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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...

Topical treatment shown to inhibit HIV and herpes simplex virus infection

Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers demonstrated that a gel applied in the vagina provides protection from both the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the herpes simplex Virus. The study, presented at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, is the first to show that a gel can retain anti-viral activity within the human vagina. The study, which was fund...

Male circumcision reduces risk of HIV transmission from women to men

The first study to examine the probability ofHIV infection per act of heterosexual sex among a population withmultiple sexual partners has found that uncircumcised men have morethan twice the risk of acquiring HIV than do circumcised men.In the study, published in the Feb. 15 issue of The Journal ofInfectious Diseases, now available online, Jared Baeten and colleaguesfrom the United States...

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...

GATA: a graphic alignment tool for comparative sequence analysis

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...

Emory Eye Center Implants Its First Retinal Chips In Patients With Retinitis Pigmentosa

An expanded clinical trial conducted by Optobionics Corporation involving the implantation of a retina mircrochip has allowed Emory Eye Center and the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research & Development Center to implant the device in several patients. The patients all have retinitis pigmentosa with moderate-to-severe vision loss. Three centers in the United States have been chosen...

Sea skate experiment sheds light on human cell transport

Along with Mark Musch, a longtime University of Chicago collaborator, Goldstein conducted an experiment with the red blood cells of skates to understand how these skinny, graceful fish can swim from salt water to fresh water. For humans, such a drastic environmental change would prompt an equally drastic physiological change: Our cells would take in too much water, diluting blood and other body f...

Clam embryo study shows pollutant mixture adversely affects nerve cell development

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...

Scientists collaborate to assess health of global environment

For the first time, a group of scientists has accomplished the daunting task of evaluating the status of all of the ecosystems on Earth, and the outlook is troubling. Commissioned by the United Nations in 2001, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment program will issue its primary report on March 30 during press conferences in London, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi, Brasilia, Cai...

Fundamental Finding Yields Insight into Stem Cells, Cancer; Opens Door to Drug Discovery

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...

Experiments provide proof of how traveling in groups protects insects

Few events involving animals are more dramatic than when they band together and head out on the march cross-country. Among examples are the many thousands of wildebeests and other hoofed mammals that form herds and migrate across the African plains. and young locusts also sometimes unite with their...

Protein Packages Found To Activate Genes; May Be What Regulates Development And Disease

It's all in the packaging. How nature wraps and tags genes determines if and when they become active, according to researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). They did the largest, most detailed study to date of the protein structure that surrounds the human genome. Their findings reveal surprising and previously unknown specifics of how genes get switc...

Experiments provide proof of how traveling in groups protects insects

Few events involving animals are more dramatic than when they band together and head out on the march cross-country. Among examples are the many thousands of wildebeests and other hoofed mammals that form herds and migrate across the African plains. and young locusts also sometimes unite with their...

Gene Vaccine Protects Mice Against Development Of Her2/neu Breast Cancer

Based on successful animal studies, a novelvaccine that uses immune cells as factories to produce Her2/neu proteinmay offer a way to treat some human breast cancers, say researchers atThe University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. [Ed : is a protein often present / surexpressed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Development of portable infectious disease detector

A portable device similar to today's homepregnancy tests that can quickly detect the presence of infectiousdiseases, including HIV-AIDS and measles, as well as biological agentssuch as ricin and anthrax, is the object of a new jointuniversity/industry research project.Vanderbilt University's Institute for Integrative Biosystems Researchand Education (VIIBRE) and Pria Diagnostics LLC, a priv...

Researchers add new tool to tumor-treatment arsenal

A new study demonstrates the potential effectiveness of treating tumors by combining agents that damage DNA with a drug that sensitizes cancer cells to these agents. The research, led by George Thomas, PhD, professor at the University of Cincinnati's (UC) Genome Research Institute, and Heidi Lane of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, appears in the March 25, 2005, issue of the jo...

NIAID Initiates Trial of Experimental Avian Flu Vaccine

Fast-track recruitment has begun for a trial to investigate the safety of a vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced today. Sites in Rochester, NY, Baltimore and Los Angeles will enroll a total of 450 healthy adults. The clinical sites are part of the NIAID-sponsored V...

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...

Zebrafish may hold key to understanding human nerve cell development

Glia appear essential for 'hair cells'responsible for hearing and balance. Traditionally viewed as supportingactors, cells known as glia may be essential for the normal developmentof nerve cells responsible for hearing and balance, according to newUniversity of Utah research. The study is reported in the January 6,2005 issue of Neuron and is co-authored by scientists at the Universityof Was...

Discovery Could Lead To Novel Approaches In HIV Treatment

,the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, has announcedthe development of a new method to assess how well the thymus (an organlocated at the base of the neck) works and the discovery of afunctional abnormality of this organ in HIV-infected individuals. Theteam of investigators led by Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sékaly, professor atUniversi...

Plants defy Mendel's inheritance laws, may prompt textbook changes

Contrary to inheritance laws the scientific world has accepted for more than 100 years, some plants revert to normal traits carried by their grandparents, bypassing genetic abnormalities carried by both parents. These mutant parent plants apparently have hidden templates containing genetic information from the preceding generation that can be transferred to their offspring, even though the...

Scientists identify new model Of NK cell development

Scientists here have made a major discovery that sheds new light upon the growth and development of human natural killer (NK) cells, powerful but somewhat mysterious components of the body's immune system that are the first line of defense against cancer and infectious diseases. Scientists have believed for years that human NK cells are generated in bone marrow, but Michael Caligiuri, dire...

Influenza vaccine uses insect cells to speed development

Using a strategy involving a genetically modified baculovirus and caterpillar cells scientists from Protein Sciences Corporation have been able to speed up a key step in the development of an experimental cell-based influenza vaccine. They report their findings today at the 2005 American Society for Microbiology Biodefense Research Meeting. "The bird flu may become the next flu pandemic st...

Unexpressed But Indispensable -- The DNA Sequences That Control Development

Amidst the hoopla over the exact number of genes we have in our genome—more than a fruitfly, fewer than a rice plant—a more fundamental genetic truth has often been obscured. The expression of 20,000?0,000 genes is under the control of an uncounted host of non-coding sequences, which bind transcription factors and thereby regulate when and where genes are expressed. Unlike coding sequences, whose...

Scientists discover that host cell lipids facilitate bacterial movement

When the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes invades the body, it commandeers its host cell's actin cytoskeleton to invade other cells. In a report published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, a group of scientists provide insight into the molecular mechanisms behind this infection technique. The research appears as the "Paper of the Week" in the March 25 issue of the Journal of Biologic...

New Treatment Rivals Chemotherapy For Lymphoma, Study Finds

A new form of treatment for lymphoma that takes a fraction of the ti...

World's largest rainforest drying experiment completes first phase

Scientists with The Woods Hole Research Center are analyzing the surprising results of the first phase of a drydown experiment occurring in the Amazonian rainforest. From January 2000 to July 2004, rainfall was excluded from a one-hectare (2.2 acre) plot in the middle of the Tapajós National Forest, in Brazil. A total of 6 feet of rainfall was diverted with six thousand 2' by 6' clear plas...

Rush Physicians Using Gene Therapy For Heart Patients With Moderate To Severe Chest Pains Who Do Not Benefit From Other Treatments

Individuals with moderate to severe chest pains (angina) who have not found relief from medication may benefit from a new gene therapy approach being used by cardiologists at Rush University Medical Center to grow new blood vessels in the heart. The phase II clinical research study uses vascular endothelial growth factor-2 (VEGF-2) in the form of a solution containing a DNA plasmid that i...

Chemists identify key gene in development of type 1 diabetes

Chemists say they have identified a gene that appears to play a key role in the development of type 1 diabetes, also known as insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes, a disease that affects about one million people in the U.S. and is on the rise worldwide. They described their findings, which they say could lead to new drug interventions and possibly gene therapy, today at the 229th national meeti...

Breast-Cancer Risk Linked to Exposure to Traffic Emissions at Menarche, First Birth

Exposure to carcinogens in traffic emissions at particular lifetime points may increase the risk of developing breast cancer in women who are lifetime nonsmokers, a study by epidemiologists and geographers at the University at Buffalo has found. Their study was conducted among women who lived in Erie and Niagara counties of New York State between 1996 and 2001. They found that higher expo...

Effective Cancer Treatments Follow The Clock

Oncologists have long thought that cancer treatments tend to be more effective at certain times of day. But they have been unable to turn this knowledge into practice, because they did not understand the phenomenon well enough. Now, researchers have discov...

Potential treatments for neurofibromatosis

Neurofibromatosis can leave its patients miserable and debilitated with chronic itching or pain from disfiguring tumors. Infants affected by the disease face possible paralysis or damage to the brain and other organs. The disease frustrates doctors because there's no effective treatment even though the responsible gene was identified more than a decade ago. Currently little can be done to...

How the environment could be damaging men's reproductive health

Two Scandinavian studies have provided further evidence that environmental factors could be affecting men's reproductive health. The studies, published online today (Thursday 28 April) in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction, suggest that environmental pollutants could be changing the ratio of sperm carrying the X or Y (sex determining) chromosomes and that th...

Variation in women's X chromosomes may explain differences among individuals, between sexes

The first comprehensive survey of gene activity in the X chromosomes of women has revealed an unexpected level of variation among individuals, according to new work by researchers at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP) and Pennsylvania State University. The results may have important implications for understanding the differences in traits among women and...

Use of PET can reduce, may eliminate more strenuous drug development trials with animals

A number of articles explore the use of positron emission tomography (PET) and small animal imaging--nonsurgical techniques that open the door to understanding and treating human diseases--in the April issue of the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Journal of Nuclear Medicine. A major benefit of small animal imaging "is the ability to carry out many studies at various time points with the same...

Liposome finding implies electrical effect on cell development

Experiments with liposomes ?cell-like "water balloons" composed of artificially created phospholipid bilayers similar to natural cell membranes ?have revealed unexpected behavior in the presence of electrical fields that may provide a paradigm-shifting change in science's understanding of biomembrane function in operating living systems. Arizona State University chemists Mark Hayes and Mic...

Multi-purpose protein regulates new protein synthesis and immune cell development

A signaling protein called IRE1, which helps stressed-out cells make new proteins, may be more versatile and important than scientists believed. A new study by researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute reveals the surprising finding that this same signaling protein is required for the formation of immune cells called B lymphocytes....

GeneNotes - A novel information management software for biologists

Analyzing microarray data - or even a simple biological network - can get you lost - quick. Tons of genes, tons of synonyms for each, tons of known interactions, with even more being unknown, tons of database with tons of information... and your job is to make sense of this puzzle in a biologically meaningfull way. Applications are being developped to make it all easier, leaving the fun part...

UCSD-Salk Team Show Protein’s Gene-Silencing Role In Development of Nervous System

The first evidence that a group of proteins called phosphatases play a key role in the development of the nervous system, has been shown in fruit flies and mice by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, in collaboration with scientists at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California. The phosphatases are required for maintenance of neural stem cells and for...