On December 8th, the 2019 International Conference for Big Data and Intelligent Health was convened at Zhejiang University. The conference was co-organized by School of Public Health, the Second Affiliated Hospital of School of Medicine and the National Institute for Data Science in Health and Medicine at Zhejiang University. Themed on “Population Health and Intelligent Medicine in the Era of Big Data”, it attracted more than 200 participants from academic and industry. Prof. WU Xifeng, d...

The central nervous system was previsouly assumed as the major “culprit” behind depression and anxiety. Little attention was paid to the role that other organs played in this process. Recently, researchers from the JIN Jin Lab at the Zhejiang University Life Sciences Institute found that physical stress-induced leukotriene B4 triggers severe mitochondrial fission in CD4+ T cells, which further leads to a variety of behavioral abnormalities including anxiety, depression, and soci...

The ability of animal cells to sense and adapt to oxygen availability is essential for life activities. William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza are awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. Mitochondria are the most crucial oxygen-consuming organelles in cells and are also the core sites of cell metabolism, providing sufficient energy and substances for cells. Due to the rapid grow...

A recent study on the gut microbiota changes in Chinese adolescent patients with bipolar depression sheds light on BD diagnosis and treatment outcome. The relevant finding was published online in the journal of Advanced Science on May 15.BD is a chronic and recurrent disease which has captured increasing attention in the globe. BD is associated with severe impairment in cognitive and social functions, and increased risk of disability and suicide, especially in young individuals. D...

China has the highest incidence of liver cancer in the world. For patients with early liver cancer, surgery is the optimal treatment, but most patients are diagnosed with advanced liver cancer and thus miss the opportunity for surgery. Due to the limitations of targeted drugs Sorafenib and Regorafenib, the immune “brake-point” drug represented by the anti-PD-1/PD-L1 axis holds promise for curing patients with advanced liver cancer. At present, Opdivo (Nivolumab), a drug for the PD-L1/PD-1 axis...

Immunotherapy, as one of the most promising cancer treatments, boosts the body’s immune system to fight cancer by activating T cells. T-cell receptors (TCRs) on T cell surface specifically and sensitively recognize rare foreign antigen or tumor neoantigen presented by major histocompatibility complexes (pMHCs) on cancer cells, which plays a vital role in recognizing and killing cancer cells. However, it still remains enigmatic that how to improve and control the efficiency of T cell killing in ...

A research team led by WANG Fudi, a professor at the School of Public Health, Zhejiang University, discovers that ferroptosis, a programmed iron-dependent cell death, as a mechanism in murine models of doxorubicin (DOX)- and ischemia/reperfusion (I/R)-induced cardiomyopathy. Five effective approaches are explored to preventing cardiac injuries, including ferroptosis inhibitor Fer-1, iron chelatordexrazoxane (DXZ), mitochondria-targeted antioxidant MitoTEMPO, Hmox1 inhibitor zinc protoporphyrin I...

The research team led by JI Junfang from the Life Sciences Institute, Zhejiang University, published an article entitled “miR-192-5p silencing by genetic aberrations is a key event in hepatocellular carcinomas with cancer stem cell features” in the December 7 issue of Cancer Research. It opens up a feasible and effective approach to targeting hepatocellular carcinomas with cancer stem cell features.Primary liver cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide and approximate...

Recently, the research team headed by Prof. ZHOU Tianhua from the School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, published an article entitled “Long Non-coding RNA GMAN, Upregulated in Gastric Cancer Tissues, is Associated with Metastases in Patients and Promotes Translation of Ephrin A1 by Competitively Binding GMAN-AS” in the journal of Gastroenterology. They identified long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) that are upregulated in gastric cancer tissues from patients and did research into their func...

Recently, ZJU scientists “captured” a particular gene for hearing impairment: mtu1. Mtu1 deficiency results in the “power shortage” of our auditory organ. This research is published in the August 22 issue of Nucleic Acids Research.These findings are part and parcel of massive research into deafness treatment. The research team led by Prof. GUAN Minxin at ZJU’s Institute of Genetics is currently searching for more deafness-inducing genes among thousands of human genes.“Among 27.8 ...