Tiny particles carrying a killer gene can effectively suppress ovarian tumor growth in mice, according to a team of researchers from MIT and the Lankenau Institute.
The findings could lead to a new treatment for ovarian cancer, which now causes more than 15,000 deaths each year in the United States. Because it is usually diagnosed at a relatively late stage, ovarian cancer is one of the most deadly forms of the disease.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered that the RNA degradation, which, when improperly regulated can lead to cancer and other diseases, can be launched in an unexpected location.
"We've been seeing only half the picture," says Vladimir Spiegelman, lead author on the new study and associate professor of dermatology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
The Wisconsin team also found that CRD-BP, a protein activated in colorectal and other cancers, can prevent RNA from degrading in the newly identified spot.
Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) over the previous 12 months, according to a 2007 government survey1. CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products such as herbal supplements, meditation, chiropractic, and acupuncture that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine.
Brussels - Numerous pathogens contain an 'internal time bomb', a deadly mechanism that can be used against them. After years of work, VIB researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) were able to determine the structure and operating mechanism of the proteins involved. This clears the road for finding ways to set the clock on this internal time bomb and, hopefully, in the process developing a new class of antibiotics. The research was accepted for publication by top journal Molecular Cell, with congratulations from the editorial board.
It's in the genes
St. Louis, July 30, 2009 — Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a substance in the liver that helps process fat and glucose. That substance is a component of the common food additive lecithin, and researchers speculate it may one day be possible to use lecithin products to control blood lipids and reduce risk for diabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease using treatments delivered in food rather than medication.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A virus discovered last year in a rare form of skin cancer has also been found in people with the second most common form of skin cancer among Americans, according to researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.
The researchers examined tissue samples from 58 people with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), a highly curable form of skin cancer that is expected to affect more than 200,000 Americans this year.
In this week's New England Journal of Medicine, scientists in Singapore, The Netherlands and France report that they have developed a novel immunization method that will induce fast and effective protection in humans against the life-threatening malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which infects 350 to 500 million people world-wide and kills over one million people each year.
Researchers at the University of Leicester have paved the way for the first ever use in Europe of an insect (biocontrol) to combat an invasive plant species in Britain.
University of Leicester biologists established that the Japanese Knotweed in Britain was one the biggest females in the world- a clone of cuttings brought into Britain in the 1850s. Costs of controlling it in Britain have been put at £1.5 billion.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a dynamic process with variable biochemical, virological and histological profiles at different stages of the infection, depending on host and viral factors. Furthermore, this profile may change at a variable pace over time. The correlation between detection of T-cell response and HBV load in chronic HBV infection remains unknown. In each of the clinical stages of chronic HBV infection, whether the composition of T-cell subpopulations is different and relates to viral load.
Laboratory studies at Kansas State University and the work of a K-State researcher are making headway in the effort to control the pandemic H1N1 virus.
Juergen Richt is a Regents Distinguished Professor at K-State's College of Veterinary Medicine and is a Kansas Bioscience Authority Eminent Scholar. His work at K-State and with outside collaborators is revealing the characteristics of the pandemic H1N1 virus.
There is no evidence that organically produced foods are nutritionally superior to conventionally produced foodstuffs, according to a study published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Consumers appear willing to pay higher prices for organic foods based on their perceived health and nutrition benefits, and the global organic food market was estimated in 2007 to be worth £29 billion (£2 billion in the UK alone). Some previous reviews have concluded that organically produced food has a superior nutrient composition to conventional food.
Scientists from Scotland and Singapore have unraveled a mystery that has perplexed scientists since red wine was first discovered to have health benefits: how does resveratrol control inflammation? New research published in the August 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), not only explains resveratrol's one-two punch on inflammation, but also show how it—or a derivative—can be used to treat potentially deadly inflammatory disease, such as appendicitis, peritonitis, and systemic sepsis.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne disease that causes inflammation of the liver and to which there is currently no vaccine available. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 3% of the world's population, approximately 170 million people, are infected with HCV and it is a leading cause of liver cirrhosis, end stage liver disease, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and liver transplantation.
A new analysis of the remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) that roamed Earth 68 million years ago has confirmed traces of protein from blood and bone, tendons, or cartilage. The findings, scheduled for publication in the Sept. 4 issue of ACS' monthly Journal of Proteome Research, is the latest addition to an ongoing controversy over which biochemical remnants can be detected in the dino.
In cancer research, as in most other biomedical sciences, they are playing a key role: living cells, kept in sterile plastic containers with red culture media populating incubators in laboratories around the world. But do researchers always know what is really living in their culture dishes? Under the microscope, different cell lines are almost impossible to distinguish from each other. When these important research objects stop growing without apparent reason – is it because of the manipulations by the scientists or because of an invisible viral or bacterial infection?