Stem cells engineered to kill cancer

Jerome Zack, professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, and his colleagues, have recently engineered blood stem cells to create immune cells that seek out and attack a type of human melanoma.

UCLA Biologists Slow the Aging Process in Fruit Flies

David Walker, assistant professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology, recently led a study showing that when the expression of a single gene, PGC-1, was boosted within the digestive tracts of fruit flies, the flies lived as much as fifty percent longer. PGC-1 activates the cells’ mitochondria and regulates mitochondrial activity in mammals and flies.