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Adding Radiation Therapy To Chemotherapy Improves Survival In Patients With High-risk Breast Cancer

For patients with high-risk breast cancer treated with radical mastectomy and adjuvant chemotherapy, the addition of radiation therapy leads to better survival outcomes with few long-term toxic effects, according to a 20-year follow-up of a randomized trial, which appears in the January 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The British Columbia randomized radiation the...

Genes In The Interferon System Important In Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Two genes with very strong associations withthe disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have been identified bya team of scientists headed by researchers at the Department of MedicalSciences at Uppsala University. The findings are being published todayon the Web page of the highly prestigious American Journal of HumanGenetics. "These findings are probably the first genetic pieces of ahug...

UAB scientists discover the origin of a mysterious physical force

Ever since the 1970s, scientists have been trying to establish the cause of a repulsive force occurring between different electrostatically charged molecules, such as DNA and other biomolecules, when they are very close to each other in aqueous media. This force became know as hydration force. Jordi Faraudo, a researcher for the Department of Physics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelo...

Researchers discover way to make cells in the eye sensitive to light

Researchers have discovered a way to makelight sensitive cells in the eye by switching on a single gene.According to research published online today in Nature, the team fromImperial College London and the University of Manchester, havediscovered that activating the melanopsin gene in the nerve cellscauses them to become light responsive, or photoreceptive. Usingmouse cells, the resea...

Protein discovery could unlock the secret to better TB treatment

UCL scientists have found a protein that could unlock the secret to quicker, more effective treatment of TB by waking TB bacteria in the body. Once the TB bacteria are active again, the disease becomes treatable using common drugs like antibiotics. Scientists believe that uncovering the molecular structure of this protein will lead the way to designing drugs which enable treatment of dormant and...

Columbia research lifts major hurdle to gene therapy for cancer

Researchers at Columbia University MedicalCenter have discovered a way to overcome one of the major hurdles ingene therapy for cancer: its tendency to kill normal cells in theprocess of eradicating cancer cells.In a new study published in the Jan. 25 issue of the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers demonstrated thatthe technique works by incorporating it i...

Priming embryonic stem cells to fulfill their promise

Bioengineering researchers at the Universityof California, San Diego have invented a process to help turn embryonicstem cells into the types of specialized cells being sought as possibletreatments for dozens of human diseases and health conditions. SangeetaBhatia and Shu Chien, UCSD bioengineering professors, and ChristopherJ. Flaim, a bioengineering graduate student, described the cell-cult...

Growth in the sea comes down to a struggle for iron

Scientists know that injecting iron into some major regions of the oceans can stimulate the growth of diatoms and other phytoplankton, but something odd occurs as these tiny marine plants continue to grow. They begin to starve in the midst of plenty, acting as though iron, an essential nutrient, still is in short supply. Why this happens is unclear, but the answer could be that iron sets off a ki...

Poor prenatal nutrition permanently damages function of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas

Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have discovered one reason why infants with low birth weight have a high potential of developing type 2 diabetes later in life. In studies of mice, the researchers found that poor prenatal nutrition impairs the pancreas's ability to later secrete enough insulin in response to blood glucose. "The bottom line is that if you don't have delivery of enough...

Drug That 'Tags' Decision-making Areas Of The Brain May Aid

Along with aiding efforts to study addictedsmokers, a new drug that attaches only to areas of the brain that havebeen implicated in may help studies of people battling other disorders such as Alzheimer’sdisease and schizophrenia.Developed by UC Irvine Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers...

The secret to longevity in tubeworms

With an incredible lifespan of up to 250 years the deep sea tube worm, Lamellibrachia luymesi is among the longest-lived of all animals, but how it obtains sufficient nutrient ?in the form of sulfide - to keep going for this long has been a mystery. In a paper just published in the premier open-access online journal PLoS Biology, Erik Cordes and colleagues now provide a solution: by releasing its...

Another Look Finds Promising Proteomics Test is Not Biologically Plausible

In a new study, researchers present a “cautionary tale?about what may go wrong when using the fledgling science of proteomics to devise a diagnostic test for cancer. In the February 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center detail why an experimental test intended to identify early ovarian cancer from a...

Cracking the olfactory code in bees

In a new study, researchers present a “cautionary tale?about what may go wrong when using the fledgling science of proteomics to devise a diagnostic test for cancer. In the February 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center detail why an experimental test intended to identify early ovarian cancer from a...

A much-needed shot in the arm for HIV vaccine development

International efforts towards developing avaccine against HIV infection have been given a much-needed boost bythe publication today of the Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise'sscientific strategic plan, published online in the freely available,open-access global health journal PLoS Medicine.The Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise is an international alliance ofindependent agencies and organiz...

Inexpensive, mass-produced genes core of synthetic biology advances at UH

;progress in this area is made in the UK, too. It'll open tons ofresearch avenue, speeding the slow (and tedious) process of genecloning, or gene modification (mutations, deletions, etc). Devices the size of a pag...

Combination therapy boosts effectiveness of telomere-directed cancer cell death

Sometimes apotential target for a drug seems very promising on paper; things areoften very different in reality. Its the case of telomerase inhibitorsto treat cancer; they are supposed to strip the "immortal" (able todivide indefinitely) aspect of cancer cells. Yet, something in the cellseems to block their function, preventing them to inhibit completelythe...

Cytoplasm affects the number of vertebrae in carp-goldfish clones

The March 2005 issue of Biology of Reproduction contains a report of some intriguing findings in cloned offspring created when nuclei from one genus of fish were transplanted to enucleated eggs of another genus of fish. The seven offspring, cloned from nuclei of common carp and egg cytoplasm of goldfish, were virtually identical to the nuclear donor species, Cyprinus carpio, in appearance...

Breakthrough Microarray-based Technology for the Study of Cancer

A new development in the analysis of cancerhas been announced by Agilent Technologies. The company has reported aninnovative method that enables the rapid advance of microarray-basedcomparative genomic studies in cancer. According to the reportpublished in the December 24, 2004 issue of the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Science (PNAS) in collaboration with the NationalHuman Genome R...

The transparent organism: EMBLEM and Carl Zeiss give labs a unique look at life

A novel high-tech microscope will be brought to the marketplace, giving laboratories everywhere fascinating new insights into living organisms. EMBLEM Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM), the commercial entity of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), announced today that it has signed a licensing deal with technological leader Carl Zeiss to commercialize a new technology called SPIM (Se...

Found: Missing sequence of the human Y chromosome

Scientists report today in the journal GenomeResearch that they have successfully cloned and characterized apreviously intractable DNA sequence: a 554-kilobase-pair genomicsegment near the centromere of the human Y chromosome. This sequencecontains eight putatively active genes that could be implicated insex-associated height differences and gonadal tumor development. Thispericentrom...

The secret lives of whales

Using genetics, Navy sonar, deep-sea submersibles, and toxicology, scientists are peering into the lives of whales ?past and present ?in ways never before possible. At a 3:00 PM press conference on February 19th at the annual meeting of AAAS, Steve Palumbi of Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, Christopher W. Clark of Cornell University, Craig Smith of the University of Hawaii and Roger Payne of t...

Gene therapy converts dead bone graft to new, living tissue

Researchers have created a way to transform the dead bone of a transplanted skeletal graft into living tissue in an experiment involving mice. The advance, which uses gene therapy to stimulate the body into treating the foreign splint as living bone, is a promising development for the thousands of cancer and trauma patients each year who suffer with fragile and failing bone grafts. The findings w...

Researchers reveal the infectious impact of salmon farms on wild salmon

A new study published in the March 30th edition of the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B (a publication of the UK's national academy of science) shows that the transfer of parasitic sea lice from salmon farms to wild salmon populations is much larger and more extensive than previously believed. This quantitative analysis of parasite transfer is a scientific...

Novel Therapy Tested in Mice Could Chase Away Cat Allergies

A molecule designed to block cat allergies successfully prevented allergic reactions in laboratory mice, as well as in human cells in a test tube, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers report in the April issue of Nature Medicine, available online now. In the future, the investigators say, these promising results could lead to a new therapy not only for human cat allergies, but...

Study identifies predictors of HIV drug resistance in patients beginning triple therapy

A scientist at the Marine BiologicalLaboratory (MBL) has published the results of an EPA-funded clam embryostudy that supports her hypothesis that, when combined, the pollutantsbromoform, chloroform, and tetrachloroethylene--a chemical cocktailknown as BCE--can act synergistically to alter a key regulator in nervecell development. While scientists have previously studied the effectsof these...

New imaging method gives early indication if brain cancer therapy is effective, U-M study shows

A special type of MRI scan that measures the flow of water molecules through the brain can help doctors determine early in the course of brain cancer regimen if a patient's tumor will shrink, a new study shows. Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center developed the assessment, which they call a functional diffusion map. They used a magnetic resonance imaging sc...

Muscle-targeted gene therapy reverses rare muscular dystrophy in mice

Gene therapy methods that specifically target muscle may reverse the symptoms of a rare form of muscular dystrophy, according to new research in mice conducted by medical geneticists at Duke University Medical Center. Infants born with the inherited muscular disorder called Pompe disease usually die before they reach the age of two. The researchers also said their approach of targeting corrective...

In the sea slug's defense against lobsters, confusion is key

Like many other marine creatures, Aplysia, a common sea slug, enlists chemical defenses against its predators, but the mechanisms by which such chemical attacks actually work against their intended targets are not well understood by researchers. New work has now shown that such chemical defenses can involve modes of trickery that had not previously been appreciated as components of chemical defen...

Scientists discover the cellular roots of graying hair

Few things about growing older are asinevitable and obvious as “going gray,?yet scientists have been unableto explain the precise cause of this usually unwelcome transformation.In a report posted today on the Web site of the journal Science,researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s HospitalBoston say they have found the cellular cause of graying hair whileinvestigating th...

Weizmann Institute scientists develop a new approach for directing treatment to metastasized prostate cancer in the bones.

Few things about growing older are asinevitable and obvious as “going gray,?yet scientists have been unableto explain the precise cause of this usually unwelcome transformation.In a report posted today on the Web site of the journal Science,researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s HospitalBoston say they have found the cellular cause of graying hair whileinvestigating th...

Elephants imitate truck noises, other animals

Elephants learn to imitate sounds that are not typical of their species, the first known example after humans of vocal learning in a non-primate terrestrial mammal. The discovery, reported in today's Nature, further supports the idea that vocal learning is important for maintaining individual social relationships among animals that separate and reunite over time, like dolphins and whales, some bi...

Probing The Promise And Perils Of Nanoparticles

For all its promise, the prospect of using nanoparticles in biomedical applications and consumer products has raised concerns about possible harmful effects of the miniscule materials. Scientists at the University of Michigan are addressing those concerns by investigating how certain kinds of nanoparticles damage cell membranes—enough to cause cell death in some cases—and how the damage can be pr...

Gene Therapy For Parkinson's Disease Moves Forward In Animals

An international team of scientists has used gene therapy in two separate studies to renew brain cells and restore normal movements in monkeys and rats with a drug-induced form of Parkinson's disease. The research, detailed online in the scientific publications Brain and The Journal of Neuroscience, essentially describes one strategy to halt Parkinson's disease at its onset and another st...

Scientists reveal molecular secrets of the malaria parasite

In an innovative project with implicationsfor malaria vaccine development, scientists have used genomics,proteomics and gene expression studies to trace how malaria parasitesevolve on a molecular level as they move between their hosts and insectvectors.That focus on the parasites' complex life cycle is helping researchersunderstand when different genes switch on and off as the pathogensmet...

Alcohol's effects on gene expression in the central nervous system

Alcohol's primary target is the central nervous system (CNS), where it influences neurotransmission to produce intoxication. Scientists can now use microarray technology to study brain function gene by gene. Symposium proceedings published in the February issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research address the effects of alcohol on what is called "gene expression" in the CNS regions...

Deficiency of growth hormone and IGF-1 reduces cancer and kidney disease, but creates other problems

Deficiencies of growth hormone and similar compounds may reduce cancer and kidney disease late in life, but also may lead to cartilage degeneration and impaired memory and learning ability, according to research at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and four other institutions. The researchers used a rat model to explore the effects of growth hormone and another compound, IGF-1...

HIV Infection Still On The Rise

Preventive measures are failing to stem the rising rate of HIV infection, warn two senior doctors in an editorial in this week's BMJ. The underlying reason for this continuing increase is socioeconomic, but the increase also repr...

Scientists document complex genomic events leading to the birth of new genes

A team of scientists led by Peer Bork, Ph.D., Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, report today in the journal Genome Research that they have identified a new primate-specific gene family that spans about 10% of human chromosome 2. Comprised of eight family members, the RGP gene cluster may help to explain what sets apart humans and other primates from the...

New therapy for HIV/AIDS eliminates needles and excessive toxicity

A team led by Johns Hopkins scientists hasfound the first clear evidence that the process behind the human immunesystem's remarkable ability to recognize and respond to a milliondifferent proteins might have originated from a family of genes whoseonly apparent function is to jump around in genetic material. essentially cut...

The death of a very special chimpanzee

Researchers at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem have succeeded in discovering and isolating a new proteinfrom the poplar tree with special structural and qualitativecharacteristics that could have consequences for development of futurenanocapsules for drug delivery to cancer cells.In addition to being obtained from plant tissue, the protein can nowalso be produced in large quantities as a...