Scientists in Tokyo have discovered a new protein, named PICT-1, that is involved in regulating PTEN, the second most commonly mutated tumor suppressor in human tumors. This discovery suggests the possibility of a new tumorigenic pathway that is due to defects in a protein involved in stabilizing PTEN rather than defects in PTEN itself.
The research appears as the “Paper of the Week” in the October 29 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, an American Society for Biochemistry and Mol

Authors of a research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlight how the use of drug-eluting stents (DES) may carry a risk of subsequent thrombosis if stenting is accompanied by a withdrawal of antiplatelet therapy.

More than 1•5 million people a year have stents implanted to improve coronary artery blood flow. A recently published pooled analysis of 11 trials (see Lancet 2004; 364: 583-91) suggested that DES—increasingly used in coronary angioplasty—have benefits ov

Research from Australia in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggests that tall girls given oestrogen therapy in adolescence to reduce adult height are more likely to experience later fertility problems than the general population.

Treatment with oestrogen to reduce the adult height of tall girls has been available since the 1950s. No randomised trials have examined the effect of oestrogen therapy. Such therapy alters the development of the long bones and has been reported to re

Results of a European study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET provide further evidence that patients with early symptoms of multiple sclerosis given a weekly injection with interferon beta are less likely to progress to full clinical disease after two years follow-up. The study showed that the drug reduced patients’ loss of brain tissue compared with individuals given placebo.

Early findings from the ETOMS (early treatment of multiple sclerosis) trial (see Lancet 2001; 357: 1576-82)

For many patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease, deep brain stimulation can mean the difference between having difficulty walking and being able to run. Since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997, the treatment has been used by 20,000 patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease or other movement disorders to help control their symptoms. Now, researchers have discovered that surgically implanting electrical stimulators on just one side of a patient’s brain could help alle

Cleveland researchers study musculoskeletal pain following significant weight loss

Over 18 months, researchers at University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University studied the frequency and prevalence of musculoskeletal (MSK) complaints in obese patients before and after undergoing gastric bypass surgery. The researchers concluded that the complaints, which involved joint and tendon pain, decreased significantly following surgery and initial weight loss, even i

Ailing health care industry will adopt operations research and manufacturing techniques by 2010, says expert

Bowing to crushing increases in the cost of delivering medical services to Americans, the troubled health care system will begin to adopt operations research and other techniques that have proven successful in the relatively unfashionable manufacturing sector, predicts a leading expert. “By the end of the decade, the health care industry will realize that operations resea

The suffering of millions of people with allergies could one day be eased thanks to new research from UK investigators. Findings from the University College London branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR), published in this week’s Nature, detail how inactivating a key signalling molecule called p110delta reduced the effect of allergies on mice.

Allergies are essentially inappropriate responses by the immune system to allergens such as pollen, dust, insects and ani

UO researchers report ’the old-fashioned way’ is more accurate for comparing DNA sequences

A study published this week in Nature (Nov. 21) shows that the most widely used method for constructing the tree of life from DNA sequences is prone to error. However, a simpler method, largely abandoned in recent years, turns out to be far more accurate.
These surprising findings may change the way evolutionary biologists infer the relationships among species – a cornerstone

University of Pittsburgh’s Gerald Schatten, Ph.D., joins South Korean researchers for symposium at 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine

As members of the United Nations General Assembly are soon to vote on the future of cloning research, possibly within days, leading scientists will be conducting a symposium discussion on the status of current work in cloning and its potential for the emerging field of regenerative medicine.

Gerald

Researchers trim count of human genes to 20,000-25,000

The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, led in the United States by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the Department of Energy (DOE), today published its scientific description of the finished human genome sequence, reducing the estimated number of human protein-coding genes from 35,000 to only 20,000-25,000, a surprisingly low number for our species.

The paper appears in the Oct.

The revolution was not televised.

In the fall of 1999, the Stanford Microarray Database booted up, and a level of computing power was suddenly available to the field of molecular biology that only a few years earlier was inconceivable. On Oct. 19, the database recorded its 50,000th experiment, marking its place at the forefront of an information processing revolution that has yielded groundbreaking insights into the relationships between genes and illness, as well as fundamental

Finding may reveal clues to origins of autism, other human brain disorders

High stress levels during infancy and early childhood can lead to the poor development of communication zones in brain cells – a condition found in mental disorders such as autism, depression and mental retardation.

These are the findings of Dr. Tallie Z. Baram and her collaborators at the UC Irvine College of Medicine, Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc., and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. For t

Research team from Italy makes presentation on project at Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting

A team of neurosurgeons and scientists from Italy is looking into whether stem cells derived from a brain tumor patient’s own skin can be used to fight the tumors. The researchers successfully grew stem cells from skin samples of adult patients with brain tumors. It is hoped that these cells can then be used as a new brain tumor therapy, which has been attempted successfully

Research team from cleveland makes presentation on findings at Congress of Neurological Surgeons annual meeting

It had long been thought that once the human brain is fully matured, no new brain cells develop. Now a team of researchers and scientists has found evidence of cell generation in the brains of adults with epilepsy and say it could lead to ground-breaking treatment for the disease. William Bingaman, M.D., a neurosurgeon from the Cleveland Clinic, presented his findings at

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered the gene for a form of Joubert Syndrome, a condition present before birth that affects an area of the brain controlling balance and coordination in about 1 in 10,000 individuals. Their study, published in the November 2004 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics*, pointed to mutations in a gene called AHI1 that lead to the production of a protein the scientists named Jouberin.