Studying the brains of tweens

UF and 18 partnering institutions recently launched the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the U.S. Recruitment of more than 10,000 children — including about 400 in the Gainesville area — is underway for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study.

The landmark study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, will follow the biological and behavioral development of children beginning at ages 9 and 10 through adolescence and into early adulthood. Recruitment will be carried out over a two-year period through partnerships with public and private schools near the research sites.

Battling liver cancer A UF Health researcher is studying a natural therapy for treating liver cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the world. Thomas Schmittgen, Ph.D., a UF College of Pharmacy professor of pharmaceutics, is identifying novel treatments and new ways to deliver those therapies by restoring microRNA levels in cancer cells in hopes of finding options for people with the disease.

A new tropical disturbance  UF researchers have identified a patient in Haiti with a serious mosquito-borne illness never before reported in the Caribbean nation. Known as “Mayaro virus,” it is closely related to chikungunya virus and was first isolated in Trinidad in 1954. Most reported cases, however, have been confined to small outbreaks in the Amazon. Whether this case signals the start of a new outbreak in the Caribbean region is currently unknown.