(Hamilton, Ontario – Sept. 25, 2009) - Antibiotic resistance has been a significant problem for hospitals and health-care facilities for more than a decade. But despite the need for new treatment options, there have been only two new classes of antibiotics developed in the last 40 years.
Now a promising discovery by McMaster University researchers has revealed an ideal starting point to develop new interventions for resistant infections.
PITTSBURGH—Regenerative medicine researchers at the University of Pittsburgh received two grants totaling more than $5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore new methods for cultivating replacement cells from existing tissues and organs.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 25, 2009 – Late-breaking data from the landmark HORIZONS-AMI clinical trial, presented at the 21st annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium, demonstrated that after two years, in heart attack patients, the use of a drug-eluting stent (paclitaxel) was safer and more effective than a bare-metal stent; and that the administration of the anticoagulant medication bivalirudin enhanced safety and efficacy compared to the use of heparin + GPIIb/IIIa inhibitors.
(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) in collaboration with researchers from Lahey Clinic Northshore, Peabody, Mass., believe that androgen deficiency might be the underlying cause for a variety of common clinical conditions, including diabetes, erectile dysfunction, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease (CVD). These findings appear in the September/October issue of the Journal of Andrology.
Blacksburg, Va. – The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC), an international team of scientists from industry and academia in 14 countries, has released a draft sequence of the potato genome with the help of a Virginia Tech researcher.
Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham), University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) and other institutions have constructed a complete model, including three dimensional protein structures, of the central metabolic network of the bacterium Thermotoga maritima (T. maritima). This is the first time scientists have developed such a comprehensive model of a metabolic network overlaid with an atomic resolution of network proteins.
PITTSBURGH—Regenerative medicine researchers at the University of Pittsburgh received two grants totaling more than $5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore new methods for cultivating replacement cells from existing tissues and organs.
LA JOLLA, CA, September 23, 2009—Using clever chemistry, a Scripps Research team has pinpointed the enzyme target of a drug group that stops the progression of the devastating disease Friedreich's ataxia in mice and may do the same for humans. The findings, developed in collaboration with scientists from Repligen Corporation, help advance this treatment approach one step closer toward human clinical trials, which will be a welcome event for disease sufferers who currently have few treatment options.
Irvine, Calif. – UC Irvine researchers have created a new approach that vastly improves the targeting of chemotherapeutic drugs to specific cells and organs.
Kenneth Longmuir, associate professor of physiology & biophysics, and Richard Robertson, professor of anatomy & neurobiology, used liposomes, small spheres (less-than 100 nanometer in diameter) of naturally-occurring lipid molecules, as "packages" for the cancer chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin, and a small peptide molecule to "address" the package to the targeted tissue.
GALVESTON, Texas — When most people think of insulin, they think of diabetes — a disease that arises when, for one reason or another, insulin can't do the critical job of helping the body process sugar. But the hormone has another, less well-known function. It's also necessary for muscle growth, increasing blood flow through muscle tissue, encouraging nutrients to disperse from blood vessels and itself serving as a biochemical signal to boost muscle protein synthesis and cell proliferation.
DALLAS – Sept. 25, 2009 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that non-AIDS-defining malignancies such as anal and lung cancer have become more prevalent among HIV-infected patients than non-HIV patients since the introduction of anti-retroviral therapies in the mid-1990s.
Necessity is the mother of invention: Great Tits eat hibernating common pipistrelle bats under harsh conditions of snow cover. This remarkable newly-acquired behaviour was observed by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen and their colleagues in a cave in Hungary. When the researchers offered the birds alternative feed, they ate it and showed little or no interest in flying into the cave again. (Biology Letters, online prepublication from September 9, 2009).
INDIANAPOLIS – Will neglecting to brush your teeth damage more than just your smile? Can failing to attack dental plaque increase your risk of heart damage?
The answer to both questions may be yes if you are male and black, an Indiana University School of Dentistry study published in the current issue of the Journal of Dental Research reports.
Although it has been demonstrated that Helicobacter pylori causes gastric cancer, it is still controversial that whether H. pylori eradication therapy is effective in primary prevention of gastric cancer. This is especially important for Yamagata Prefecture, a region of Japan with the second highest incidence of gastric cancer in the world.
CHICAGO (September 24, 2009) – New research published in the September issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons challenges the widely held belief that more medical errors occur in teaching hospitals during the month of July due to the influx of new graduates from medical and nursing schools – also known as the "July Phenomenon." The study shows no differences in in-hospital mortality rates, number of days in the intensive care unit (ICU) or on ventilator support, or minutes spent undergoing resuscitation for trauma patients in July compared with results for other mont