A dramatic increase in life expectancy for people infected with HIV has been achieved since the introduction of Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART), say Medical Research Council (MRC) scientists today (Friday 17 October 2003).

New research conducted at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit in London and published in this week’s issue of The Lancet shows that in the first four years after the introduction of HAART, death rates from AIDS fell by over 80%.

More than 50,000 peo

Testing of smart drug expands at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center

It is a drug suffused in promise, a next-generation therapy that has shown glimmers of powerful potential. Iressa® is the kind of treatment that oncologists dream of – a pill that can be swallowed once a day, a non-toxic therapy that causes few side effects. For 10 percent of patients who have tried it, people who have no other options left for them, Iressa seems to make the difference between life and death. Another 30 per

Discovery of protein chain may lead to new drugs and treatments

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have identified a complex series of proteins that enable HIV to bypass the natural defenses of human cells and replicate. The discovery of these proteins is the key for understanding how HIV overcomes host defenses and could potentially be new targets for HIV medications. A study detailing the finding is published in the October 16, 2003, online version of

A novel treatment developed by UCSF vascular surgeons has been used in a first-of-its-kind operation to repair a life-threatening aneurysm in the patient’s aortic arch, which carries blood from the heart.

In an aortic aneurysm the walls of the aorta, the primary blood vessels leading away from the heart, bulge out like a filling water balloon. Eventually it bursts, usually causing a fatal bleeding episode.

Using a wire-thin catheter, the UCSF team inserted a specially designe

After having demonstrated how “molecular motors” move within cells, a team of researchers led by a Duke University Medical Center scientist now believe they have discovered the power stroke that drives these motors.

Molecular motors are proteins made up of amino acids like any other protein in a cell. Unlike other proteins, however, they move along cellular highways of tiny filaments, called microtubules, as they transport nutrients around the cell or herd chromosomes during cell division.

Using high-tech robots and old-fashioned hard labor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have measured the abundance and pinpointed the cellular locations of more than 4,000 proteins in yeast.

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of the cell. They catalyze reactions, transport molecules within the cell and switch genes on and off. Measuring the abundance of and identifying the cellular locations of yeast proteins will be invaluable in helping to understand the complex biology of a re

First comprehensive view of protein activity in higher organism

UCSF scientists have developed a set of powerful tools that allow researchers to look in unprecedented detail at the full complement of thousands of proteins acting and interacting in a living organism. They have used the new tools to mine nearly the entire proteome of an organism – discovering what proteins are active in each cell, where they are active and in what quantity.

The results, published in two papers

During a recent submersible dive 3,000 feet down in the Gulf of Maine a HARBOR BRANCH scientist and sub pilot had the first face-to-face meeting ever in the deep sea with a rare Greenland shark. The docile 15-foot creature gently rammed into the submersible’s clear front sphere before turning and swimming slowly away. The entire encounter was captured on video, a clip of which can be viewed by clicking under the shark’s photo at: http://www.at-sea.org/missions/maineevent4/day14.html

HARBOR

Writing in this week’s issue of Nature, Professor Paul Pearson relates how he discovered an account of the theory – regarded as one of the most important in the history of science – in a rare 1794 publication by geologist, James Hutton. Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859. Professor Pearson tracked down a copy, which runs to three volumes and more than 2000 pages, in the National Library of Scotland. Couched in the middle of the second volume is a whole chapter on the selection

A mutation in one of the genes that might be responsible for the inflammation that characterizes Crohn’s disease has been identified by researchers at Temple University’s School of Medicine (TUSM).

Their study, “The mutation Ser511Asn leads to N-glycosulation and increases the cleavage of high molecular weight kininogen in rats genetically susceptible to inflammation,” appears in the October 15 issue of Blood (www.bloodjournal.org).

Although the exact cause of Crohn&#14

Although cases of adult-onset diabetes have skyrocketed in the United States, researchers still don’t know much about the biological processes that predispose so many people to the disease. But in research that will be published in the Oct. 16 issue of the journal Nature, scientists say they’ve found a protein that plays an essential role in regulating a cell’s ability to absorb glucose, an important step toward gaining a better understanding of the underlying causes of diabetes.

Implants are artificial roots which are used to insert teeth and which nowadays give very good results. Nevertheless, the Inasmet Foundation together with the dental specialist Mikel Maeztu is developing a new treatment for the Donostia company, Lifenova Biomedical. This treatment will help to strengthen the union between implant and bone. It involves implants inserted through ionic implantation.

The aim of the research is to develop new implants for human patients, and so before carrying o

Contrary to what your music teacher told you, it does not take decades of piano practice to learn to play phrases on the piano without looking at your fingers. A brain map linking finger movements with particular notes begins to form within minutes of starting training, according to research published this week in BMC Neuroscience. Recent brain imaging studies of professional musicians have demonstrated that silent tapping of musical phrases can stimulate auditory areas of the cortex and hea

Nature has evolved clever ways to prevent animals from different species from successfully reproducing. As published in the upcoming issue of Genes & Development, molecular biologists at UC Irvine are gaining a better understanding as to how.

In the October 15th issue, Drs. Noriko Kamei and Charles Glabe report on the identification of a receptor on the surface of sea urchin eggs that regulates the species-specific adhesion of sperm.

External fertilization can be risky business, e

According to estimates, 10 % of women suffer from urinary incontinence, which can occur at all ages. Stress urinary incontinence is the most prevalent form of the condition and can result from intensive physical exercise, childbirth, weakened pelvic floor muscles, a decrease in blood oestrogen levels, a gynaecological operation or tissue ageing. Most stress urinary incontinence cases can be treated or cured. Several treatments, including surgery, have long helped patients with this psychologically u

A molecule expressed in the earliest stages of pregnancy that vanishes when the baby is born seems to keep some cells responsible for directing the immune system in an immature and accepting stage, Medical College of Georgia researchers says.

Their finding that the molecule HLA-G helps make dendritic cells – which work like air-traffic controllers for the immune system – tolerant helps explain how a fetus, with genes from both parents, can avoid rejection by the mother’s immune system.