Body

Washington, DC -- People over age 70 years of age can safely donate a kidney, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The results provide good news for patients who need a kidney but have limited options for donors; however, kidneys from these elderly donors do not last as long as those from younger living donors.

• Suloxdexide is no better than placebo at preventing kidney failure or reducing urinary protein excretion in diabetes patients with kidney failure.
• Kidney disease due to diabetes is the most common cause of kidney failure in developed countries.
• The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is expected to double by 2030. Kidney disease cases are sure to rise in parallel.

A new approach to vaccinating cattle could help farmers worldwide, research suggests.

Scientists have developed a technique using a harmless parasite – which lives in cows but has no effect on their health – to carry medicines into the animals' bloodstream.

Researchers created the vaccine by inserting key genetic material from a vaccine into the parasite's DNA. The manipulated parasite is intended to be injected into cattle, where it would continue to thrive in their bloodstreams, releasing small amounts of vaccine slowly over time.

Two remarkable discoveries were today revealed by researchers into genome analysis of Leishmania parasites. These results uncovered a surprising level of variation at the genome structure level.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new fourth-generation oncolytic virus designed to both kill cancer cells and inhibit blood-vessel growth has shown greater effectiveness than earlier versions when tested in animal models of human brain cancer.

Researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) are developing the oncolytic virus as a treatment for glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer (average survival: 15 months after diagnosis).

A new study from University of California, Berkeley, researchers demonstrates that adult stem cells can reshape our organs in response to changes in the body and the environment. Current thinking has been that, once embryonic stem cells mature into adult stem cells, they sit quietly in our tissues, replacing cells that die or are injured but doing little else.

When a bacterial cell divides into two daughter cells and those two cells divide into four more daughters, then 8, then 16 and so on, the result, biologists have long assumed, is an eternally youthful population of bacteria. Bacteria, in other words, don't age -- at least not in the same way all other organisms do.

New Rochelle, NY, October 24, 2011—Cytokines, a varied group of signaling chemicals in the body, have been described as the software that runs the immune system, but when that software malfunctions, dysregulation of the immune system can result in debilitating autoimmune diseases such as lupus, arthritis, and diabetes.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- People who use over-the-counter thyroid supplements may be putting their health at risk, according to a study being presented at the annual meeting of the American Thyroid Association. The supplements contain varying amounts of two different kinds of thyroid hormones apparently derived in large part from chopped up animal thyroid glands, says the study's senior investigator, Victor Bernet, M.D., an endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic in Florida.

Physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) are opening a new window into the life of biological cells, using a technique that lets them grab the ends of a single protein molecule and pull, making continuous, direct measurements as it unfolds and refolds. Their latest results, reported in the journal Science, reveal a complex network of intermediate structural and kinetic states along the way to functionally correct folded forms, including both express routes and dead ends.

BOSTON--Challenging a half-century-old theory about why chemotherapy agents target cancer, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have devised a test that can predict how effective the drugs will be by determining whether a patient's tumor cells are already "primed" for death.

Stir this clear liquid in a glass vial and nothing happens. Shake this liquid, and free-floating sheets of protein-like structures emerge, ready to detect molecules or catalyze a reaction. This isn't the latest gadget from James Bond's arsenal -- rather, the latest research from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists unveiling how slim sheets of protein-like structures self-assemble.

FINDINGS: Whitehead Institute scientists have determined that master transcription factors determine the genes regulated by key signaling pathways. In this way, signaling pathways are targeted to genes that are most relevant to each cell type and tailor gene expression to control cell state, growth, differentiation, and death.

Researchers have now identified and characterized adult stem cells that have the capacity to regenerate lung tissue. The findings, which come from studies of isolated human stem cells and of mice infected with a particularly nasty strain of H1N1 influenza virus, could lead to new regenerative therapies for acute and chronic airway diseases, according to the report published in the October 28th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.

New discoveries about follicular lymphoma, a currently intractable form of cancer, highlight the power of functional genomics in cancer gene discovery. A report in the Oct 28th issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication, demonstrates how genetic insights can be translated directly into therapies.

The findings are but one example of what has now become possible given the avalanche of data on cancer genomes.