Combating viruses is often a frustrating business. Find a way to destroy them — and before you know it, they’ve found a way to defend themselves and neutralize the anti-viral treatment.

How, exactly, do the viruses do it? In an article published as the cover story in a recent issue of the journal Proteins, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher, Prof. Isaiah (Shy) T. Arkin, has revealed just how influenza-causing viruses adapt to nullify the effectiveness of the anti-viral drug

Prof. Nadia Rosenthal, Head of EMBL-Monterotondo (near Rome, Italy), and international collaborators have been awarded a US$6 million grant for cardiovascular research. The scientists will investigate the ability of heart muscle to repair itself – after being damaged by a heart attack, for example – and to regain function.

Prof. Rosenthal has previously shown that when a muscle is injured, stem cells can help the tissue rebuild. This team of researchers will build on her findings an

Study has implications for prevention of brain damage after exposure

Later this fall, emergency-medicine physicians enter into what they call the “CO season” – a time when faulty furnaces and other mechanical mishaps lead to a spike in cases of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. CO poisoning is the leading cause of injury and death by poisoning worldwide, with about 40,000 people treated in the U.S. annually. Brain damage occurs – days to weeks later – in half of the patients with a ser

Ever since Darwin’s day, scientists have been trying to understand how interactions among living creatures—competition and predation, for example—drive evolution.

Recent work by paleontologists Tomasz Baumiller of the University of Michigan and Forest Gahn of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History offers new insights into the process. A report on their research appears in today’s issue of Science.

Biologists long have speculated that preda

Why do patients opt for complementary and alternative therapies when they are ill? Is the relationship and communication between a patient and a practitioner as important in the treatment as the complementary treatments prescribed?

The answers to these questions are the focus of a new research study at one of the country’s foremost complementary medicine research centres, thanks to Department of Health (DoH) funding of £330,000. Dr Sarah Brien, a Senior Research Fellow at the

A high percentage of the population could be endangering their health by taking herbal medicines without checking with a health professional first according to Peter Houghton, Professor in Pharmacognosy, King’s College London. Speaking today (6 September) at the BA Festival of Science, Prof Houghton warned of the risks of herbal remedies interacting with conventional medicines.

There is widespread belief that all herbs are safe because they are ‘natural’. However, some plant materia

Researchers hope to reduce the incidence of large birth weights

In the first study of its kind, researchers at Temple University School of Medicine will analyze whether the frequent monitoring and adjustment critical to the management of diabetes during pregnancy can be better accomplished virtually. The ultimate goal is to reduce large birth weights, which can pave the way to later problems such as obesity and diabetes. Gestational diabetes, which typically occurs toward the end o

Stem cells that researchers have isolated from the skin of mice have the power to self-renew when cultured in the laboratory, as well as to differentiate into skin and functioning hair follicles when grafted onto mice. The findings mean that the human equivalent of these stem cells, which scientists are also trying to isolate, could ultimately be used to regenerate skin and hair, the researchers said.

Stem cells — isolated from embryos or from adult tissue — are immature proge

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers are proposing that the first battle for survival-of-the-fittest might have played out as a simple physical duel between fatty bubbles stuffed with genetic material. The scientists suggest that genetic material that replicated quickly may have been all the bubbles needed to edge out their competitors and begin evolving into more sophisticated cells.

This possibility, revealed by laboratory experiments with artificial fatty acid sacs, is in

USC researchers detail process of beak formation in journal Science

The shapes of avian beaks are determined by areas of active growth amidst areas of slow growth in a developing embryo, and are associated with activity levels of a specific protein called bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), according to a group of researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Their paper, which describes this molecular beak-shaping process, will be publish

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have successfully designed and improved a new type of cancer-killing compound by performing molecular surgery to stabilize the molecule so that it selectively triggers cell death.

The idea for developing the compound emerged from the HHMI laboratory of Stanley J. Korsmeyer, who leads one of the hottest research teams currently studying programmed cell death, or apoptosis, a genetic program that executes cells that are no longer need

A research team at Yale has found that blocking a kind of cell death called apoptosis in fibrotic diseases of the lung, also blocks the fibrosis, opening new ways of looking at treatment for lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis.

Published in the August 2 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the study, led by Jack A. Elias, M.D., of Yale, examined how a molecule called TGF-beta causes apoptosis and abnormal scarring in the lungs.

Elias said there are a varie

Spiral-shaped molecules, reinforced by chemical ’staples,’ could aid drug discovery

A part of the system that causes cells to self-destruct when they are damaged or unneeded has been harnessed to kill leukemia cells in mice, say scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The discovery could aid in the discovery of new drugs for cancer and other diseases. The researchers plucked a critical “death domain” from a key molecule in the self-destruction mechanism of a cell,

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have developed a small molecule that mimics the action of a key “death-promoting” protein in cells, a finding that could lead to more effective cancer therapies with fewer side effects.
In the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Science, the researchers report on this new compound and how it behaves like the cellular protein Smac, a molecule that lifts barriers to cell death. Dr. Xiaodong Wang, professor of biochemistry and one of the au

Ticks as small as a freckle can transmit a number of illnesses for which there is no vaccine and, in some cases, no cure. These creatures even could become bioterrorism weapons.

To find new ways to control the tiny animals and halt the spread of the pathogens they carry, Purdue University researchers and colleagues from the University of Connecticut Health Center, the University of Notre Dame and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are undertaking the job of unraveling the genetic

’Wounds may not heal the way we thought they did’

Bone marrow produces cells that not only help fight infection, but also permanently heal wounds, according to research at the University of Washington. Previously, researchers had not known that bone marrow contributed to the development of new skin in wounds. The findings will be published in the Sept. 3 issue of Stem Cells.

“Wounds may not heal the way we thought they did,” says Dr. Richard Ikeda, a biochemist at the Na