ORLANDO, Florida With an estimated 80,000 Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tears happening each year in the United States (Source: American Journal of Sports Medicine 2006 ; 9:1512-1532), including recently to famed golfer, Tiger Woods, choosing the best replacement ligament for surgery is one key to success.
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By injecting purified stem cells isolated from adult skeletal muscle, researchers have shown they can restore healthy muscle and improve muscle function in mice with a form of muscular dystrophy. Those muscle-building stem cells were derived from a larger pool of so-called satellite cells that normally associate with mature muscle fibers and play a role in muscle growth and repair.
BOSTON July 10, 2008 Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have demonstrated for the first time that transplanted muscle stem cells can both improve muscle function in animals with a form of muscular dystrophy and replenish the stem cell population for use in the repair of future muscle injuries.
PHILADELPHIA Among patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer, the addition of hormone therapy following vaccine treatment improved overall survival compared with either treatment alone or when the vaccine followed hormone treatment, according to recent data published in the July 15 Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Scientists have identified about two dozen genes that control embryonic stem cell fate. The genes may either prod or restrain stem cells from drifting into a kind of limbo, they suspect. The limbo lies between the embryonic stage and fully differentiated, or specialized, cells, such as bone, muscle or fat.
By knowing the genes and proteins that control a cell's progress toward the differentiated form, researchers may be able to accelerate the process a potential boon for the use of stem cells in therapy or the study of some degenerative diseases, the scientists say.
T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL)
DALLAS July 10, 2008 UT Southwestern Medical Center plastic surgeons and specialists in diabetes, neurology, pain management and rehabilitation are launching a cutting-edge study of peripheral nerve surgery to alleviate long-standing pain and numbness in patients with diabetic neuropathy.
Smaller, more accurate, higher performance and lower priced - that is the formula for success for micro- and nanoelectronics. Miniaturisation plays a crucial economic role to-day and contributes significantly to the key technologies of the 21st century; however, the smaller the structures, the more susceptible they are to minimal contaminations.
Genetic recombination, the process by which sexually reproducing organisms shuffle their genetic material when producing germ cells, leads to offspring with a new genetic make-up and influences the course of evolution. In the current issue of Nature, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, present the most precise map of genetic recombination yet.
Philadelphia, 10 July 2008 Preliminary research shows encouraging results with transplantation of retinal cells in patients with blindness caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to a report in the August issue of American Journal of Ophthalmology (http://www.AJO.com).
Confocal microscope image of a self-assembled monolayer of a polychlorotriphenyl methyl radical patterned on a quartz surface. This multifunctional molecule behaves as an electroactive switch with optical and magnetic response.
Tiny electronically active chemicals can be made to form ordered layers on a surface, thanks to research supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF) through the EUROCORES programne SONS 2 (Self-Organised NanoStructures).
RNA, the transporter of genetic information within the cell, has emerged from the shadow of DNA to become one of the hottest research areas of molecular biology, with implications for many diseases as well as understanding of evolution. But the field is complex, requiring access to the latest equipment and techniques of imaging, gene expression analysis and bioinformatics, as well as cross-pollination between multiple scientific disciplines.
A group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Biocentre at the Technical University of Denmark have managed to decipher the final part of the immune system's key codes.
The same researchers already broke the first part of the codes last autumn, and have now put together a comprehensive picture of how the immune system checks for dangers both in and outside our cells.
Japanese scientists have made a micro-sized sewing machine to sew long threads of DNA into shape. The work published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Lab on a Chip demonstrates a unique way to manipulate delicate DNA chains without breaking them.
Scientists can diagnose genetic disorders such as Down's syndrome by using gene markers, or "probes", which bind to only highly similar chains of DNA. Once bound, the probe's location can be easily detected by fluorescence, and this gives information about the gene problem.
Many vitamin pills and tablets such as pain killers are packaged today in cylindrical tubes with a cork-likecap. This will often incorporate some form of desiccant to protect the contents against moisture, while asimple mechanical spring in the tube stops the contents from rattling around.