HOUSTON - (June 14, 2016) - In 1988, scientists in Switzerland looked through a microscope and saw something they didn't expect: two sections of an X-shaped chromosome spiraling in opposite directions. Now scientists at Rice University have confirmed that such anomalies are indeed possible.
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San Diego, Calif. - Cancer patients often experience significant fluctuations in weight and lean body mass (LBM). Neglecting to account for these changes can prevent clinicians from obtaining precise data from molecular imaging, but a new method of measuring LBM takes changes in individual body composition into account for better staging of disease and therapy monitoring, say researchers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).
It was a dark and stormy night in the laboratory, and jagged bolts of lightning lit the sky as Dr. Kaplan and his assistant Bianca stitched the pieces of the lifeless creature back together.
Actually, it was a sunny day on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, but recent sea turtle research by Assistant Professor David Kaplan of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and graduate student Bianca Santos easily brings to mind the classic tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his makeshift monster.
A research collaboration between the Medical University of South Carolina, the Institute of Human Genetics in France, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Rockefeller University has revealed the means by which cells accomplish programmed DNA replication arrest. Their results in the June 13, 2016 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describe the conditions that require a replication fork to stop, and in doing so explain why terminator sites on DNA don't always successfully stop a replication fork.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Fungal infections can be devastating to human health, killing approximately 150 people every hour, resulting in over a million deaths every year, more than malaria and tuberculosis combined.
Unfortunately the antifungal drug arsenal is limited, with many of the best drugs more than 50 years old.
Albany, Calif. - Streets lined with gold? Not exactly, but a new report from the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station estimates trees lining Californian streets and boulevards provide benefits to municipalities and residents worth $1 billion.
A new US study suggests that some of the medicinal benefits of dispensary grade Cannabis could be compromised because the flowers host potentially harmful yeasts and toxic molds, which cannot be detected by industry standard culturing techniques.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Women live longer than men.
This simple statement holds a tantalizing riddle that Steven Austad, Ph.D., and Kathleen Fischer, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham explore in a perspective piece published in Cell Metabolism on June 14.
"Humans are the only species in which one sex is known to have a ubiquitous survival advantage," the UAB researchers write in their research review covering a multitude of species. "Indeed, the sex difference in longevity may be one of the most robust features of human biology."
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Researchers at Mayo Clinic have developed an accurate way to measure a circulating factor, called GDF11, to better understand its potential impact on the aging process. They found that GDF11 levels do not decline with chronological age, but are associated with signs of advanced biological age, including chronic disease, frailty and greater operative risk in older adults with cardiovascular disease. Results appear today in Cell Metabolism.
PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University researchers have developed a portable biosensor that makes it easier to detect harmful bacteria.
The research team, led by Yuehe Lin, professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, recently published the work in the journal, Small.
Mainstays of biomedical research, permanent lines of cloned cells are used to study the biology of health and disease and to test prospective medical therapies. Yet, all too often, these apparent pillars of bioscience and biotechnology crumble because they are crafted from faulty starting materials: misidentified or cross-contaminated cell lines.
Philadelphia, PA, June 14, 2016 - Fifty years after the first reported partial-ileal bypass, metabolic surgery has an established role in achieving weight loss and reducing cardiovascular death in obese patients. Scientists have now demonstrated that it can significantly benefit the lipid profiles of these patients a year and more after surgery, according to a new report published in The American Journal of Medicine.
Bottom Line: Metastatic ovarian cancer patients treated with chemotherapy prior to surgery had altered immune cells in their tumors, and specific alterations identified suggest that immunotherapy given after chemotherapy may help in preventing the cancer from coming back.
Journal in Which the Study was Published: Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Author: Frances R. Balkwill, PhD, professor of cancer biology at Barts Cancer Institute in Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom.
Bottom Line: A newly devised tumor-specific fluorescent agent and imaging system guided surgeons in real time to remove additional tumors in ovarian cancer patients that were not visible without fluorescence or could not be felt during surgery.
Journal in Which the Study was Published: Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Author: Alexander L. Vahrmeijer MD, PhD, head of the Image-guided Surgery group in the Department of Surgery at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Women with advanced ovarian cancer may benefit more from immunotherapy drug treatments if they are given straight after chemotherapy, according to a new study published in Clinical Cancer Research* today.
Researchers - funded by Cancer Research UK** and based at Queen Mary University London - examined samples from 60 women *** with ovarian cancer and found that chemotherapy given prior to surgery activates specialised immune cells called T cells within the tumour.