Body

Scientists at USC have discovered a new type of drug for the treatment of ovarian cancer that works in a way that should not only decrease the number of doses that patients need to take, but also may make it effective for patients whose cancer has become drug-resistant.

The drug, which so far has been tested in the lab on ovarian cancer cells and on mice tumors, was unveiled last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

If applied to the $5-billion-per-year dietary supplement industry, "quality by design" (QbD) — a mindset that helped revolutionize the manufacture of cars and hundreds of other products — could ease concerns about the safety and integrity of the herbal products used by 80 percent of the world's population. That's the conclusion of an article in ACS' Journal of Natural Products.

Billions of people around the world today will unknowingly perform a chemical reaction first reported 100 years ago. And the centennial of the Maillard reaction — which gives delightful flavor to foods ranging from grilled meat to baked bread to coffee — is the topic of a fascinating article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

Certificate of Need, a form of state government regulation designed to keep mortality rates and health care costs down, appears to do neither for heart bypass surgery, according to a health economics researcher at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). Her findings are reported in an article appearing in today's online edition of the journal Medical Care Research and Review.

PHILADELPHIA – LAM, short for pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis, affects about 1 in 10,000 women of childbearing age and is characterized by proliferation of smooth muscle-like cells in the lung, destruction of lung tissue, and growth of lymphatic vessels. The disease manifests itself in a wide variety of ways, so it is sometimes difficult to diagnose and there is no cure. The disease is caused by inactivation of either of two genes, TSC1 or TSC2, but to date no animal model has been able to replicate the pathologic features those mutations produce in humans.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – OCTOBER 3, 2012 – Today investigators at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City reported the first use of whole genome information for diagnosing critically ill infants. As reported in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes STAT-Seq, a whole genome sequencing approach - from blood sample to returning results to a physician - in about 50 hours. Currently, testing even a single gene takes six weeks or more.

CHICAGO, Oct. 3, 2012 – Yesterday U.S. Army surgeons exhibited new research findings in two poster presentations at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress.

The poster presentation titled, "Assessment of Disease Features and Immune Response in Breast Cancer Patients with Recurrence after Receiving AE37, a HER2 Peptide Vaccine," outlined outcomes of injecting AE37, a HER-2 derived vaccine, in breast cancer survivors following completion of standard therapy. Those who received injections of AE37 were more likely to survive disease-free than the control group.

Engineers at The University of Texas at Dallas have used advanced techniques to make the material graphene small enough to read DNA.

Shrinking the size of a graphene pore to less than one nanometer – small enough to thread a DNA strand – opens the possibility of using graphene as a low-cost tool to sequence DNA.

Athletics have always been a part of Jade Dismore's life. The 27-year-old native of South Africa grew up playing tennis and swimming; as an adult she became an avid runner and recreational volleyball player. For several years she felt soreness in her shoulder, but assumed it was nothing serious. As she began training for her first triathlon, the pain became increasingly severe. After trying to manage the pain on her own for years, Dismore decided it was time to seek medical attention.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – As flu season approaches, people who get sick may not realize they can pass the flu not only to other humans, but possibly to other animals, including pets such as cats, dogs and ferrets.

This concept, called "reverse zoonosis," is still poorly understood but has raised concern among some scientists and veterinarians, who want to raise awareness and prevent further flu transmission to pets. About 80-100 million households in the United States have a cat or dog.

Emissions of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere can be traced back thousands of years in the Greenland ice sheet. Using special analytical methods, researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, have determined how much methane originates from natural sources and how much is due to human activity. The results go all the way back to Roman times and up to the present, where more than half of the emissions are now man-made. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature.

Scientists have discovered a rare fossil called Kulindroplax, the missing link between two mollusc groups, which is revealed in a 3D computer model, in research published today in the journal Nature.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report the discovery of microbial–dependent mechanisms through which some cancers mount an inflammatory response that fuels their development and growth.

The findings are published in the October 3, 2012 Advanced Online Edition of Nature.

New Haven, Conn. — A fossil unearthed in Great Britain may end a long-running debate about the mollusks, one of life's most diverse invertebrate groups: Which evolved first, shelled forms like clams and snails, or their shell-less, worm-like relatives?

The small new fossil, found in marine rocks along the English-Welsh border, provides the best fossil evidence yet that the simpler worm-like mollusks evolved from their more anatomically complex shelled brethren, rather than the other way around.

A new study led by researchers from the UCLA School of Nursing has found that nursing intervention can significantly decrease substance abuse among homeless youth. Published in the current issue of the American Journal on Addictions, the research also revealed that "art messaging" can have a positive effect on drug and alcohol abuse and other risky behaviors among this population.