Body
HOUSTON - Thyroid cancer that has spread to distant sites has a poor prognosis, but an experimental drug that inhibits tumor blood vessel formation can slow disease progression in some patients, a research team led by investigators from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports in the July 3rd edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida State University faculty member who uses computational techniques to evaluate a new class of cancer-killing drugs is attracting worldwide attention from other researchers.
Kevin C. Chen, an assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering, is using high-powered computers to determine how substances known as recombinant immunotoxins can best be modified in order to attack and kill malignant tumors while doing minimal harm to a patient's healthy cells.
As the specter of a worldwide outbreak of avian or "bird flu" lingers, health officials recognize that new drugs are desperately needed since some strains of the virus already have developed resistance to the current roster of anti-flu remedies.
A new form of energy-transfer, reported today in Nature (3 July 2008) may have implications for the study of reactions going on in the atmosphere, and even for those occurring in the body.
Imagine a simple molecule consisting of two atoms as being like two balls attached together by a spring. If an incoming atom strikes one side of the molecule, the spring compresses and you would expect the molecule to jump backwards remember Newton's cradle? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_cradle)
An international research team has published the first clear example of how climate extremes can create conditions in which diseases that are normally tolerated singly may converge and bring about mass die-offs in wildlife.
In a report issued June 25 by PLoS ONE, an online peer-reviewed research journal, researchers examined outbreaks of canine distemper virus (CDV) in 1994 and 2001 that resulted in unusually high mortality in Serengeti lions. CDV cycles periodically within the Serengeti ecosystem, and epidemics have occurred without effects on lion populations.
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have shown that an MGH-developed, microchip-based device that detects and analyzes tumor cells in the bloodstream can be used to determine the genetic signature of lung tumors, allowing identification of those appropriate for targeted treatment and monitoring genetic changes that occur during therapy. A pilot study of the device called the CTC-chip will appear in the July 24 New England Journal of Medicine and is receiving early online release.
ST. PAUL, Minn. Women over age 90 are significantly more likely to have dementia compared to men in their 90s, according to a study published in the July 2, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Research shows that dementia risk for both men and women increases from age 65 to 85, but this most recent study is one of few that looks at people over age 90.
Scientists from Hungary, Germany and the U.K. have discovered that our own body not only makes chemical compounds similar to the active ingredient in marijuana (THC), but these play an important part in maintaining healthy skin. This finding on "endocannabinoids" just published online in, and scheduled for the October 2008 print issue of, The FASEB Journal could lead to new drugs that treat skin conditions ranging from acne to dry skin, and even skin-related tumors.
WASHINGTON D.C.— World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is alarmed by the dramatic decline of at least 30 percent in the Bengal tiger population of Suklaphanta Wildlife Reserve in Nepal, once a refuge that boasted among the highest densities of the endangered species in the Eastern Himalayas. The recent survey of April 2008 showed a population of between 6-14 tigers, down from 20-50 tigers in 2005.
Extinction risks for natural populations of endangered species are likely being underestimated by as much as 100-fold because of a mathematical "misdiagnosis," according to a new study led by a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher.
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