When Anita Louise Smith enrolled in an experimental drug trial in 2002 in Colorado, she had a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis but no symptoms and was looking to reduce the chances of being ravaged by the disease. Last year, she died at the age of 46 from an infection linked to the drug.
This tragedy – recounted in an article in the March 4 issue of The Lancet by two Stanford University School of Medicine neurologists – serves as a telling case study of what can go wrong in clini
GeneChip Citrus Genome Array launched by Affymetrix, Inc.
UC Riverside researchers, in partnership with Affymetrix, Inc., have designed a chip – the GeneChip® Citrus Genome Array – that can improve citrus varieties and suggest ways to better manage them. By helping determine which genes are turned on in a tissue of citrus – genes that are associated with taste, acidic content and disease, for example – the chip provides information useful to researchers for rectifying existing pr
Thousands of years ago, humans began scrubbing off and discarding the outer layer of long-grain rice, preferring the polished white kernel beneath. Now, for the first time, scientists in Japan have shown that this waste product of rice processing, called rice bran, significantly lowers blood pressure in rats whose hypertension resembles that of humans.
The team reports their findings in the March 8 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, published by the America
C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker for inflammation in the blood, can help to identify individuals whose abnormal precancerous lesions will advance closer to invasive lung cancer.
The results appear in the first issue for March 2005 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.
Stephen Lam, M.D., F.R.C.P.C., of the Lung Tumour Group, British Columbia Cancer Agency at the University of British Columbi
A new drug that enhances the activity of a key brain cell receptor involved in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) reverses learning and memory deficits in mice engineered to have pathological hallmarks of the disease. What’s more, the drug, called AF267B, reduces both of the pathologies–the brain-clogging buildup of protein “amyloid plaque” outside brain cells and the protein “neurofibrillary tangles” inside the cells.
In an article in the March 2, 2006, issue of Neuron, Dr. Frank La
Whether salamanders transform into their terrestrial, adult form or retain their aquatic, juvenile form depends on the nature of the streambed where they develop. A study published today in the open access journal BMC Biology reveals that the Oklahoma salamander Eurycea tynerensis metamorphoses into a more terrestrial adult form in streambeds composed of fine, tightly packed gravel but retains its juvenile, or paedomorphic, form in streambeds made of large, loosely packed particles. This study hi
Plaques that form around the nerve cells of people with multiple sclerosis are apparently what disable people with the disease. But partly developed reparative cells within the plaques provide hope for a treatment, a UT Southwestern physician reports in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Elliot Frohman, professor of neurology and ophthalmology, is lead author on an overview of MS. It is the first time in five years that Journal editors have had researchers provide an overvi
Researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center report in the March issue of Cancer Research that a pair of promising proteins, known as fibulins 3 and 5, slow the growth of cancer tumors in mice by preventing blood vessels from sprouting. The proteins are promising candidates for use in cancer therapy.
“Healthy humans produce fibulin proteins, which regulate cell proliferation, migration and invasion. In the past, we have seen that they are depleted in numerous metastatic
Attaching a recently discovered cytokine to neural stem cells derived from bone marrow, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute have developed a tool to track and kill malignant brain tumor cells and provide long-term protection against their return.
Results of an animal study are published in the March 1, 2006 issue of Cancer Research, and the researchers are now applying to regulatory agencies to translate their work into hum
A destructive pathogen is impacting Hawaii’s production of anthuriums, a plant known for its heart-shaped flower and leaves, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).
Anthuriums’s flower portion, or spathe, is available in a variety of colors including brilliant shades of red, orange, pink, and salmon. Although they originated in Central America, anthuriums are now the most important cut flowers in the Hawaiian floriculture industry,
The MRSA ‘superbug’ evades many of the measures introduced to combat its spread by infecting a common single-celled organism found almost everywhere in hospital wards, according to new research published in the journal Environmental Microbiology.
Scientists from the University of Bath have shown that MRSA infects and replicates in a species of amoeba, called Acanthamoeba polyphaga, which is ubiquitous in the environment and can be found on inanimate objects such as vases, sinks an
A cut can be life-threatening for people with hemophilia, whose bodies don’t produce enough of a protein that prevents prolonged bleeding.
Now University of Florida researchers may be one step closer to finding a safe way to spur production of this missing protein in patients with the most common form of the hereditary bleeding disorder. Using a dormant strand of DNA that has quietly existed in fish for millions of years, the researchers replaced the faulty gene responsible
Biochemistry Professor Frank Sauer and colleagues uncover new information about how embryonic fruit fly cells differentiate, a process that may advance cancer and stem-cell research.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have discovered a molecular mechanism that directs the fate and function of cells during animal development. The findings could hold promise for the advancement of cancer and stem-cell research.
The research is published in the Feb. 24
Scientists at Northwestern University and the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have reprogrammed malignant melanoma cells to become normal melanocytes, or pigment cells, a development that may hold promise in treating of one of the deadliest forms of cancer.
A report describing the group’s research was published in the Feb. 27 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that will appear in the March 7 issue of the journal.
The experiments were
In the first study of native African honeybees and honey-making stingless bees in the same habitat, humans and chimpanzees are the primary bee nest predators. Robert Kajobe of the Dutch Tropical Bee Research Unit and David Roubik from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute report this finding in the March, 2006 issue of Biotropica.
Batwa Pygmies, who have traditionally harvested honey for food, located 228 bee nests (both honeybees and stingless bees) for the study. Roubik i
In addition to triggering a depression-like social withdrawal syndrome, repeated defeat by dominant animals leaves a mouse with an enduring “molecular scar” in its brain that could help to explain why depression is so difficult to cure, suggest researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
In mice exposed to this animal model of depression, silencer molecules turned off a gene for a key protein in the brain’s hipp
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