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SAN DIEGO — Collecting cancer cells from patients and growing them into 3-D mini tumors could make it possible to quickly screen large numbers of potential drugs for ultra-rare cancers. Preliminary success with a new high-speed, high-volume approach is already guiding treatment decisions for some patients with recurring hard-to-treat cancers.

“Believe it or not, for some rare cancers...

SAN DIEGO — Getting goose bumps doesn’t just make hairs stand on end; it may also help hair grow.

Nerves and muscles that raise goose bumps also stimulate stem cells in the skin to make hair follicles and grow hair. Ya-Chieh Hsu, a stem cell researcher at Harvard University, reported the unpublished findings December 9 at the joint meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology and the...

Some dads have broken a textbook genetic rule. Fathers in three unrelated families passed mitochondria — tiny energy factories found in cells — on to their children, researchers report.

Scientists have long thought that children inherited mitochondria exclusively from their mothers, since mitochondria from the father’s sperm are usually destroyed after fertilizing the egg (SN: 1/1/00, p...

Yeast intentionally stuffed with bacteria may teach scientists something about the origins of cells’ powerhouses.

Cellular power-generating organelles, called mitochondria, are thought to have once been bacteria captured by archaea, single-celled microbes that are one of the earliest forms of life. Now, almost all eukaryotic cells (cells with a nucleus) contain mitochondria. At first,...