Scientists have developed a technique that allows them to measure how well cancer drugs reach their targets inside the body. It shows individual cancer cells in a tumour in real time, revealing which cells interact with the drug and which cells the drug fails to reach. In the future, the findings, published in Nature Communications, could help clinicians decide the best course and delivery of treatment for cancer patients.

Scientists have uncovered how cells are kept in the right place as the body develops, which may shed light on what causes invasive cancer cells to migrate. In order for organs to develop properly, cells from different tissues need to be separated by sharp borders that persist throughout our lifetime. The mechanisms that keep cells in the right place are lost in cancer cells, allowing them to invade other cell populations and spread to differ...

Diamond is a natural choice when it comes to making nanoscale devices but patterning is expensive and time-consuming. An EU-funded project has investigated DNA templates for patterning any shape. Nanocrystalline diamond thin films are seeded and then grown to produce material for nanoscale devices used in a whole array of fields, from medicine to quantum information processing. However, the precise nanoscale patterning required for these new...

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has approved a research application from the Francis Crick Institute to use new 'gene editing' techniques on human embryos. The aim of the research, led by Dr Kathy Niakan, a group leader at the Crick, is to understand the genes human embryos need to develop successfully.