SYDNEY (Reuters) – Scientists who have mapped the genome of Australia’s symbolic animal, the koala, say it could help them develop better vaccines to treat the animals, who are battling an epidemic of the bacterial disease chlamydia. The development will also ... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss drugmaker Roche said on Monday that a trial showed its immunotherapy Tecentriq plus the chemotherapy Abraxane significantly reduced the risk of disease worsening or death in people with metastatic triple negative breast cancer. The com... More »
(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc said on Monday a combination of its breast cancer drug, Ibrance, and another drug was not statistically significant in extending overall survival in certain patients, the secondary goal of a late-stage trial. Ibrance is Pfizer’s blockbus... More »
(Reuters) – Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Monday it would stop developing its experimental treatment for pancreatic cancer after it failed to meet the main and secondary goals in a mid-stage trial. The company said it would now focus on developing othe... More »
Chicago (Reuters) – Mixed results over the weekend from closely watched studies combining Bristol-Myers Squibb Co’s cancer immunotherapy with Nektar Therapeutics experimental drug NKTR-214, led at least one Wall Street analyst to reassess expectations. Bristol... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Some 70 percent of women with early-stage breast cancer and an intermediate risk of cancer recurrence can safely skip chemotherapy after their tumors have been removed, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. “This is a major finding,” said Dr. La... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Merck & Co’s immunotherapy Keytruda improved survival as a stand-alone treatment for newly-diagnosed lung cancer patients and with chemotherapy for hard-to-treat squamous cell lung cancer, new data released on Sunday showed, further cementi... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – In a disappointment for Roche Holding AG (ROG.S), two of its oncology drugs provided only modest protection from disease progression in lung cancer and breast cancer, according to data from separate clinical trials presented on Saturday. Ad... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – An experimental cancer drug from Loxo Oncology performed even better in patients with a rare mutation of the RET gene than previously reported, according to updated results from an early stage clinical trial presented on Saturday. Last mont... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Lynch syndrome, a rare hereditary disease typically associated with an increased risk of colorectal and endometrial cancers, appears to be linked with several additional types of cancer than previously thought, U.S. researchers said on Satu... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – An experimental blood screening test from Grail Inc showed early promise in detecting early-stage lung cancers based on free-floating DNA released by tumors, according to preliminary results released on Saturday. The findings, presented at ... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Patients with advanced multiple myeloma treated with bluebird bio’s experimental immunotherapy lived for a median of nearly a year before their cancer worsened, according to data from a small study presented on Friday. The treatment, called... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have pinpointed three genes that may have played a pivotal role in an important milestone in human evolution: the striking increase in brain size that facilitated cognitive advances that helped define what it means to be human... More »
MUMBAI/KOCHI (Reuters) – India began a fresh round of tests to trace the origin of a rare brain-damaging virus that has killed 13 people, a health official said on Monday, as initial tests on animals suspected of carrying the Nipah virus showed no sign of the ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Roche’s new hemophilia drug Hemlibra dramatically reduced bleeding in a broad population of hemophilia patients, results from two clinical trials showed on Monday, setting it up to take a dominant market position. Hemlibra cut by 96 percent ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of lizards inhabiting the island of New Guinea boasts one of the most exotic traits of any animal: green blood. And scientists have been trying hard to figure out what benefit this characteristic — caused by high levels of an ord... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – Roche’s immunotherapy combination that includes Tecentriq, Avastin and chemotherapy will get an accelerated review by U.S. regulators for use as an initial treatment of a common form of lung cancer, the Swiss drugmaker said on Monday. Roche ... More »
(Reuters) – A heat shield used in a NASA spacecraft designed to send a six-wheeled rover vehicle to Mars in 2020 suffered an “unexpected” fracture during a structural test this month, causing the space agency to build a replacement, the space agency said. “The... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – International scientists have identified 44 genetic variants that can increase the risk of developing major depression and found that all humans carry at least some of them. The new findings could help explain why not everyone treated with a... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday on SpaceX’s first high-priority science mission for NASA, a planet-hunting orbital telescope designed to detect worlds beyond our solar system that might be capable of har... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – General Electric is raising its bet on biotechnology with the launch of prefabricated manufacturing units for producing virus-based gene and cell therapies, novel anti-cancer treatments and vaccines. Interest in such medicines, which use eng... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – An 11th-hour technical glitch prompted SpaceX to postpone its planned launch on Monday of a new NASA space telescope designed to detect worlds beyond our solar system, delaying for at least 48 hours a quest to expand astronomer... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – A new NASA satellite designed to detect more Earth-like worlds around stars beyond our solar system is due for launch aboard a SpaceX rocket from Florida on Monday, on a quest to expand the known inventory of so-called exoplane... More »
(Reuters) – Alzheimer’s researchers have proposed a radical change in the way the disease is defined, focusing on biological changes in the body rather than clinical symptoms such as memory loss and cognitive decline. The new research framework, released on Tu... More »
(Reuters) – Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic conducted a supersonic test flight over the Sierra Nevada mountains of its SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket ship on Thursday, the company said, three years after a fatal accident on an earlier version of the s... More »
(Reuters) – The search for worlds circling stars far beyond our solar system will intensify in the coming weeks with NASA’s launch of a spacecraft scientists hope will enlarge the known catalog of so-called exoplanets believed capable of supporting life. NASA ... More »
FILE PHOTO: The logo of AstraZeneca is seen on medication packages in a pharmacy in London April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) – AstraZeneca now expects a key lung cancer study of two immunotherapy drugs to produce overall surviv... More »
FILE PHOTO: An elephant walks in Amboseli National Park in front of Kilimanjaro Mountain, Kenya, March 19, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The most comprehensive elephant genome study ever conducted, covering seven living and ex... More »
(Reuters) – A European Medicines Agency (EMA) panel on Friday recommended against approving Puma Biotechnology’s lead breast cancer drug, an outcome the U.S drugmaker had signaled last month. The EMA said the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHM... More »
FILE PHOTO: A herd of endangered Przewalski horses are seen at the Takhin Us National Park in the south-west part of Mongolia, July 16, 2012. Picture taken July 16, 2012. REUTERS/Petr Josek/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It may come as a disappointment to e... More »
A common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) flies during its nocturnal hunt in Belize in this handout photo released on February 20, 2018. Brock Fenton/Handout via REUTERS. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If you want to know how vampire bats can survive on a diet that — a... More »
The Amazon molly, an all-female species that engages in asexual reproduction, appears in a handout photo taken in a laboratory at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, provided February 12, 2018. Manfred Schartl/University of Wurzburg/Handout via REUTERS WASH... More »
An undated picture shows a magnification of a lab-grown fully matured human egg ready for fertilization. Doctor David Albertini/University of Edinburgh/Handout via REUTERS LONDON, (Reuters) – Scientists have succeeded for the first time in growing human eggs i... More »
The greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) is shown in this undated handout photo taken in Brittany, France, released on February 7, 2018. Courtesy Olivier Farcy/Handout via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Bats are the longest-lived mammals relative to body si... More »
A Downy woodpecker is shown in this undated photo provided February 2, 2018. Courtesy Arlene Koziol/The Field Museum/Handout via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For a person, slamming your head full force into a tree trunk could be enough to knock you silly. Wo... More »
Artist’s life reconstruction of the titanosaurian dinosaur Mansourasaurus shahinae on a coastline in what is now the Western Desert of Egypt approximately 80 million years ago is pictured in this undated handout image obtained by Reuters on January 29, 2018. A... More »
(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a radioactive drug to treat the ultra-rare type of digestive tract cancer that killed Steve Jobs in 2011. The approval for Advanced Accelerator Applications SA’s Lutathera comes just days a... More »
A sign is seen at an AstraZeneca site in Macclesfield, central England May 19, 2014. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo (Reuters) – AstraZeneca said an inhaler for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) delivered improved lung function in a late stage trial t... More »
A close-up view of the teeth accompanying the left maxilla of human remains from Misliya Cave in Israel, the oldest remains of our species Homo sapiens found outside Africa, is provided in this photo released on January 25, 2018. Courtesy Israel Hershkovitz/Te... More »
Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, two cloned long tailed macaque monkeys are seen at the Non-Primate facility at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, China January 10, 2018. Picture taken January 10, 2018. Qiang Sun and Mu-ming Poo, Chinese Academy of Sciences ... More »
Brain shape evolution in Homo sapiens are shown in this combination image, the earliest known members of our species, the 300,000 year-old cranium Jebel Irhoud 1 (L) and present day humans (R) in this undated handout image released on January 24, 2018. Courtes... More »
The fossilized tail of a sauropod of the Atlasaurus imelakei species, that will be auctioned on Tuesday night in Mexico to raise funds for the reconstruction of thousands of schools damaged by September quakes, is displayed at the lobby of the BBVA Bancomer to... More »
Artist’s impression of two Diluvicursor pickeringi foraging on the bank of a high-energy river within the Australian-Antarctic rift valley are seen in this image provided January 11, 2018. Peter Trusler/Handout via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) – There’s not a ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – A private British company developing a vaccine that would be the first in the world to fight all types of flu has raised 20 million pounds ($27 million) from investors including GV, the venture capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc. Vacc... More »
Artist’s impression of two Diluvicursor pickeringi foraging on the bank of a high-energy river within the Australian-Antarctic rift valley are seen in this image provided January 11, 2018. Peter Trusler/Handout via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In sandstone n... More »
Professor Ketan Patel works in the lab at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain January 2, 2018. Picture taken January 2, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Radburn LONDON (Reuters) – Drinking alcohol produces a harmful chemical in the body which can lead... More »
An illustration released January 3, 2018 depicts the Upward Sun River base camp site in central Alaska, where the 11,500-year-old remains of a 6-week-old girl were discovered in 2013. The girl’s genome shows she belonged to a previously unknown population or e... More »
FILE PHOTO: Swiss drugmaker Novartis’ logo is seen at the company’s plant in the northern Swiss town of Stein, Switzerland October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted priority review for Novartis... More »
FILE PHOTO: Gil Ronen, Co-founder and CEO of NRGene, an Israeli genomic big data company, gestures during his interview with Reuters at a field in Givat Brenner, Israel January 8, 2017. Picture taken January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Baz Ratner TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Isr... More »
Marijuana plants are seen in an indoor marijuana plantation of a marijuana smokers club in the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay July 16, 2017. Picture taken July 16, 2017 REUTERS/Andres Stapff LONDON (Reuters) – An ingredient in cannabis called cannabidiol or ... More »
(Reuters) – More than half of patients with advanced multiple myeloma who had run out of therapeutic options remained in complete remission after receiving bluebird bio Inc’s experimental gene-modifying immunotherapy in a small, early stage study, according to... More »
Swiss drugmaker Roche’s logo is seen at their headquarters in Basel, Switzerland January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann ZURICH (Reuters) – Scientists at Swiss drugmaker Roche said on Friday they may have discovered why some tumors resist new immunotherapy dru... More »
A dinosaur, named Halszkaraptor escuilliei, a turkey-sized, bird-like dinosaur that boasted a swan’s neck, arms resembling flippers, long legs and a mouth full of needle-like teeth staked out a unique amphibious lifestyle in rivers and lakes about 75 million y... More »
LONDON, (Reuters) – Doctors in France have found the first evidence that a drug normally used to treat lung, kidney or skin cancer may be able to eradicate HIV-infected cells in people with the AIDS virus. In a case described as potentially exciting by scienti... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – A test from Foundation Medicine Inc that can detect cancer-causing mutations in 324 genes has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agencies said. The test, known as F... More »
An artist’s illustration shows individuals from the fish-eating pterosaur species Hamipterus tianshanensis, including adults, juvenile and eggs in this handout illustration obtained by Reuters November 30, 2017. Fossils of hundreds of Hamipterus individuals an... More »
A scientist does research in a lab in San Diego, California April 26, 2009. REUTERS/Mike Blake CHICAGO (Reuters) – In a major step toward creating artificial life, U.S. researchers have developed a living organism that incorporates both natural and artificial ... More »
FILE PHOTO: An actor dressed as a ‘Yeti’ waves from a tour bus during a promotional event for Travel Channel’s “Expedition Unknown: Hunt for the Yeti” in Manhattan, New York City, U.S. on October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – Germany has reported an outbreak of low pathogenic H5N2 bird flu on a farm in the Lower Saxony region in the north of the country, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Thursday. The disease was detected on a farm... More »
FILE PHOTO: A nighttime view of Europe made possible by the “day-night band” of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is seen in a global composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satell... More »
An alkali fly creates a protective bubble in order to dive in Mono Lake, California, U.S. in this June 2017 photo released on November 20, 2017. Courtesy Floris van Breugel/Caltech/Handout via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A small fly that thrives at an inhos... More »
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Swiss drugmaker Roche’s logo is seen at their headquarters in Basel, Switzerland January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo ZURICH (Reuters) – Roche announced a double dose of trial wins on Monday, saying its immunotherapy Tecen... More »
Oenophiles take note: 5980 BC was a very good year for wine. More »
Scientists have identified a new species of great ape on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, finding that a small population of orangutans inhabiting its Batang Toru forest merits recognition as the third species of these shaggy reddish tree dwellers. More »
Eagle Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Friday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration tentatively approved its diluted version of Eli Lilly and Co's blockbuster cancer drug Alimta. More »
A raccoon-sized, feather-clad dinosaur that roamed China 130 million years ago shared a distinctive trait with the furry modern mammal that topples trash cans in North America: a stripe across their eyes resembling a bandit mask. More »
This figure shows the best-preserved fossil specimen of Sinosauropteryx from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of China and an interpretive drawing of the bones, stomach contents, and darkly pigmented feathers. The scale bar represents 50 mm. Photo courtesy of ... More »
A trail of fossilized three-toed footprints that measure nearly two feet (57 cm) long shows that a huge meat-eating dinosaur stalked southern Africa 200 million years ago at a time when most carnivorous dinosaurs were modest-sized beasts. More »
A mysterious partial skull unearthed in Papua New Guinea in 1929 that once was thought to belong to an extinct human species now turns out to have another unique distinction. Scientists believe it belongs to the oldest-known human tsunami victim. More »
It is not the taming of the shrew, but rather the shrinking of the shrew. More »
An experimental cancer drug discovered by Hutchison China MediTech has demonstrated promising activity in shrinking tumors in lung cancer patients whose disease had worsened following treatment with approved medicines. More »
Cetaceans -- whales and dolphins -- are among the brainiest of beings. In terms of sheer brain size, the sperm whale is tops on Earth, with a brain six times larger than that of a person. More »
The Trump Administration threw its support behind a public-private partnership with 11 drug companies to advance a new class of drugs that uses the body's immune system to fight cancer. More »
The massive brooding stone figures peering from Easter Island's hillsides are emblematic of the enigmatic people who once thrived on the dot of land in the middle of the Pacific. New genetic research only deepens the mystery around these people. More »
When black rats invaded Lord Howe Island after the 1918 wreck of the steamship Makambo, they wiped out numerous native species on the small Australian isle in the Tasman Sea including a big, flightless insect that resembled a stick. More »
A trio of Swiss, American and British scientists won the 2017 Nobel chemistry prize on Wednesday for developing cryo-electron microscopy, allowing researchers to see biological molecules frozen in action. More »
Three U.S. scientists won the 2017 Nobel prize for physics on Tuesday for opening up a new era of astronomy by detecting gravitational waves, ripples in space and time foreseen by Albert Einstein a century ago. More »
Two of the U.S. scientists awarded the Nobel prize on Tuesday for opening up a new era of astronomy by detecting gravitational waves said they hoped the attention would make Americans less inclined to dismiss scientific consensus in favor of politics. More »
A seasonal flu vaccine that would be the first in the world to fight all types of the virus is to be tested in a two-year clinical trial involving more than 2,000 patients by researchers in Oxford. More »
U.S. scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young won the 2017 Nobel prize for medicine on Monday for unraveling molecular mechanisms that control our internal body clocks. More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted priority review for Roche's Perjeta in combination with Herceptin and chemotherapy for treating HER2-positive early breast cancer after surgery, Roche said on Friday. More »
People living on the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean long had spoken of a big, tree-dwelling rat called vika that inhabited the rainforest, but the remarkable rodent managed to elude scientists -- until now. More »
Genetic data from the skeletal remains of seven people who lived centuries ago in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Province is offering intriguing new evidence that our species, Homo sapiens, is older than previously believed. More »
Rocky outcrops in eastern Canada contain what may be some of the oldest evidence of life on Earth, dating back about 3.95 billion years. More »
Some plant-eating dinosaurs apparently liked a side order of crabs to go with their usual salad. More »
Swiss drugmaker Novartis notched a trial win for its drug cocktail against skin cancer on Monday, while a rival treatment from Roche with slipping sales failed in a separate study with a similar patient group. More »
Bristol-Myers Squibb's immunotherapy drug Opdivo is a better and safer option than its older medicine Yervoy for treating melanoma patients who have had surgery to remove disease, researchers reported on Monday. More »
Eli Lilly staked its claim for a slice of sales in a new class of breast cancer drugs on Sunday as clinical data showed adding its medicine abemaciclib to standard therapy reduced the risk of disease progression by 46 percent. More »
A new blood test from Roche and Foundation Medicine has shown it can accurately measure the number of mutations within a tumor, potentially helping to predict which patients may respond best to some immunotherapies. More »
Giving Merck & Co's immunotherapy drug Keytruda in combination with chemotherapy for previously untreated advanced lung cancer appears to provide durable benefits, according to an update of a closely watched clinical trial. More »
The alcohol industry uses denial, distortion and distraction to mislead people about the risks of developing cancer from drinking, often employing similar tactics to those of the tobacco industry, a study said on Thursday. More »
The world's biggest T. rex is getting ready for a cutting-edge makeover. More »
The U.S. space agency's Cassini spacecraft will end its 13-year mission to Saturn in mid-September by transmitting data until the final moment before it plunges into the ringed planet's atmosphere, officials said on Tuesday. More »
Next week's solar eclipse will be streamed live online for the first time, from the vantage point of helium-filled balloons across the United States, providing the public with sky-high views as the moon blocks the sun. More »
Scientists at a Massachusetts company seeking to make pig organs safe enough to be transplanted into humans have used gene-editing technology to clone piglets that lack a potentially dangerous retrovirus, according to a study released on Thursday. More »
The lemon-sized fossil skull of an infant ape nicknamed Alesi that inhabited a Kenyan forest about 13 million years ago is offering a peek at what the long-ago common ancestor of people and all modern apes may have looked like. More »
In dense Chinese forests populated by dinosaurs 160 million years ago, two furry critters resembling flying squirrels glided from tree to tree, showing that even in such a perilous neighborhood early mammals had succeeded in going airborne. More »
The largest heart ever seen has gone on display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, giving visitors a chance to view a hugely rare biological curiosity up close. More »
FILE PHOTO: The logo of AstraZeneca is seen on medication packages in a pharmacy in London April 28, 2014. AstraZeneca said on Tuesday that U.S. regulators had awarded its blood cancer drug acalabrutinib “breakthrough” status for the treatment of patients with... More »
FILE PHOTO: A right whale swims in Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts, in this photo taken April 14, 2011. Erin Burke/Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries/NOAA Marine Mammal Permit # 14603/Handout/File Photo via REUTERS North American conservationists are scram... More »
