February 8, 2010, 7:57 AM CT

Genetic variant linked to biological aging

Researchers announced recently (7 Feb) they have identified for the first time definitive variants linked to biological ageing in humans. The team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants which are located near a gene called TERC.

The study in Nature Genetics published recently by scientists from the University of Leicester and King's College London, working with University of Groningen in the Netherlands, was funded by The Wellcome Trust and the British Heart Foundation.

British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the University of Leicester Professor Nilesh Samani, of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, who co-led the project explained that there are two forms of ageing chronological ageing i.e. how old you are in years and biological ageing whereby the cells of some individuals are older (or younger) than suggested by their actual age.

He said: "There is accumulating evidence that the risk of age-associated diseases including heart disease and some types of cancers are more closely correlation to biological rather than chronological age.

"What we studied are structures called telomeres which are parts of one's chromosomes. Individuals are born with telomeres of certain length and in a number of cells telomeres shorten as the cells divide and age. Telomere length is therefore considered a marker of biological ageing......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

February 3, 2010, 7:33 AM CT

Clean, biodegradable structure for stem cell growth

Medical scientists were shocked to discover that virtually all human embryonic stem cell lines being used in 2005 were contaminated. Animal byproducts used to line Petri dishes had left traces on the human cells. If those cells had been implanted in a human body they likely would have been rejected by the patient's immune system.

Even today, with new stem cell lines approved for use in medical research, there remains a risk that these cells will be contaminated in the same way. Most research labs still use animal-based "feeder layers" because it remains the cheapest and most reliable way to get stem cells to multiply.

Materials researchers at the University of Washington have now created an alternative. They built a three-dimensional scaffold out of a natural material that mimics the binding sites for stem cells, allowing the cells to reproduce on a clean, biodegradable structure. Results reported in the journal Biomaterials show that human embryonic stem cells grow and multiply readily on the structure.

"The major challenge for stem cell treatment today is it's very difficult to make a lot of them with high purity," said main author Miqin Zhang, a UW professor of materials science and engineering. "So far it seems like this material is very good for stem cell renewal."........ Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 8:07 AM CT

Early detection of Alzheimer's disease

Investigators from the International Center for Biomedicine and the University of Chile, in collaboration with the Center for Bioinformatics of the Universidad de Talca, have discovered that two drugs, the benzimidazole derivatives lanzoprazole and astemizole, appears to be suitable for use as PET (positron emission tomography) radiotracers and enable imaging for the early detection of Alzheimer's Disease. The study is reported in the current issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

Lanzoprazole and astemizole specifically tag pathological oligomers of tau which form the core of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), a pathognomonic brain lesion in Alzheimers patients. Prof. Dr. R.B. Maccioni and Dr. Leonel Rojo, authors of the study commented, "Since neurofibrillary tangles are positively correlated with cognitive impairment, we propose that these drugs have great potential in PET neuroimaging for in vivo early detection of AD and in reducing the formation of NFTs. These studies, based on advanced proteomics and databases of molecular interactions, may help to find potential new drugs for early diagnosis and therapy of Alzheimers disease. The findings are the result of a long-standing research program supported by the Alzheimers Association-USA and Fondecyt, Chile to evaluate new drug candidates." Technological applications of this discovery are being developed with the collaboration of VentureL@b of the Universidad Adolfo Ibaez......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 8:06 AM CT

New computational tool for cancer treatment

A number of human tumors express indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), an enzyme which mediates an immune-escape in several cancer types. Scientists in the Molecular Modeling group at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and Dr. Benot J. Van den Eynde's group at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Ltd (LICR) Brussels Branch developed an approach for creating new IDO inhibitors by computer-assisted structure-based drug design. The study was presented in the January 2010 online issue of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry

The docking algorithm EADock, used for this project, was developed by the Molecular Modeling Group over the last eight years. It provides solutions for the "lock-and-key" problem, wherein the protein active site is regarded as a "lock", which can be fitted with a "key" (commonly a small organic molecule) able to regulate its activity. Once an interesting molecule has been obtained, synthesis and laboratory experiments are necessary to confirm or reject the prediction. This algorithm will soon be made available to the scientific community worldwide.

The researchers obtained a high success rate. Fifty percent of the molecules designed in silico were active IDO inhibitors in vitro. Compounds that displayed activities in the low micromolar to nanomolar range, made them suitable for further testing in tumor cell experiments and for in vivo assessment in mice. If these studies are successful, researchers can begin evaluating these new compounds in patients undergoing cancer-immunotherapy......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 7:42 AM CT

HIV researchers solve key puzzle

Scientists have made a breakthrough in HIV research that had eluded researchers for over 20 years, potentially leading to better therapys for HIV, as per a research findings published recently in the journal Nature

The researchers, from Imperial College London and Harvard University, have grown a crystal that reveals the structure of an enzyme called integrase, which is found in retroviruses like HIV. When HIV infects someone, it uses integrase to paste a copy of its genetic information into their DNA.

Previous to the newly released study, which was funded by the Medical Research Council and the US National Institutes of Health, a number of scientists had tried and failed to work out the three-dimensional structure of integrase bound to viral DNA. New antiretroviral drugs for HIV work by blocking integrase, but researchers did not understand exactly how these drugs were working or how to improve them.

Scientists can only determine the structure of this kind of molecular machinery by obtaining high quality crystals. For the newly released study, scientists grew a crystal using a version of integrase borrowed from a little-known retrovirus called Prototype Foamy Virus (PFV). Based on their knowledge of PFV integrase and its function, they were confident that it was very similar to its HIV counterpart......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

January 29, 2010, 8:24 AM CT

Stopping Schizophrenia Before It Starts?

The onset of schizophrenia is not easy to predict. Eventhough it is linked to as a number of as 14 genes in the human genome, the previous presence of schizophrenia in the family is not enough to determine whether one will succumb to the mind-altering condition. The disease also has a significant environmental link.

As per Prof. Ina Weiner of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology, the developmental disorder, which commonly manifests in early adulthood, can be triggered in the womb by an infection. But unlike developmental disorders such as autism, it takes a number of years for the symptoms of schizophrenia to develop.

"Pharmacological therapys for schizophrenia remain unsatisfactory, so clinicians and scientists like myself have started to dig in another direction," says Prof. Weiner. "The big question asked in recent years is if schizophrenia can be prevented".

Revolutionizing the therapy

In their study, recently reported in Biological Psychiatry, Prof. Weiner and her colleagues Dr. Yael Piontkewiz and Dr. Yaniv Assaf sought to discover biological cues that would help trace the progression of the disease before symptoms manifested. "If progressive brain changes occur as schizophrenia is emerging, it is possible that these changes could be prevented by early intervention," she says. "That would revolutionize the therapy of the disorder......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

January 21, 2010, 8:22 AM CT

Older brains make good use of 'useless' information

Toronto A newly released study has observed promising evidence that the older brain's weakened ability to filter out irrelevant information may actually give aging adults a memory advantage over their younger counterparts.

A long line of research has already shown that aging is linked to a decreased ability to tune out irrelevant information. Now researchers at Baycrest's world-renowned Rotman Research Institute have demonstrated that when elderly adults "hyper-encode" extraneous information and they typically do this without even knowing they're doing it they have the unique ability to "hyper-bind" the information; essentially tie it to other information that is appearing at the same time.

The study, which appears online this week in the journal Psychological Science, was led by Karen Campbell, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Toronto, with supervision from Rotman senior scientist Dr. Lynn Hasher, a leading authority in attention and inhibitory functioning in younger and elderly adults.

"We observed that older brains are not only less likely to suppress irrelevant information than younger brains, but they can link the relevant and irrelevant pieces of information together and implicitly transfer this knowledge to subsequent memory tasks," said Campbell......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

January 15, 2010, 8:06 AM CT

Trial of new osteoporosis drug

Endocrinologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC are launching a human trial of a new drug that their research indicates holds great promise for building bones weakened by osteoporosis.

For the study, 105 participants will be randomly assigned to receive either teriparitide ( Forteo), a drug that already is FDA-approved for osteoporosis therapy, or an experimental agent called parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP), explained principal investigator Mara J. Horwitz, M.D., an assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Pitt School of Medicine, and a practicing metabolic bone specialist at UPMC.

"We are very eager to find out how this new drug compares to a treatment that is currently available," Dr. Horwitz said. "Our prior studies suggest that it may increase bone density more dramatically with fewer side effects, but this is the first head-to-head comparison".

On the cellular level, bone is constantly being broken down, a process known as resorption, and then rebuilt. In osteoporosis, this balancing act is off-kilter, leaving bones less dense and more vulnerable to fracture. A number of drugs, such as alendronate (Fosamax), and raloxifene (Evista), work by decreasing bone resorption. They can improve bone density by two to 10 percent over several years to a decade and reduce fractures, but a number of patients' bone density already has been reduced by half when therapy begins......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

January 13, 2010, 8:15 AM CT

How Melanoma Ivades Immune System

Melanoma, if not detected in its early stages, transforms into a highly deadly, therapy-resistant cancer. Eventhough the immune system initially responds to melanoma and mounts anti-tumor attacks, these assaults are generally ineffective, allowing more advanced melanomas to win the battle and spread beyond the primary site. Now, scientists at Children's Hospital Boston and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) shed light on how melanomas stimulate, yet ultimately evade, a patient's immune system. Their work, published online January 12 by the journal Cancer Research, also suggests ways drugs might block these tactics.

In 2008, the same team, led by Markus Frank, MD, of the Transplantation Research Center of Children's and BWH, and George Murphy, MD, chief of Dermatopathology at BWH, showed in the journal Nature that a key reason for melanoma virulence is a small group of tumor stem cells that are able to grow despite chemotherapy drugs, allowing the tumor to re-grow and progress. They also showed that targeting these cells (identifiable by a molecule on their surface known as ABCB5) could successfully inhibit tumor growth in mice. (The ABCB5 technology has been licensed and is currently in clinical drug development.)

In their new paper, first author Tobias Schatton, PhD, of the Transplantation Research Center, and his colleagues show that these ABCB5-positive cells also produce molecules that inhibit the body's natural immune attack, known as PD-1 and B7.2. These molecules work, they found, by triggering white blood cells known as regulatory T cells (T-regs), to dampen the normal anti-melanoma response. The T-regs are thus tricked into protecting the deadly melanoma stem cells from the body's own defenses......... Posted by: George      Read more         Source

January 12, 2010, 8:56 AM CT

ADHD: Disconnect Between Brain Regions

Two brain areas fail to connect when children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder attempt a task that measures attention, as per scientists at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain and M.I.N.D. Institute.

"This is the first time that we have direct evidence that this connectivity is missing in ADHD," said Ali Mazaheri, postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain. Mazaheri and colleagues made the discovery by analyzing the brain activity in children with ADHD. The paper appears in the current online issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The scientists measured electrical rhythms from the brains of volunteers, particularly the alpha rhythm. When part of the brain is emitting alpha rhythms, it shows that it is disengaged from the rest of the brain and not receiving or processing information optimally, Mazaheri said.

In the experiments, children with diagnosed ADHD and normal children were given a simple attention test while their brain waves were measured. The test consisted of being shown a red or blue image, or hearing a high or low sound, and having to react by pressing a button. Immediately before the test, the children were shown either a letter "V" to alert them that the test would involve a picture (visual), or an inverted "V" representing the letter "A" to alert them that they would hear a sound (auditory)......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 11, 2010, 8:16 AM CT

Calcium and taste perception

Calcium may not come to mind when you think of tasty foods, but in a study appearing in the January 8 issue of JBC, Japanese scientists have provided the first demonstration that calcium channels on the tongue are the targets of compounds that can enhance taste.

In addition to molecules that directly trigger specific taste buds (salty, sweet etc.), there are other substances which have no flavor of their own but can enhance the flavors they are paired with (known as kokumi taste in Japanese cuisine).

Exploiting this enhancement could have practical uses in food modulation; for example, creating healthy foods that contain minimal sugar or salt but still elicit strong taste. At the moment, though, the mode of action for these substances is poorly understood.

However, Yuzuru Eto and his colleagues examined whether calcium channels which sense and regulate the levels of calcium in the body might be the mechanism involved; they noted that calcium channels are closely correlation to the receptors that sense sweet and umami (savory) tastes and that glutathione (a common kokumi taste element) is known to interact with calcium channels.

To test their possibility, they created several small molecules that resembled glutathione and analyzed how well these compounds activated calcium channels in cell samples. Next, they diluted the same test substances in flavored water (salt water, sugar water, etc.) and asked volunteers (all trained in discriminating tastes) to rate how strong the flavors were......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

January 11, 2010, 7:49 AM CT

Repairing a defective alcohol metabolism enzyme

An experimental compound repaired a defective alcohol metabolism enzyme that affects an estimated 1 billion people worldwide, as per research supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The findings, published Jan. 10, 2010 in the advance online edition of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, suggest the possibility of a therapy to reduce the health problems linked to the enzyme defect.

"This intriguing finding could have broad public health implications," said NIAAA Acting Director Kenneth R. Warren, Ph.D. "We look forward to further research aimed at translating these laboratory discoveries into possible therapys for people".

"We recently identified a molecule called Alda-1 that activates the defective enzyme, and in the current study, we determined how this activation is achieved," said the study's senior author, Thomas D. Hurley, Ph.D., professor and associate chairman of biochemistry and molecular biology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. Initial investigations of Alda-1 were led by co-author Daria Mochly-Rosen, Ph.D., professor of chemical and systems biology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

After alcohol is consumed, it is first metabolized, or broken down, into acetaldehyde, a toxic chemical that causes DNA damage. Aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) is the main enzyme responsible for breaking down acetaldehyde into acetate, a nontoxic metabolite in the body. It also removes other toxic aldehydes that can accumulate in the body......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

January 11, 2010, 7:47 AM CT

Genetic research related to ankylosing spondylitis

Work done in part by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has led to the discovery of two new genes that are implicated in ankylosing spondylitis (AS), an inflammatory and potentially disabling disease. In addition, the international research team pinpointed two areas along stretches of DNA that play an important role in regulating gene activity linked to the arthritic condition.

The findings, a critical milestone in the understanding of AS, are reported in the recent issue of Nature Genetics, a journal that emphasizes research on the genetic basis for common and complex diseases. "This helps us better understand what is driving this disease and gives us direction for new therapys and diagnostic tests," said John D. Reveille, M.D., the study's principal investigator and professor and director of the Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunogenetics at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

Reveille, the university's Linda and Ronny Finger Foundation Distinguished Chair in Neuroimmunologic Disorders, and Matthew A. Brown, M.D., professor of immunogenetics at Australia's University of Queensland, led the research by the Triple "A" Spondylitis Consortium Genetic Study (i.e. the TASC or Australo-Anglo-American Spondylitis Consortium). Based on work from a genome-wide association scan, the team identified genes ANTXR2 and IL1R2 as well as two gene deserts, segments of DNA between genes on chromosomes 2 and 21 that are linked to ankylosing spondylitis. Importantly, the study also confirmed the Triple "A" Australo-Anglo-American Spondylitis Consortium's previously reported associations of genes IL23R and ERAP1, formerly known as ARTS1......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

January 5, 2010, 9:04 AM CT

Nano Cocktail to Target Tumors

A team of scientists in California and Massachusetts has developed a "cocktail" of different nanometer-sized particles that work in concert within the bloodstream to locate, adhere to and kill malignant tumors.

"This study represents the first example of the benefits of employing a cooperative nanosystem to fight cancer," said Michael Sailor, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and the primary author of a paper describing the results, which is being published in a forthcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An early online version of the paper appeared last week.

In their study, the UC San Diego chemists, bioengineers at MIT and cell biologists at UC Santa Barbara developed a system containing two different nanomaterials the size of only a few nanometers, or a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, that can be injected into the bloodstream. One nanomaterial was designed to find and adhere to tumors in mice, while the second nanomaterial was fabricated to kill those tumors.

These researchers and others had previously designed nanometer-sized devices to attach to diseased cells or deliver drugs specifically to the diseased cells while ignoring healthy cells. But the functions of those devices, the scientists discovered, often conflicted with one another......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

January 4, 2010, 8:04 AM CT

Experimental drug shows promise against cancers

An experimental drug currently being tested against breast and lung cancer shows promise in fighting the brain cancer glioblastoma and prostate cancer, scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in two preclinical studies.

The drug's actions, observed in isolated human cells in one trial and in rodents in the other, are particularly encouraging because they attacked not only the bulk of the tumor cells but also the rare cancer stem cells that are thought to beresponsible for most of a cancer's growth, said Dr. Jerry Shay, professor of cell biology and a senior co-author of both papers. The glioblastoma study appears in the recent issue of Clinical Cancer Research The prostate cancer study is available online in the International Journal of Cancer.

In the glioblastoma study, performed in mice, the drug also crossed from the bloodstream into the brain, which is particularly important because a number of drugs are not able to cross the blood-brain barrier.

"Because it attacks a mechanism that's active in most cancers, it might prove to be widely useful, particularly when combined with other therapies," said Dr. Shay.

Dr. Shay and colleagues study telomeres, bits of DNA that help control how a number of times a cell divides. Telomeres are protective "caps" of DNA on the ends of chromosomes, the structures that contain the body's genes. As long as telomeres are longer than a certain minimum length, a cell can keep dividing. But telomeres shorten with each cell division, so a cell stops dividing once the telomeres are whittled down to that minimum......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

January 3, 2010, 10:51 AM CT

Promise for high-speed genetic sequencing

Faster sequencing of DNA holds enormous potential for biology and medicine, especially for personalized diagnosis and customized therapy based on each individual's genomic makeup. At present however, sequencing technology remains cumbersome and cost prohibitive for most clinical applications, though this appears to be changing, thanks to a range of innovative new techniques.

In the current issue of Science, Stuart Lindsay, director of Arizona State University's Center for Single Molecule Biophysics at the Biodesign Institute, along with his colleagues, demonstrates the potential of one such method in which a single-stranded ribbon of DNA is threaded through a carbon nanotube, producing voltage spikes that provide information about the passage of DNA bases as they pass through the tubea process known as translocation.

Carbon nanotubes are versatile, cylindrical structures used in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science. They are composed of carbon allotropesvaried arrangements of carbon atoms, exhibiting unique properties of strength and electrical conductivity.

Traditional methods for reading the genetic script, made up of four nucleotide bases, adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine (labeled A,T,C,&G), typically rely on shredding the DNA molecule into hundreds of thousands of pieces, reading these abbreviated sections and finally, reconstructing the full genetic sequence with the aid of massive computing power. A decade ago, the first human genomea sequence of over 3 billion chemical base pairswas successfully decoded, in a biological tour de force. The undertaking mandatory around 11 years of painstaking effort at a cost of $1 billion dollars. In addition to the laboriousness of existing techniques, accuracy is compromised, with errors accumulating in proportion to the number of fragments to be read......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

December 29, 2009, 8:56 AM CT

Genetic Causes in Lipid Metabolism troubles

Researchers of Helmholtz Zentrum München led by Professor Karsten Suhre have identified new gene variants linked to disturbances in the lipid metabolism. Some of these common human gene variants are already known to be risk factors for diabetes mellitus. The pathomechanisms of diabetes have intrigued physicians and been the subject of much debate for a number of decades. These new research results may contribute to a better understanding of the clinical picture of diabetes and its pathogenesis - and could lead to new approaches in early diagnosis and treatment. The findings have been reported in the current online issue of the renowned journal Nature Genetics.

The research team, made up of researchers of the Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at Helmholtz Zentrum München and of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and led by Professor Karsten Suhre, identified variants in nine different genes which could be linked to disturbances in the lipid metabolism. Together with Dr. Christian Gieger and Assistant Professor Thomas Illig of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Zentrum München, Professor Suhre succeeded for the first time in associating variants in the well-known diabetes risk genes MTNR1B and GCKR with changes in the metabolism. "The results of our study bring us a decisive step closer in our search for markers for the early detection and treatment of serious metabolic diseases such as diabetes," Professor Suhre explained......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

December 29, 2009, 8:11 AM CT

Schizophrenia mouse model

Researchers have created what may be a schizophrenic mouse by reducing the inhibition of brain cells involved in complex reasoning and decisions about appropriate social behavior.

Findings by Medical College of Georgia scientists, published Dec. 28 in PNAS, elucidate the critical balance between excitation and inhibition of these cells that appears to go awry in schizophrenia. They also provide the first animal model for studying the disabling psychiatric disorder that affects about 1 percent of the population.

"We believe the mouse, which exhibits some of the same aberrant behavior as patients with this disorder, will help identify better therapies," said Dr. Lin Mei, a developmental neurobiologist who directs MCG's Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics. "We are doing testing to see if antipsychotic drugs already on the market are effective in treating the mouse".

MCG researchers made the mouse by deleting a candidate gene for schizophrenia, ErbB4, from interneurons, which are brain cells that help shower larger decision-making neurons, called pyramidal cells, with inhibition.

In their earlier work, they identified how ErbB4 and another candidate gene, neuregulin-1, work together to balance the activity of these pyramidal cells. They reported in Neuron in May 2007 that the two help keep a healthy balance between excitation and inhibition by increasing release of GABA, a major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the inhibitory synapses of the brain's prefrontal cortex. Seven years earlier, they showed the two also put a damper on excitatory synapses, communication points between neurons where the neurotransmitter glutamate excites cells to action......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 24, 2009, 10:14 PM CT

Vitamin C boosts the reprogramming of adult cells into stem cells

Famous for its antioxidant properties and role in tissue repair, vitamin C is touted as beneficial for illnesses ranging from the common cold to cancer and perhaps even for slowing the aging process. Now, a study published online on December 24th by Cell Press in the journal Cell Stem Cell uncovers an unexpected new role for this natural compound: facilitating the generation of embryonic-like stem cells from adult cells.

Over the past few years, we have learned that adult cells can be reprogrammed into cells with characteristics similar to embryonic stem cells by turning on a select set of genes. Eventhough the reprogrammed cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), have tremendous potential for regenerative medicine, the conversion is extremely inefficient.

"The low efficiency of the reprogramming process has hampered progress with this technology and is indicative of how little we understand it. Further, this process is most challenging in human cells, raising a significant barrier for producing iPSCs and serious concerns about the quality of the cells that are generated," explains senior study author Dr. Duanqing Pei from the South China Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

December 23, 2009, 7:58 AM CT

Success with new anti-cancer drug

A study conducted at Scott & White Healthcare in Temple, Texas, observed that a new drug stopped the growth of breast tumors in mice. This drug is unique in that it works both by stopping the cancer cells from growing and metastasizing to other organs, and by stimulating the immune system to destroy breast cancer cells and keeps them from coming back. This is the only drug that's able to work in both ways, while all other therapys work in one way or another. And, this research initiative not only involves physicians and biologists working together to bring therapys from the laboratory to the bedside, but a unique third component agriculturalists.

Researcher Alexzander Asea, Ph.D., the Effie and Wofford Cain Endowed Chair in Clinical Pathology, and division chief of investigative pathology at Scott & White Healthcare and the Texas A&M Health Science Center, said "we observed that some of the mice were essentially cured".

"All anti-cancer drugs broadly fall into two categories; either directly killing cancer cells (often healthy cells as well), or vaccines that help sick patients by boosting the immune system to better fight off cancer. This new drug works both ways, as a vaccine by taking away the cancer cell ability to grow, multiply and spread to distant organs, and by educating the immune system to recognize the breast cancer cells as 'foreign invaders' that need to be attacked and destroyed and to continue that process over time," Dr. Asea said......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

December 23, 2009, 7:57 AM CT

Nanotechnology Heals Abscesses

Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed a new approach for treating and healing skin abscesses caused by bacteria resistant to most antibiotics. The study appears in the journal PLoS One.

Abscesses are deep skin infections that often resist antibiotics and may require surgical drainage. For their new therapy strategy, the Einstein researchers developed tiny nanoparticles - smaller than a grain of pollen - that carry nitric oxide (NO), a gas that helps in the body's natural immune response to infection.

When topically applied to abscesses in mice, the particles released NO that traveled deep into the skin, clearing up the infections and helping to heal tissue.

"Our work shows that nitric oxide-releasing nanoparticles developed here at Einstein can effectively treat experimental skin abscesses caused by antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, even without surgical drainage," says Joshua D. Nosanchuk, M.D., senior author of the study and associate professor of medicine and of microbiology & immunology.

"This is important," he notes, "because several million people are treated for staph infections every year in the U.S. Increasingly, these infections are caused by methicillin-resistant Staph aureus - or MRSA - the serious and potentially fatal "superbug" that we tackled in this study"......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

December 23, 2009, 7:50 AM CT

Switching off hunger hormone

A Faculty of 1000 assessment examines how a stomach-produced hormone that influences the desire to eat and consume alcohol could be switched off to control drinking problems.

The study, carried out by Jerlhag et al. at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, showed that the hormone ghrelin, typically released by the stomach and known to promote appetite and therefore the intake of food, also influences the consumption of alcohol.

The results, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, showed that mice injected with ghrelin and then given the choice of alcohol or water to drink, were more likely to choose alcohol. At the same time, mice treated with ghrelin antagonists, as well as knockout mice (mice with the hormone's receptor removed), proved resistant to the effects of alcohol.

Faculty of 1000 Biology reviewer Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan says the ghrelin-injected mice showed more than a typical appetite for calories in choosing alcohol and the findings might influence therapy strategies for alcoholism.

Professor Berridge says, "These results seem to suggest a role for the effects of ghrelin on the brain in the motivation for alcohol consumption"......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

December 15, 2009, 11:36 PM CT

Chip capable of growing cardiac tissue

Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers, working with colleagues in Korea, have produced a laboratory chip with nanoscopic grooves and ridges capable of growing cardiac tissue that more closely resembles natural heart muscle. Surprisingly, heart cells cultured in this way used a "nanosense" to collect instructions for growth and function solely from the physical patterns on the nanotextured chip and did not require any special chemical cues to steer the tissue development in distinct ways. The researchers say this tool could be used to design new therapies or diagnostic tests for cardiac disease.

The device and experiments using it were described in this week's online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work, a collaboration with Seoul National University, represents an important advance for scientists who grow cells in the lab to learn more about cardiac disorders and possible remedies.

"Heart muscle cells grown on the smooth surface of a Petri dish, would possess some, but never all, of the same physiological characteristics of an actual heart in a living organism," said Andre Levchenko, a Johns Hopkins associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering. "That's because heart muscle cells-cardiomyocytes-take cues from the highly structured extracellular matrix or ECM, which is a scaffold made of fibers that supports all tissue growth in mammals. These cues from the ECM influence tissue structure and function, but when you grow cells on a smooth surface in the lab, the physical signals can be missing. To address this, we developed a chip whose surface and softness mimic the ECM. The result was lab-grown heart tissue that more closely resembles the real thing"......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

December 15, 2009, 11:27 PM CT

Decoding memory-forming brain cell conversations

The conversations neurons have as they form and recall memories have been decoded by Medical College of Georgia scientists.

The breakthrough in recognizing in real time the formation and recollection of a memory opens the door to objective, thorough memory studies and eventually better therapies, said Dr. Joe Tsien, neuroscientist and co-director of MCG's Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute. He is corresponding author on the study published Dec. 16 in PLoS ONE (see http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008256).

"It's a beginning, a first glimpse of a memory," Dr. Tsien said. "For the first time it gives us the ability to look at the brain dynamic and tell what kind of memory is formed, what are the components of the memory and how the memory is retrieved at the network level." The finding could help pinpoint at what stage memory formation is flawed and whether drugs are improving it.

For their studies, MCG researchers combined new technology and computational methods with century-old Pavlovian conditioning.

In the memory center of the brain, they used 128 electrodes capable of monitoring a handful of neurons each to simultaneously record the conversations of 200 to 300 neurons as mice learned to associate a certain tone with a mild foot shock 20 seconds later......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source