Increasing levels of uric acid, a metabolic breakdown product found in blood and urine, may help cut some of the potentially devastating “secondary” cellular damage that occurs following a spinal cord injury, say researchers at Jefferson Medical College. The finding may lead to new treatments for such injuries.

After a spinal cord injury, the body’s inflammatory response may actually make things worse, releasing a variety of potentially harmful chemicals that can make the injury

Hybrid targeted therapy effective in treating Gleevec-resistant disease

Using rational drug design strategies, investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland have created a targeted therapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) that may ultimately be more effective than Gleevec®, the current frontline treatment. The researchers report in the February issue of Cancer Cell that the new compound, AMN107, is about 20 times more

A team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) has identified the gene responsible for spreading the poisonous (toxic) effects of cadmium–a finding, say the researchers, that may one day lead to the prevention of cadmium toxicity in humans.

Cadmium–a heavy metal suspected of causing human birth defects, lung cancer and testicular cancer–is found in cigarette smoke, some shellfish and seafood, soil and some plants. It is known to damage the human central nervous

Brain overcompensates for mutations

The supersensitivity to dopamine that is characteristic of schizophrenia can be caused by mutations to a wide variety of genes, rather than alterations to just two or three specific genes, says a University of Toronto researcher.

In research published in the Feb. 15 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Toronto pharmacology professor Philip Seeman and his 16 colleagues in eight universities show th

Paradox suggests reasons why COX-2 inhibitors hurt and help.

Laboratory studies at Johns Hopkins have revealed that certain products of the enzymes COX-1 and COX-2 can both protect and damage the brain. The findings, published in the February 2005 issue of the Journal of Neurochemistry, offer tantalizing clues to why drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex, which block COX-2, can ease arthritis but potentially harm the heart and brain.

Katrin Andreasson, M.D., an assistant profess

An analysis of previously uncharted chemical contents, mostly carbohydrates, in U.S.-consumed mushrooms shows that these fruity edible bodies of fungi could be tailored into dietary plans to help fill various nutritional needs.

Using modern analytic tools, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that the six mushroom varieties tested – in raw and cooked forms and at various harvest times and maturity levels – are rich in total dietary fibers, including

To avoid damage from too much oxygen, say researchers, challenging previous theories

A new study investigating the respiratory system of insects may have solved a mystery that has intrigued physiologists for decades: why insects routinely stop breathing for minutes at a time.

Challenging previous theories, researchers at UC Irvine and Humboldt University propose that insects such as grasshoppers, moths, butterflies, some types of fruit flies, beetles and bugs close o

Combinatorial drug therapies, effective for cancer and AIDS, show potential for Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases

UC Irvine researchers have identified several promising drug compounds that when combined show the potential to treat Huntington’s disease.

In tests on fruit flies, Larry Marsh and Leslie Thompson found that combinatorial drug therapies developed from these compounds halted the brain-cell damage caused by the fatal, progressive neurodegener

Leishmaniases and trypanosomiases are parasitic diseases which kill several thousands of people per year, mainly in developing countries. The effectiveness of existing treatments is being called into question owing to their toxicity and the emergence of resistance. A family of alkaloids, the quinolines, could be a worthwhile new therapeutic line to follow. Following on from the discovery of anti-leishmaniasis activity in natural quinolines, a research team of IRD, Pasteur Institute and CNRS sci

A highly sensitive post-mortem test could help scientists more accurately determine if a person died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a human neurological disorder caused by the same class of infectious proteins that trigger mad cow disease, according to a new study supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The finding opens the possibility that such testing might be refined in the future so it can be used to detect prion disease in living people and animals before the o

Innovative research restores hand function

Once-paralyzed stroke victims are regaining arm and hand functions thanks to an innovative treatment developed by University of Toronto and Toronto Rehabilitation Institute researchers.

The treatment, outlined in the January Neuromodulation, uses a neuroprosthesis that stimulates muscles with electrical pulses, mimicking the intricate movements along the hand and arm. Simultaneously, the patient concentrates on the movement itsel

Mayo Clinic researchers are the first to identify an interaction between two cellular proteins — Skp2 and FOXO1 — that is important for the growth and survival of cancer cells. Researchers also show that this interaction can be chemically reversed to stop cancer tumor growth — a strategy that may lead to new and better cancer treatments.

Their report appears as an electronic advance article of PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( http://www.pnas.org/cgi

A Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) professor and 138 of his undergraduates have co-authored a paper that provides the first genome-wide estimate of vital genes that are also essential for eye development of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. The undergraduates are students in a unique biology class taught by HHMI professor Utpal Banerjee at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Banerjee and his students identified 501 essential genes responsible for proces

To gauge the toxicity of Pfiesteria, the important single-celled fish predator that was the culprit behind a number of fish kills and fish diseases along the East Coast in the 1990s, researchers need to both use the proper study methods and recognize that certain populations of the organism, called strains, are toxic while others are not.

That’s the main result of a wide-ranging study by Dr. JoAnn M. Burkholder, professor and director of the Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology at N

New and effective treatments for lung cancer may rest on their ability to hinder the action of estrogen in lung cancer cells, according to two studies published in the current issue of Cancer Research. The University of Pittsburgh studies build on current knowledge about the relationship between estrogen and lung cancer growth and suggest that blocking estrogen may be vitally important to improving survival from the disease.

Since 1930, a 600 percent increase in death rates from

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists from the Universities of Sheffield, Nottingham, Manchester and Glasgow has been awarded a £3m research grant to develop a new nanotechnology tool which they have called the ‘Snomipede’. The team, led by Professor Graham Leggett at the University of Sheffield, hopes that once developed, the Snomipede could enable advances in areas as diverse as the understanding of the origins of disease and the low-cost commercial manufacture of plastic computer chips.