Body

ATLANTA -- An enzyme involved in glucose metabolism in cells plays a major role in the early steps of wound healing, a finding that could lead to new therapeutic approaches for wound care, according to researchers at Georgia State University.

When immune cells called neutrophils release pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2), an enzyme that acts in the last step of the glycolysis pathway, PKM2 aids wound healing by promoting the development of new blood vessels at the wound site. The findings are published in the journal Wound Repair and Regeneration.

Nature has its own economy, with trading as dynamic as that of any stock exchange. To cope with nutrient deficiencies in their respective habitats, certain plants, animals and fungi have evolved partnerships by which they can swap resources.

WASHINGTON - The latest and final in a series of congressionally mandated biennial reviews of the evidence of health problems that may be linked to exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the Vietnam War changed the categorization of health outcomes for bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, and spina bifida and clarified the breadth of the previous finding for Parkinson's disease. The committee that carried out the study and wrote this report, Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2014, reviewed scientific literature published between Oct. 1, 2012, and Sept. 30, 2014.

"Organs-on-Chips," added last May to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and winner of the 2015 Design Award from the London Design Museum, have kept their "classical" design over the years, but have grown in complexity thanks to recent advances. The family of chips, which are microfluidic devices containing hollow channels lined by living human cells, now includes everything from a lung-on-a-chip to an intestine-on-a-chip to a blood-brain-barrier-on-a-chip.

Combining the two most powerful biological tools of the 21st century, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have modified how the genome of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is read for the first time using a variation of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. The development offers a major technological advance in creating cell models of genetic diseases.

Australian scientists have shown that brown fat - a special type of fat that burns energy to produce heat - may also help to keep blood sugar steady in adults.

Researchers at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research measured brown fat activity and blood glucose continuously in real time in study participants, and found that individuals with more brown fat had smaller fluctuations in blood sugar. Their findings open new avenues for diabetes therapies that target brown fat.

Columbus, Ohio - The activity level of a particular gene in lung tumors might identify lung-cancer patients who will likely be helped by a particular chemotherapy regimen given to prevent recurrence after surgery. The finding comes from a study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC -- James).

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Approximately a quarter of women with HER2 positive breast cancer, who were treated with a combination of the targeted drugs lapatinib and trastuzumab before surgery and chemotherapy, saw their tumours shrink significantly or even disappear, according to results from a clinical trial.

In a study published online by JAMA Ophthalmology, Dong Hyun Kim, M.D., of Gachon University Gil Medical Center, Incheon, Korea and colleagues examined the associations between outdoor air pollution and dry eye disease in a Korean population.

PORTLAND, OR - Cancer clinical trials with negative results don't make an immediate splash in the scientific literature, but they do have a long-term impact on cancer research, according to a new study by SWOG, the federally funded international clinical trials network.

The PLOS ONE scientific journal, published by the Public Library of Science and which deals mainly with basic research into any subject relating to science and medicine, has recently published the paper 'Number of Players and Relative Pitch Area per Player: Comparing Their Influence on Heart Rate and Physical Demands in Under-12 and Under-13 Football Players'. In this work, researchers at the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Education and Sports have analysed how various football training exercises affect physical and physiological aspects in the under 12s (U12) and under 13s (U13).

In a study published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution the researchers detail the initial insights into several remarkable features of the genome of this agriculturally important mite that is widely employed to control plant pests, with thousands shipped to fruit growers every day.

PHILADELPHIA -- Two widely used targeted therapy drugs approved by the FDA for the treatment of metastatic kidney cancer--sorafenib and sunitinib--are no more effective than a placebo in preventing return of the disease to increase life spans of patients suffering from advanced kidney cancer after surgery, according to a new multi-institutional study in the Lancet led by a researcher at the A

Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR), in collaboration with the universities of Barcelona and Jaen, have brought to light the antitumoral nature of maslinic acid (a compound derived from olives) in Caco-2 p53-deficient colon adenocarcinoma cells in the short term.

Hamilton, ON (March 10, 2016) -- Minimal access hip arthroscopy surgery has become the treatment of choice for hip pain in young adults, especially athletes, but a team of McMaster University surgeons is looking to see if the procedure is a sham.

To evaluate the surgery, the team is examining how patients do after having hip arthroscopy operations and comparing those results to patients undergoing a placebo surgery that skips the step of actual repair and tests whether patients feel relief.