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PET/CT can identify new cancer lesions at early stage, allowing for prompt treatment

A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Md., reports that whole-body positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scans may help physicians identify new, unexpected malignant cancerous tumors in patients, according to an article in the May issue of the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Journal of Nuclear Medicine. "PET/CT can help find additional...

Several minute intermediate stage in virus-cell fusion discovered; opportunity for drug development

To ignite a life-threatening infection in the body, a virus such as HIV invades body cells by first merging, or fusing, with the cell's outer membrane. Once inside the cell, the invading microbe's genetic material takes over, turning the 'host' cell into a factory to produce more copies of the virus, which then spill out to invade other cells in the body. Scientists had assumed that once a...

NYU biologists map out early stages of embryo formation

A team of genomic researchers headed by biologists at New York University's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute, and Cenix Biosciences, has mapped out a preliminary molecular diagram of the early stages of embryo formation, offering for the first time a global look at how a single cell begins its path into a...

Wright bros. upstaged! Dinos invented biplanes

The evolution of airplanes from the Wright Brothers' first biplanes to monoplanes was an inadvertent replay of the much earlier evolution of dinosaur flight, say two dino flight experts. According to paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee and retired aeronautical engineer R.J. Templin, a small early Chinese dinosaur called Microraptor gui used a two-level, biplane wing configuration to fly from...

Driver of anthrax toxicity could lead to late-stage therapy

A study in the March 24 Cell reports the discovery of a gene that drives anthrax bacteria's toxic effects. The gene could offer a potential new target for countermeasures against the lethal toxin, according to the researchers. Such therapies might have the potential to protect against anthrax during the late stages of the disease, after antibiotics have lost their therapeutic value, they a...

Front-line immune cells mature in four stages, study shows

Researchers here have cracked the site and the stages of development for the last major set of human immune cells. The researchers found that natural killer (NK) cells, one of the body's front-line defenses against cancer and infections, mature from progenitor stem cells in four discrete stages. They also found that this happens in secondary lymphoid tissue such as tonsils and lymph gland...

New research finds surveys of larval-stage organisms effective for measuring marine biodiversity

There is a push to document the biodiversity of the world within 25 years. However, the magnitude of this challenge is not well known, especially when it comes to vast and often inaccessible marine environments. To date, surveys of species diversity in the world's oceans have focused on adult organisms, but new research from Boston University has found that studying marine life in its larval phas...

Major cancer study aims to identify protein markers for early-stage disease

A team led by Bay Area scientists is one of five nationwide to receive a major grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to refine and standardize the technologies for identifying biomarkers in the blood -- specific proteins, and the patterns they make -- for the early detection of cancer. The grants, which signal the NCI's strategic shift toward studies aimed at early detection of c...

Nano-devices hold promise for early-stage cancer detection

They are miniature labs that can be swallowed like a pill, injected through a catheter, or woven into fabric. Their function is to screen for, detect, and potentially treat, cancer and other diseases when they are still at a single-cell size in early development stages. They will also detect harmful pathogens in food and water. Engineering researchers at McMaster University will be escal...

Novel vaccine shows promise against early-stage breast cancer

A diagnosis of breast cancer has taken on a new meaning in the past 10 years, as research has produced a host of new therapies and detection techniques, significantly improving long-term survival for women who have been fighting the disease. To build on these successes, researchers are now harnessing what they have learned about treating breast cancer and applying it to possible methods of preve...

Early-stage immune system control of HIV may depend on inherited factors

How well an individual's immune system controls HIV during the earliest phases of infection appears to depend on both the specific versions of key immune-system molecules called HLA Class I that have been inherited, as well as on the fragments of viral protein those molecules display to the T lymphocytes that usually destroy infected cells. In a report in the November issue of PLOS Medicine, res...

Intravenous nanoparticle gene therapy shows activity in stage IV lung cancer

A cancer-suppressing gene has been successfully delivered into the tumors of stage 4 lung cancer patients via an intravenously administered lipid nanoparticle in a phase I clinical trial at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The gene, FUS1, also was found to be active in the metastatic non-small cell lung cancer tumors. "We've treated 13 patients in this first-in-hum...

Using brain scans, researchers find evidence for a two-stage model of human perceptual learning

Using advanced brain imaging techniques, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have watched how humans use both lower and higher brain processes to learn novel tasks, an advance they say may help speed up the teaching of new skills as well as offer strategies to retrain people with perceptual deficits due to autism. , the research team...

Scientists discover stage at which an embryonic cell is fated to become a stem cell

Cambridge scientists have discovered the stage at which some of the cells of a fertilised mammalian egg are fated to develop into stem cells and why this occurs. The findings of the study, which overturn the long-held belief that cells are the same until the fourth cleavage (division) of the embryo, are reported in today's edition of Nature. After fertilisation, the cells of the embryo a...

Early-stage sperm cells created from human bone marrow

Human bone marrow has been used to create early-stage sperm cells for the first time, a scientific step forward that will help researchers understand more about how sperm cells are created. The research published today (Friday, April 13 2007), in the academic journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology, was carried out in Germany* by a team of scientists led by Professor Karim Nayernia, formerly...

454 sequencing identifies HIV drug resistance at early stage

454 Life Sciences, a member of the Roche group, and a Yale School of Medicine researcher today announced that they have used the company’s Genome Sequencer™ system to identify previously undetectable rare drug resistant HIV variants in samples from an earlier performed clinical trial. The work, presented today by Michael Kozal, M.D. of the Yale University School of Medicine and the VA CT Heal...