A new generation of devices to help people with joint disorders walk with ease and comfort are becoming a reality thanks to the work of GAIT, which is creating the world’s first ‘intelligent’ mechanical devices to support knee and ankle joints.

Due to end in August next year, the 36-month IST programme project is developing the most advanced leg supports designed to date, combining biomechanics with information technologies to produce more comfortable and effective devices that c

A new study of back pain treatments, co-ordinated by researchers at the University of York, has found that spinal manipulation, in the form of chiropractic, osteopathy, or manipulative physiotherapy, followed by a programme of exercise, provides significant relief of symptoms and improvements in general health.

The study, backed by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and co-ordinated by the Trials Unit in the University’s Department of Health Sciences, is the biggest of its t

The draft sequence of the wild chicken, Gallus gallus, will be published in the Dec 9th issue of Nature (cover story). The analysis of this genome is not about getting bigger eggs and tastier chicken – it’s giving scientists surprising insights into the human genome. Researchers can use these new data as a tool to identify similar sequences in humans – regions previously thought to be ‘junk’ DNA in the human. These sequences must have an important role if they have been conserved over the 310

Scientists at the University of Sheffield have played a major role in sequencing the chicken genome, published in Nature and Genome Research on Thursday 9 December. The chicken is the first farm animal to be successfully sequenced, as well as being the first bird.

The Sheffield team were responsible for determining the sequences of messenger RNAs, which have allowed an international team of scientists to analyse the chicken genome sequence and identify most chicken genes.

Use of a novel gene-based therapy before breast cancer surgery reduced tumor size by nearly 80 percent on average, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium meeting.

The therapy, known as Advexin, also showed evidence that the p53 protein it was delivering was actually being replaced in the targeted tumors, and that the treatment produced beneficial and possibly sustained local immune responses

Different molecular subtypes of breast cancer respond differently to chemotherapy, a research team from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium meeting.

The findings reinforce the emerging notion that breast cancer should be classified according to its gene expression profile, in order to make accurate predictions about the outcome of the disease and select the optimal treatment for patients, says the senio

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have found a potential predictor of response to the chemotherapy drug Taxol, which is commonly used before or after surgery for stage I-III breast cancers, even though only a subset of women ultimately benefit from this treatment.

Patients whose breast cancer cells have lost their ability to express a protein called “tau” are twice as likely to have a good response to Taxol treatment, the researchers report

The overall performance of the gene signature to be used in the first large-scale trial to study the role of such tumor signatures in breast cancer is encouraging and gives the green light to start the trial proper, Dr. Martine Piccart, head of the medical oncology department at the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels, Belgium, told the San Antonio Breast Cancer conference today (Wednesday 8 December 2004). Dr Piccart heads the TRANSBIG consortium, which intends to use the 70-gene prognostic signatur

The connection between species richness and area occupied, recognized by biologists for more than a hundred years as a fundamental ecological relationship in plant and in animal communities, has been discerned for the first time at the microbial level.

A pair of papers in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal Nature, one focused on bacteria and another on a microbial fungi, shows that the number of species present – the diversity – increases as the area they occupy increases. “The resul

Scientists from Michigan State University have uncovered a previously unknown metabolic mechanism used by plants to create seed oil.

The results, described Wednesday in the British journal Nature, address a longstanding question in plant biology – why do oilseed plants rely on a seemingly inefficient metabolic process to produce such prodigious amount of energy-rich oil? The answer, according to the MSU team, is that plant seeds are more efficient than anyone thought. “Seeds ac

Like the famous living deserts of the Southwest, the so-called “gene deserts” in our DNA are teeming with activity. The trick is knowing where to look for it. A new roadmap to the location of DNA segments that are significant in medical, biological and evolutionary research could emerge from studies published today (Dec. 9) by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their colleagues. The work is reported in the online version of the journal Genome Research.

Developed by biologists at Argonne National Lab

Structural changes in proteins can now be seen in increased detail, using a new application of an existing technique. The application, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, could help produce lead drugs for disease therapy.

In research published in Chemistry and Biology, the scientists report the use of wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), an X-ray diffraction technique that has previ

The overall performance of the gene signature to be used in the first large-scale trial to study the role of such tumor signatures in breast cancer is encouraging and gives the green light to start the trial proper, Dr. Martine Piccart, head of the medical oncology department at the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels, Belgium, told the San Antonio Breast Cancer conference today (Wednesday 8 December 2004).

Dr Piccart heads the TRANSBIG consortium, which intends to use the 70-ge

US fertility experts today (Thursday 9 December) warned teenage boys and young men to consider limiting the time that they use laptop computers positioned on their laps, as long-term use may affect their fertility.

The increasing popularity of laptop computers (LC), coupled with existing evidence that elevated scrotal temperature can result in sperm damage, prompted researchers from the State University of New York at Stony Brook to undertake the first study into the effect of heat

Service Will Allow Patients Direct Access to Latest Research

Scientific publishers and the nation’s leading voluntary health organizations have announced a groundbreaking initiative to help patients and caregivers close a critical information gap.

Scheduled to launch as a pilot project in Spring 2005, patientINFORM (www.patientinform.org) is a free, online service dedicated to disseminating original medical research directly to consumers. A collaborative effort of leadin

Many postmenopausal women with hormone-dependent breast cancer (requires estrogen and/or progesterone to grow) may be undertreated if they do not receive chemotherapy in addition to hormonal therapy after surgery, according to a Loyola University Health System, Maywood, Ill., study.

Loyola’s Dr. Kathy S. Albain presented the results of a 10-year follow-up of The Breast Cancer Intergroup of North America Trial 0100 at the late breaking session of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Sy