University Of California - Berkeley

With the help of sponges inserted in the bloodstream to absorb excess drugs, doctors are hoping to prevent the dangerous side effects of toxic chemotherapy agents or even deliver higher doses to knock back tumors, like liver cancer, that don’t respond to more benign treatments. The “drug sponge” is an absorbent polymer coating a cylinder…

Scientists have used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to lessen some autism symptoms in mice with a form of fragile X syndrome, the most common known single-gene cause of autism spectrum disorder. Employing gold nanoparticles to deliver the DNA-cutting Cas9 enzyme into the brain—a technique developed at the University of California, Berkeley, and called CRISPR-Gold—the researchers were…