Toward the ultimate goal of engineering human tissues and organs that can mimic native function for use in drug screening, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine, a Wyss Institute team led by Core Faculty member Jennifer Lewis, Sc.D., has made another foundational advance using three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting. This work builds upon their demonstrated ability to bioprint tissue constructs composed of multiple types of living cells patterned alongside a vascular network in an extracellular matrix.

Researchers from ERIBA, Radboud UMC, XJTU, Saarland University, CWI and UMC Utrecht have made a big step towards a better understanding of the human genome. By identifying large DNA variants in 250 Dutch families, the researchers have clarified part of the "dark matter", the great unknown, of the human genome. These new data enable researchers from all over the world to study the DNA variants and use the results to better understand genetic diseases.

Affecting 33.5 million patients worldwide, atrial fibrillation is the most common form of cardiac arrhythmia. As if having an irregular heart beat wasn't troubling enough, patients with atrial fibrillation are also much more likely to have a stroke. "Atrial fibrillation is thought to be responsible for 20 to 30 percent of all strokes in the United States," said Northwestern University's Michael Markl, the Lester B. and Frances T. Knight Professor of Cardiac Imaging. "While atrial fibrillation is easy to detect and diagnose, it's not easy to predict who will suffer a stroke because of it."

Person-to-person communication is one of the most persuasive ways people deliver and receive information. Until recently, this communication was impossible to collect and study. Now, social media networks, such as Twitter, allow researchers to systematically witness public communication about health, including cardiovascular disease. Twitter is used by more than 300 million people who have generated several billion Tweets, yet little work has focused on the potential applications of these data for studying public attitudes and behaviors associated with cardiovascular health.

Gamers playing the popular online puzzle game Foldit beat scientists, college students and computer algorithms in a contest to see who could identify a particular protein's shape. The study findings have implications for video game enthusiasts and classroom instruction, and showcase the positive impact citizen science can have on research.

The European Commission and the Human Brain Project (HBP) Coordinator, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), have signed the first Specific Grant Agreement (SGA1), releasing EUR 89 million in funding retroactively from 1st April 2016 until the end of March 2018. The signature of SGA1 means that the HBP and the European Commision have agreed on the HBP Work Plan for these two years.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a mobile app and thumb-size device that help to prevent cerebral infarctions at an early stage, during asymptomatic atrial fibrillation. The mobile device, which detects arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) has been tested with excellent results for around two years in real-life conditions in cooperation with Turku University Central Hospital.