Body

December 8, 2008 – BRONX, NY - In an important finding published online in Developmental Cell, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, along with collaborators at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have identified a protein likely responsible for causing breast cancer to spread.

A protein that shields tumor cells from cell death and exerts resistance to chemotherapy has an Achilles heel, a vulnerability that can be exploited to target and kill the very tumor cells it usually protects, researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago show in a new study published in the Dec. 9 issue of Cancer Cell.

Akt is a signaling protein, called a kinase, that is hyperactive in the majority of human cancers.

A University of Iowa researcher and colleagues at the University of Michigan have discovered a direct link between disruption of a critical cellular housekeeping process and fatty liver disease, a condition that causes fat to accumulate in the liver.

Experts are recommending that a malaria vaccine progress to Phase 3 trials following the successful trial of the RTS, S/AS01E malaria vaccine among 5-17 month old children in Korogwe, Tanzania and coastal Kenya, which is reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

In a separate paper, which also appears in the online journal today, the findings are presented of the first co-administration of the RTS, S/AS02 malaria vaccine through the WHO Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in infants living in an area of perennial transmission in Tanzania.

A previously unknown mutation discovered in a common roundworm holds the promise of new treatments for obesity in humans, McGill University researchers say. Their study was published Dec. 3 in the journal Nature, and was funded by the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

In lean times, a normal Caenorhabditis elegans worm goes into a form of suspended animation called "dauer" that slows its metabolism and allows it to survive for extended periods without food.

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Boston, MA—Researchers from Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center have found that reducing time spent watching television and increasing time spent walking briskly or engaged in vigorous physical activity may reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes in African-American women. These findings appear on-line in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

What began as an homage to achievement in the field of coral reef geology has evolved into the discovery of an unexpected link between corals of the Pacific and Atlantic. Dr. Ann F. Budd from the University of Iowa and Dr. Donald McNeill of the University of Miami named a new species of fossil coral found on the Island of Curaçao – some six million years old – after renowned coral reef geologist and University of Miami Rosenstiel School professor, Dr. Robert N. Ginsburg.

PORTLAND, Ore. – Oregon Health & Science University Knight Cancer Institute researchers are closer to understanding why certain chronic myeloid leukemia mutations are not stopped by the revolutionary targeted cancer pill, Gleevec, or similar therapies in that drug family.

The research will be presented Monday, Dec. 8, at the 50th Annual American Society of Hematology conference in San Francisco.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have discovered high doses of thiamine – vitamin B1 – can reverse the onset of early diabetic kidney disease.

Kidney disease, or diabetic nephropathy, develops progressively in patients with type 2 diabetes. Early development of kidney disease is assessed by a high excretion rate of the protein albumin from the body in the urine, known as microalbuminuria.

Antwerp, Belgium − VIB researchers connected to the University of Antwerp have developed a new method that enables them to track down the cause of hereditary diseases more quickly and efficiently. By means of this technique, genetic tests that take a long time today − such as screening for hereditary forms of breast cancer − can be carried out much more rapidly. This finding creates new perspectives for tests that are currently expensive and difficult to perform.

Genetic screening today

SAN FRANCISCO ― The oral medication lenalidomide is safe and well-tolerated for elderly patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a group without a well-defined frontline therapy for their disease, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported today at the 50th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

The on-board entertainment and internet access enjoyed by train passengers could soon be transformed by new technology developed at the University of York.

Researchers in the Department of Electronics have overcome two of the major technological challenges which severely limit the services currently provided on trains.

"Our research should make it far easier for train operators to offer a broader range of internet and live media services in many more locations and at a lower cost"

Dr John Thornton

A precious metal which has never before been used in a clinical setting is being developed as an anti-cancer agent by University of Warwick researchers.

The metal, osmium, is closely related to platinum, which is widely used to treat cancers in the form of the drug cisplatin. Most famously, the cyclist Lance Armstrong was treated with cisplatin for testicular cancer.