news 2019

Placebo effects do not only occur in medical treatment - placebos can also work when psychological effects are attributed to them. Psychologists from the University of Basel reported these findings in the journal Scientific Reports, based on three studies with over 400 participants. Psychotherapy and placebos are both psychological interventions that not only have comparable effects, but that are also based on very similar mechanisms.

When researchers make a new discovery, they tend to only publish the results of their successful experiments. But just as informative are all the experiments that didn't work - the failed trials and incorrect hypotheses, which can offer important information. A team of EPFL chemists has developed a methodology for collecting those lessons and, crucially, sharing them with other researchers.

A Phase 1 clinical trial to test the safety of an antibody to use against Ebola outbreak has been successfully concluded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland (U.S.A. The treatment is based on the monoclonal antibody mAb114, which was isolated and characterized in Switzerland at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Bellinzona, affiliated to USI Università della Svizzera italiana) in collaboration with Humabs BioMed SA, a subsidiary of Vir Biotechnology Inc.

An innovative combination therapy can force malignant breast cancer cells to turn into fat cells. This can be used to prevent the formation of metastases in mice, as researchers at the University of Basel's Department of Biomedicine recently reported in the journal Cancer Cell. Tumor cells can adapt dynamically to changing conditions thanks to their ability to reactivate a cellular process that is central to embryonic development.

The most deadly aspect of breast cancer is metastasis. It spreads cancer cells throughout the body. Researchers at the University and the University Hospital of Basel have now discovered a substance that suppresses the formation of metastases. The development of metastasis is responsible for more than 90% of cancer-related deaths, and patients with a metastatic disease are considered incurable.

Researchers at the University of Zurich have determined the three-dimensional structure of the receptor that causes nausea and vomiting as a result of cancer chemotherapy. The study explains for the first time why some drugs work particularly well in ameliorating these side effects. The results also provide important insights into how to develop compounds to effectively tackle other disorders.

Chemotherapy is an effective treatment for breast cancer, yet some patients develop metastasis in spite of it. Researchers at EPFL have discovered that chemotherapy-treated mammary tumors produce small vesicles that may help them spread to other organs. The study is published. Some patients with breast cancer receive chemotherapy before the tumor is removed with surgery.