A small magnifying glass incorporated into pharmaceutical packaging to help consumers read dosage instructions and save billions of pounds is being brought to market thanks to a seed investment of £30,000 from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).

Drug instructions on bottles need to be small to fit into a confined space that also incorporates product and manufacturing information including batch details and dates. With 30% of those taking prescripti

OncoMethylome Sciences announced today that it will perform MGMT gene methylation testing for a multi-center clinical trial for patients with brain tumors conducted jointly by the U.S.-based Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). With patient enrollment underway, the trial was designed to determine whether increasing the intensity of temozolomide drug treatment regimen for patients with glioblastoma multiforme tumors imp

First on East Coast — third in country — with artificial heart technology

A cardiac surgery team at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Pauley Heart Center has performed the first artificial heart implant on the East Coast. The CardioWest temporary Total Artificial Heart, or TAH-t, is the only total artificial heart approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The patient, a man in his late 50s from Virginia, was in stable condition today in the Pauley Center’s

If you are not diabetic and you are hospitalized, your blood sugar level is probably the last thing on your mind. But the fact is that high blood sugar during hospitalization for serious illness increases your risk of infection and death.

Roughly one third of patients experience hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, during their hospital stay, and many of those patients don’t have diabetes or are undiagnosed. Blood sugar levels tend to go higher when a patient is critically i

People with type 2 diabetes have highly acidic urine, a metabolic feature that explains their greater risk for developing uric-acid kidney stones, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

The study – the first to compare the urinary biochemical characteristics of type 2 diabetics with those of normal volunteers – is available online and will be published in the May issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Individuals with type 2

Ever wondered how flies are able to walk on the ceiling without falling off? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart (Germany) are investigating this James Bond-style ability of insects to hang upside down from a ceiling. In the future such knowledge could lead to the design of tiny machines that mimic this phenomenon of nature.

The team led by Stanislav Gorb used optical sensors to measure the forces applied by each leg of a fly whilst walking freely on a smooth ceiling. They

The Pacific Hagfish is a strange animal: it feeds by gnawing its way into a carcass and staying inside to feed for up to 3 days. Scientists at the University of British Columbia (Canada) believe the Hagfish’s gruesome method of feeding may cause the stagnant water inside the carcass to become acidic from the build up of CO2 produced by the fish, which could explain why the fish is able to cope with environmental conditions of up to 7% CO2 (350 × that found in normal air). Dan Baker is presenting

Weekend athletes who overexert themselves running or playing basketball may one day reap the benefits of research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that shows that adult stem cells can be used to make new tendon or ligament tissue.

Tendon and ligament injuries present a major clinical challenge to orthopedic medicine. In the United States, at least 200,000 patients undergo tendon or ligament repair each year. Moreover, the intervertebral disc, which is composed in part of ten

Scientists from all over the world tackle the global threat of Malaria at the second annual BioMalPar conference

Today the network of excellence for Biology and Pathology of the Malaria Parasite (BioMalPar), will bring together the world’s elite in the field of Malaria research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. At the second annual BioMalPar conference, organised jointly by Institut Pasteur Paris (France), Leiden University Medical Centre (The Nether

Researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School have identified a third gene involved in prostate cancer, expanding their groundbreaking announcement, published last October in Science, that the majority of prostate cancers carry a malignancy-inducing fusion of genes never before seen in solid tumors. The new findings appear in the April 1 issue of Cancer Research. Since prostate cancer is a cancer of the epithelial cells lining organs, lead researcher Arul Chinnaiyan and his colleagues be

We are all familiar with the dangers of too much fat in our diet–increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity are just a few of the most severe consequences. But some rare metabolic diseases, such as hypolipidemia and Tangier disease, seem to work in reverse–they severely limit the amount of fat and cholesterol that makes it into the bloodstream. Researchers from the Carnegie Institution and the University of Pennsylvania have found a specific gene that could be responsible for su

New evidence in the April 5, 2006 Cell Metabolism reveals a molecular mechanism that may play a general role in animals’ ability to respond appropriately when starved. The researchers discovered a pathway in worms that underlies their ability to adapt to food scarcity by remodeling their primary feeding organ.

In combination with earlier evidence, the findings suggest the so-called muscarinic acetylcholine pathway might play a conserved role in animals’ starvation response, t

But meta-analysis does not uncover enough benefits to recommend use of soy supplements

Because some studies have suggested that soy contains chemicals that may help ward off breast cancer, increasing numbers of women are using soy supplements as a potential tumor preventive. But although a new meta-analysis of all available published data finds that while soy intake may be associated with a small reduction in the risk of breast cancer, there is no evidence to recommend the use

University of Mississippi researchers say they have created the first-ever mammalian model of how alcohol consumption spurs tumor growth, showing that even moderate drinking resulted in larger and more robust tumors.

The research provides the first mammalian model of the links between alcohol, VEGF, and tumor growth, said Wei Tan, the study’s lead author. The study increases understanding of how alcohol over-stimulates production of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEG

Scientists at the University of Illinois have discovered an antifreeze-protein gene in cod that has evolved from non-coding or ’junk’ DNA. Since the creation of these antifreeze proteins is directly driven by polar glaciation, by studying their evolutionary history the scientists hope to pinpoint the time of onset of freezing conditions in the polar and subpolar seas. Professor Cheng will present her latest results at the Annual Main Meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in Can

Researchers at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia have uncovered a genetic “signature” that accurately identifies colon cancer–a key, they hope, to better understand how the cancer develops.

Colon cancer may begin when processes that regulate adult stem cells in the colon go awry. A handful of stem cells lie in the bottom of tiny tube-like “crypts” in the epithelium (or lining) of the colon. Stem cells produce daughter cells that proliferate, eventually making their way to