Deadly in Biological News

Komodo even more deadly than thought: Research

The carnivorous reptiles ( Varanus komodoensis ) are known to bite prey and release them, leaving them to bleed to death from their wounds: the victims are reported to go into shock before the dragons kill and eat them. Some researchers believe that prey are killed by pathogenic bacteria in th...

FluChip technology licensed to combat deadly flu virus

Boulder, CO, 4-28-09. InDevR, a small biotech company in Boulder, CO, announced today that they have licensed the FluChip technology from the University of Colorado. The FluChip was invented by a joint team of scientists at the University of Colorado and the Centers for Disease Control and Preve...

TGen researchers discover possible way to block the spread of deadly brain tumors

PHOENIX, Ariz. April 17, 2009 Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) may have found a way to stop the often-rapid spread of deadly brain tumors. A gene with the playful-sounding name NHERF-1 may be a serious target for drugs that could prevent malignant tumors fro...

Minimizing the spread of deadly Hendra virus

Groundbreaking CSIRO research into how the deadly Hendra virus spreads promises to save the lives of both horses and humans in the future. CSIRO Livestock Industries' scientists working at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL), in Geelong Victoria, have made a major breakthrough in bet...

UNC study: Scientists identify chemical compound that may stop deadly brain tumors

CHAPEL HILL Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have identified a compound that could be modified to treat one of the most deadly types of cancer, and discovered how a particular gene mutation contributes to tumor growth. The findings and potential...

University of Kansas graduate student researcher takes aim at deadly brain tumors

LAWRENCE, Kansas Natalie Ciaccio, a fourth-year graduate student researcher in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Kansas, is investigating what might be an ideal target for anti-cancer drug therapy, and she is focusing her work on brain tumors specifically. The Na...

Scientists discover how deadly fungus protects itself

February 3, 2009 (Bronx, NY) Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered how a deadly microbe evades the human immune system and causes disease. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ), may h...

Study: Excessive use of antiviral drugs could aid deadly flu

COLUMBUS, Ohio Influenza's ability to resist the effects of cheap and popular antiviral agents in Asia and Russia should serve as a cautionary tale about U.S. plans to use the antiviral Tamiflu in the event of widespread avian flu infection in humans, scientists say. Researchers analyzed almos...

Battling bacteria in the blood: Researchers tackle deadly infections

ANN ARBOR, Mich. It's a leading cause of death, but no one knows for sure how and why it happens. It's a major source of health care costs, adding days or weeks to the hospital stays and lost work time of millions of people. But no one fully understands how best to fight it. "It" is bacterial...

15-state Southern obesity summit to focus on deadly epidemic

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. With Thanksgiving and end-of-the-year holidays coming soon, many Americans will eat, drink and get heavier. It is a challenging season for those working to control and reverse our nation's obesity epidemic. Luckily this is an opportune time to remind everyone of the problem an...

New vaccine may give long-term defense against deadly bird flu and its variant forms

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A new vaccine under development may provide protection against highly pathogenic bird flu and its evolving forms, according to researchers at Purdue University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who discovered the new preventative drug and have tested it in m...

Sydney harbors deadly diet for sea creatures

Contaminated seaweeds in Sydney Harbour could be threatening the small animals that feed on them, according to a new study revealing that the harbour's seaweeds have the world's highest levels of copper and lead contamination. Up to 75 percent of the offspring of small crustaceans that feed on ...

Ayurvedic nightshade deadly for dengue mosquito

Mosquitoes responsible for spreading disease are increasingly becoming resistant to synthetic insecticides. Now research published in the online open access journal BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine suggests that the berries of a weed common to India, Solanum villosum (S villosum), have p...

Research unveils new hope for deadly childhood disease

Investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center have uncovered a promising drug therapy that offers a ray of hope for children with Batten disease a rare neurodegenerative disease that strikes seemingly healthy kids, progressively robs them of their abilities to see, reason and move, ...

Best treatment identified to reduce deadly Staph infections

LAS VEGAS One type of over-the-counter product for topical wound care is more effective than others in killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, or MRSA, which is potentially deadly and in recent years has moved from its historic hospital setting to a much broader public conce...

Northwestern to expose most deadly infectious diseases in 3-D

CHICAGO --- A scientist slides on a pair of plastic 3-D glasses and an unearthly blue multi-armed creature -- an image right out of a sci-fi horror flick -- seems to leap out of the computer screen into the laboratory. But this is no movie director's fantasy. The horror image is real. The ee...

Scripps research team blocks bacterial communication system to prevent deadly staph infections

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA, OCT. 30, 2007 -- In hopes of combating the growing scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, in particular drug-resistant staph bacteria, a team of scientists from the Scripps Research Institute has designed a new type of vaccine that could one day be used in humans to block ...

Scientists learn why the flu may turn deadly

As the swine flu continues its global spread, researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have discovered important clues about why influenza is more severe in some people than it is in others. In their research study published online in the Journal of Leukocyte Biolog...

Simple home spit test to spot deadly pre-eclampsia

A simple spit test designed to detect pre-eclampsia in the early stages is being trialed in a UK hospital, reports Cath O'Driscoll in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. The test, which is designed to be used at home, will allow mums-to-be to check for themselves whether they are at ...

Dealing deadly cancers a knockout punch

New scientific evidence is helping to build a compelling case for oncolytic viruses as a first-line and adjunctive treatment for many cancers. Reovirus, a non-pathogenic virus under development at Calgary, Alberta-based Oncolytics Biotech, has shown powerful anti-cancer activity against cultur...

Cornell lab confirms deadly fish virus spreading to new species

A lethal fish virus in the Great Lakes and neighboring waterways is approaching epidemic proportions, according to Paul Bowser, Cornell professor of aquatic animal medicine in the College of Veterinary Medicine. The viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), which causes anemia and hemorrhaging in ...

Brown team finds crucial protein role in deadly prion spread

A single protein plays a major role in deadly prion diseases by smashing up clusters of these infectious proteins, creating the "seeds" that allow fatal brain illnesses to quickly spread, new Brown University research shows. The findings are exciting, researchers say, because they might reveal a ...

Natural protein stops deadly human brain cancer in mice

Scientists from Johns Hopkins and from the University of Milan have effectively proven that they can inhibit lethal human brain cancers in mice using a protein that selectively induces positive changes in the activity of cells that behave like cancer stem cells. The report is published this week in...

Researchers identify new weapon to fight deadly bacterial sepsis

One of the most dangerous risks of contracting a serious bacterial infection is that the victim may develop sepsis--an overreaction by the immune system causing destructive inflammation throughout the body, often leading to heart and other organ failure and death. Even the best hospital intensive c...

'Conversation stoppers' fight deadly bacterial infections

The study, which was directed by Scripps Research Professor Benjamin Cravatt, Ph.D., is being published in the September 8 issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry. The new study describes a pathway-different than the one previously suggested-for the biosynthesis of neurotransmitter lipids, N...

Tulane researcher reports on origin of deadly fever outbreak

Bats or other cave dwelling animals may have been responsible for the deadly 1998?000 outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever among gold miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to an article in the Aug. 31, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Daniel G. Bausch, ass...

Experimental vaccine protects mice against deadly 1918 flu virus

Federal scientists have developed a vaccine that protects mice against the killer 1918 influenza virus. They also have created a technique for identifying antibodies that neutralize this virus, a tool that could help contain future pandemic flu strains. These findings are important, the researchers...

U of M researchers discover genetic key to treating deadly fungal infections

University of Minnesota researchers have discovered how a prevalent fungal pathogen that causes 10,000 deaths per year in the United States overcomes the effects of antifungal drugs by duplicating a section of one of its chromosomes. Candida albicans, a type of yeast present in 80 percent of hu...

Anti-inflammatory drug's potentially deadly side effect found to be rare

Scientists have completed an extensive study of more than 3,000 patients who received a promising anti-inflammatory drug, natalizumab, that was linked to three cases of a serious brain infection in large clinical trials halted in early 2005. The new study found no new cases of progressive multifo...

Plant-derived vaccines safeguard against deadly plague

Through an innovative feat of plant biotechnology and vaccine design, researchers in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have successfully turned tobacco plants into vaccine production factories to combat the deadliest form of plague. The vaccine elicits a protective immune response...

Advanced genomics and proteomics improve the diagnosis and treatment of a deadly lung disease

A team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists has peeled back some of the mystery of how cells are able to turn off genes selectively to control critical events of development. The new insights arise from the first clear molecular images of the structure of Dicer, an enzyme that enabl...

Scientists reveal how deadly toxin hijacks cells

Scientists have pinpointed exactly how botulinum neurotoxin A - a potential agent of biological warfare and one of the most lethal toxins known to man - is able to sneak into cells. The finding is crucial for the development of new treatments against botulism, a paralytic illness caused by the t...

Genomics-based vaccine could prevent deadly cattle disease

Every year, East Coast fever destroys the small farmer's dream of escaping poverty in Africa. Killing more than a million cattle and costing some $200 million annually, this tick-borne disease rages across a dozen countries in eastern and central Africa. Now, an international team of scientists has...

Potential vaccine developed for deadly leishmaniasis disease

Development of a fundamentally new "candidate," or potential, vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that kills about 60,000 people annually, is reported in the current issue of ACS Chemical Biology . Spread by the bite of infected female sand flies, visceral leishmaniasis infects...

Researchers develop new method to help find deadly malaria parasite's Achilles heel

The most deadly malaria parasite has protein 'wiring' that differs markedly from the cellular circuitry of other higher organisms, a finding which could lead to the development of antimalarial drugs that exploit that difference. Researchers at UCSD have discovered that the single-cell parasite resp...

UCLA discovery will aid in treatment of patients with a deadly brain cancer

Researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer have identified key characteristics in certain deadly brain tumors that make them 51 times more likely to respond to a specific class of drugs than tumors in which the molecular signature is absent. The discovery of the telltale molecular signature ?the expres...

Life in deadly conditions

Max Planck researchers sequence the genome of a microbiological master of adaptationArchaea, small single-celled organisms, are particularly interesting for scientists because they are able to live under extreme environmental conditions, for instance under high salt concentrations, high pH-values, ...

Emerging staph strains found to be increasingly deadly and deceptive

A study of how the immune system reacts to strains of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria--emerging strains that sicken otherwise healthy people, or so-called "community-acquired" infections--has shown for the first time that these strains are more deadly and better at evading human...

US/African project deciphers deadly parasite genome

An innovative North-South research collaboration has culminated in a study published in this week's Science that provides molecular clues to help develop new ways to treat or prevent East Coast fever. The disease, which kills a million cattle a year in East and Central Africa, has had a devastat...

Three deadly parasite genomes sequenced

Covering ship hulls with artificial shark skin could help ships sailing smoothly. The growth of marine organisms such as barnacles on ship hulls is a major cause of increased energy costs in the naval industry. Shark skin offers a structural design that prevents this so called 'bio-fouling'. Ralp...