Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory news

Conventional biological wisdom holds that living cells  interact with their environment through an elaborate network of chemical signals. As a result many therapies for the treatment of cancer and other diseases in which cell behavior goes awry focus on drugs that block or disrupt harmful chemical signals. Now, a new road for future therapies may have been opened with scientific evidence for a never seen before way in which cells can also sense and respond to physical forces.

A team of

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been awarded $12.8 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research into cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, radioactive decontamination and a variety of other health conditions.

The grants bring Berkeley Lab’s total Recovery Act funding to more than $240 million in areas covering energy, computing and general science, as well as infrastructure projects. The NIH grants will go to 14 i