TEG

Antibiotic Resistant Bacterium Uses Sonar-like Strategy to “See?Enemies or Prey

For the first time, scientists have foundthat bacteria can use a Sonar-like system to spot other cells (eithernormal body cells or other bacteria) and target them for destruction.Reported in the December 24 issue of Science, this finding explains howsome bacteria know when to produce a toxin that makes infection moresevere. It may lead to the design of new toxin inhibitors. “Blocking orinte...

Affymetrix and the Karolinska Institutet Announce Translational Medicine Strategic Alliance

Affymetrix Inc. (Nasdaq: AFFX - News) and Karolinska Institutet announced today that they have entered into a strategic alliance designed to improve healthcare by accelerating the translation of basic genetic research into tools for better diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. During the next five years the projects include genetic analyses and measurement of gene expression in patients wi...

Affymetrix and Stratagene Announce Strategic Software Alliance

announced today that they have entered into a non-exclusive strategic alliance under which Stratagene will provide Affymetrix customers with new software solutions for GeneChip(R) data analysis. As part of this agreement, Stratagene will develop a new software package for...

Pathogen-Mimicking Vaccine As Strategy For Cancer Therapy

Results from the first clinical trial of a therapeutic cancer vaccine combining the synthetic bacterial DNA sequence, CpG 7909 (ProMuneTM, Coley Pharmaceutical), with a peptide antigen were reported today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The paper shows that the CpG 7909 DNA sequence is safe, and increases the immune system's ability to recognize and destroy cancer cells. The Phase I stu...

Navigating an integrated yeast network

Scientists have for the first time mapped multiple complex biological interactions in a yeast cell in a simple graphical form, enhancing our understanding of how the networks of interaction by which components of a cell influence one another. New research published in the Open Access journal Journal of Biology shows that such maps can also reveal cryptic interactions and enable accurate predictio...

Integration of Agilent's MS technology, Proteome Systems' software to help scientists in proteomics research

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) and Proteome Systems, a leading international proteomics company, today announced they have signed a marketing agreement to collaborate on an integrated solution for the analysis of glycoproteins, molecules that are important in the study of many diseases, including cancer, influenza and arthritis. Under the agreement, Proteome Systems will make its GlycomIQ so...

New strategies to reduce hospital-aquired infections

The current goal to reduce sickness and death from infections that patients acquire in hospitals has created a renewed focus on identifying ways to reduce the problem at its source. Hospital water for drinking, bathing, showering, to make ice cubes or to rinse medical equipment is increasingly being recognized as a significant source of microbes that may contribute to many of these life-threateni...

Gene silencing technique offers new strategy for treating, curing disease

A new technique aimed at directly controlling the expression of genes by turning them on or off at the DNA level could lead to drugs for the treatment or cure of many diseases, say researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center. "Virtually every disease starts at the level of malfunctioning gene expression, or viral or bacterial gene expression," said Dr. David Corey, professor of pharmacol...

AIDS expert says global strategy needed to combat feminization of HIV/AIDS

Thomas C. Quinn, M.D., a Johns Hopkins physician and scientist, who has spent the best part of the last 25 years leading major efforts to combat HIV and AIDS throughout the world, is calling for global strategies and resources to confront the rapid "feminization" of the AIDS pandemic. Quinn, a professor of infectious diseases at Hopkins and a senior investigator at the National Institute o...

Preventing a pandemic: Study suggests strategies for containing a flu outbreak

Though quick to caution about the many things that could go wrong, researchers say that it may be possible to contain a Southeast Asian outbreak of avian influenza in humans, buying precious time for the production of a vaccine. Using a computer model to simulate an outbreak in a rural Southeast Asian population, the scientists have shown how a combination of strategies, including targeted...

Polio vaccination strategies assessed as eradication nears

Polio is on track to become only the second disease ever eradicated. In two studies in the Dec. 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online, scientists are working to ensure that once it is gone, it stays gone. One study reduces concerns that people whose immune systems were weakened by HIV would re-introduce poliovirus into the community. The other study looks at the ho...

Fitting in: Newly evolved genes adopt a variety of strategies to remain in the gene pool

The largest-ever experimental analysis of duplicated genes provides insight into mechanisms of evolution When Mother Nature creates an identical copy of a gene in an organism's genome, the duplicated copy is usually deleted, inactivated, or otherwise rendered nonfunctional in order to prevent genetic redundancy and to preserve biological homeostasis. In some cases, however, gene duplicat...

Asleep in the deep: Model helps assess ocean-injection strategy for combating greenhouse effect

In searching for ways to counteract the greenhouse effect, some scientists have proposed capturing the culprit---carbon dioxide---as it is emitted from power plants, then liquefying the gas and injecting it into the ocean. But there are pitfalls in that plan. The carbon dioxide can rise toward the surface, turn into gas bubbles and vent to the atmosphere, defeating the purpose of the whol...

Melanoma vaccine strategy shows promise in laboratory experiments

A novel approach to creating a vaccine to treat melanoma has demonstrated promising effectiveness in a new laboratory study led by researchers at The Wistar Institute. About a third of melanoma patients might benefit from such a vaccine. The study appears in the current issue of Cancer Research. In the study, the scientists used a small protein called a peptide found in approximately 70 pe...

Study by Einstein researchers could lead to a novel strategy for treating obesity

In their latest finding on the brain's role in controlling appetite and weight, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have shown that reducing levels of fatty acids in the hypothalamus causes rats to overeat and become obese. Their results suggest that restoring fatty-acid levels in the brain may be a promising way to treat obesity. The study, published in the January 15th on-lin...

Team discovers possible 'universal strategy' to combat addiction

An international research team led by the University of Saskatchewan has discovered a signaling pathway in the brain involved in drug addiction, together with a method for blocking its action, that may point to a single treatment strategy for most addictions. The team, led by Xia Zhang, associate p...

Researchers discover way to transport environmental arsenic to plant leaves in new clean-up strategy

Environmental arsenic pollution is a serious and growing environmental problem, especially on the Indian subcontinent. Researchers at the University of Georgia had, several years ago, used genetic techniques to create "arsenic-eating" plants that could be planted on polluted sites. There was a problem, however. The arsenic sequestered from soil remained largely in the roots of the plant, m...

Attacking cancer's sweet tooth is effective strategy against tumors

An ancient avenue for producing cellular energy, the glycolytic pathway, could provide a surprisingly rich target for anti-cancer therapies. A team of Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers knocked down one of the pathway's enzymes, LDHA, in a variety of fast-growing breast cancer cells, effectively shutting down glycolysis, and implanted the cells in mice. Control animals carrying tumo...

Everything in its place: Researchers identify brain cells used to categorize images

Socks in the sock drawer, shirts in the shirt drawer, the time-honored lessons of helping organize one's clothes learned in youth. But what parts of the brain are used to encode such categories as socks, shirts or any other item, and how does such learning take place? New research from Harvard Medical School (HMS) investigators has identified an area of the brain where such memories are...

New strategy rapidly identifies cancer targets

In a step toward personalized medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Brian J. Druker and colleagues have developed a new technique to identify previously unknown genetic mutations that can trigger cancerous growth. By analyzing the proteins ?instead of the genes ?inside acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, the researchers have dramatically reduced the time it takes to zero in on mo...

Researchers unveil strategy for creating actively-programmed anti-cancer molecules

The new study, which was published July 5 in an advanced, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, achieved a significant enhancement of the treatment of metastatic breast cancer in animal models. The study showed the new hybrid compound remained in circulation for a week. In comparison, the small molecule drug was cleared in a matter of minutes. "Although th...

New strategy developed to combat West Nile Virus

The spread of West Nile Virus appears to be triggered by a complex interaction of mosquitoes, nesting birds and specific weather patterns, scientists say, which leads to "amplification" of the virus within mosquito populations. Researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Florida have identified how those factors mesh to create heightened risk of the West Nile Virus in so...

Different strategies underlie the ecology of microbial invasions

Infectious disease can play a key role in mediating the outcome of competition between rival groups, as seen in the effects of disease-bearing conquistadors in the New World--or, on a much smaller ecological scale, the ability of bacteria to spread their viruses to competing bacteria. In a new study, researchers have compared two different general ways in which bacteria compete with one another,...

UCSD researchers create roadmap to integrin activation

Calling it an important technical advance in the study of the complex receptors and pathways of the body's cellular system, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have reconstructed the signaling pathways that impact activation of a receptor that is critical to the control of bleeding and to the thrombosis that occurs in heart attacks and strokes. <p...

Circumcision: A proven strategy to prevent HIV

Male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of acquiring HIV in young African men, according to a study led by University of Illinois at Chicago professor of epidemiology Robert Bailey. Researchers conducted a clinical trial enrolling 2,784 HIV negative, uncircumcised men between 18 and 24 years old in Kisumu, Kenya...

Trojan horse strategy defeats drug-resistant bacteria

A new antimicrobial approach can kill bacteria in laboratory experiments and eliminate life-threatening infections in mice by interfering with a key bacterial nutrient, according to research led by a University of Washington scientist. The joint project, conducted at the UW, the University of Iowa, and the University of Cincinnati, will be featured in the April 2 issue of the Journal of Clinical...

Newly identified mechanism for silencing genes points to possible anti-cancer strategies

Genes provide the instructions used by the individual cells to produce the many different proteins that make up the body. Scientists are only beginning to appreciate, however, the extraordinary degree of control exercised over every step of the production process. Only about 10 percent of human genes, for example, are actively producing proteins in a given cell at a given time. The remain...

US control strategies may make flu epidemics worse, UCLA study shows

Regular as clockwork, the flu arrives every year. And, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5 to 20 percent of the U.S. population on average will come down with it. About 36,000 people will die. But among health experts, a bigger concern than the seasonal flu is an outright flu pandemic, such as a human strain of avian flu. And officials say it is not a qu...

Blood-brain barrier breached by new therapeutic strategy

A major obstacle in the treatment of infections and other diseases of the brain is the blood-brain barrier, which prevents systemically delivered therapeutic drugs from reaching the brain. Grantees of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, have now shown that a short protein (peptide) from the rabies virus can carry a strip of ther...

FDA sees nanotech challenges in every product category it regulates

WASHINGTON, DC—According to Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies Director David Rejeski, “Today, FDA took a step forward in fulfilling its responsibilities for nanotechnology oversight. If nanotechnology regulation was a baseball game, FDA has scored the first run in the first inning. But the agency must act rapidly to adopt and fully implement the Nanotechnology Task Force’s recommendations....