to understand the factors that contribute to the variability in the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the drugs. It is now clear that the gut microbiome plays a critical role in the markedly different responses of individuals to identical drug therapy.

A team at UC Davis Medical Centre in Sacramento, California, have used mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) patches to treat spina bifida. Although still experimental, with outcomes yet unknown in the few babies that received the treatment, earlier work on English bulldogs and other models of spinal cord injury suggests this approach may be useful to treat spina bifida.

Cells constantly exchange material with their surroundings. At one end of the ingestion scale, nutrients are adsorbed by mechanisms such as endocytosis. At the other end, entire cells can be swallowed by another cell. Terms such as entosis, emperitosis, phagoptosis and, simply, cannibalism, describe these fascinating phenomena.