Body

Irvine, Calif. — UC Irvine School of Medicine researchers have discovered the mechanism by which bacterial toxins that cause food-borne botulism are absorbed through the intestinal lining and into the bloodstream. Their study, which appears in the June 20 issue of Science, points to new approaches to blocking this poisonous substance.

Crows like to select mates that look alike. In a large-scale genomic study, published in Science today, a team of researchers led by Uppsala University found that this behaviour might be rooted in their genetic make-up, revealing a likely common evolutionary path that allows for separating populations into novel species.

HIV-1, the virus responsible for most cases of AIDS, is a very selective virus. It does not readily infect species other than its usual hosts – humans and chimpanzees. While this would qualify as good news for most mammals, for humans this fact has made the search for effective treatments and vaccines for AIDS that much more difficult; without an accurate animal model of the disease, researchers have had few options for clinical studies of the virus.

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – June 19, 2014) St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have discovered how an important "on" switch is attached to the machinery that cells rely on to adapt thousands of proteins to meet changing conditions. The research appears in the current issue of the journal Cell.

NEW YORK, NY (June 19, 2014) — For the first time, a therapy has been found that can delay progression of metastatic uveal melanoma, a rare and deadly form of melanoma of the eye.

Results from a multicenter clinical trial show that a new drug called selumetinib increases progression-free survival, the length of time during and after treatment that a patient with metastases lives with the disease without it progressing. The findings were published today in the online edition of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Pancreatic cancer tumors addicted to mutant Kras signaling for their growth and progression have a ready-made substitute to tap if they're ever forced to go cold-turkey on the mutant oncogene, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report in the journal Cell.

When researchers dialed up mutant Kras to spur pancreatic cancer growth in mice, and then shut it down, a group of recurrent tumors grew back independently of mutant Kras, reliant on a different oncogene.

DOHA, QATAR (June 17, 2014) -- HIV epidemics are emerging among people who inject drugs in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Though HIV infection levels were historically very low in the Middle East and North Africa, substantial levels of HIV transmission and emerging HIV epidemics have been documented among people who inject drugs in at least one-third of the countries of this region, according to findings published today in PLOS Medicine.

African American women with early stage, invasive breast cancer were 12 percent less likely than Caucasian women with the same diagnosis to receive a minimally invasive technique, axillary sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy, even as the procedure had become the standard of surgical practice, according to research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

UCLA researchers led by Dr. Brigitte Gomperts have discovered the inner workings of the process thought to be the first stage in the development of lung cancer. Their study explains how factors that regulate the growth of adult stem cells that repair tissue in the lungs can lead to the formation of precancerous lesions.

Findings from the three-year study could eventually lead to new personalized treatments for lung cancer, which is responsible for an estimated 29 percent of U.S. cancer deaths, making it the deadliest form of the disease.

Equine influenza viruses from the early 2000s can easily infect the respiratory tracts of dogs, while those from the 1960s are only barely able to, according to research published ahead of print in the Journal of Virology. The research also suggests that canine and human influenza viruses can mix, and generate new influenza viruses.

(Vancouver – June 19, 2014) – A new mobile app developed by researchers at the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) at BC Children's Hospital and the University of British Columbia can measure respiratory rate in children roughly six times faster than the standard manual method.

A team of scientists, led by principal investigator David D. Schlaepfer, PhD, professor in the Department of Reproductive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that small molecule inhibitors to a protein called focal adhesion kinase (FAK) selectively prevent the growth of ovarian cancer cells as tumor spheroids.

The findings come in a pair of studies published online this week in the journals Gynecologic Oncology and Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique to control populations of the Australian sheep blowfly – a major livestock pest in Australia and New Zealand – by making female flies dependent upon a common antibiotic to survive.

A few years ago, a molecule known as "JQ1" was developed, which can block so called BET bromodomain proteins. This switch off the known cancer gene MYC thereby preventing cancer cells from dividing.

The discovery was regarded as a major breakthrough. A problem was that JQ1 did not function optimally in animal experiments, and this means that it has not been possible to test the treatment on cancer patients.

New molecule

In a study that included long-term follow-up of obese patients with type 2 diabetes, bariatric surgery was associated with more frequent diabetes remission and fewer complications than patients who received usual care, according to a study in the June 11 issue of JAMA, a diabetes theme issue.

Obesity and diabetes have reached epidemic proportions and constitute major health and economic burdens. Worldwide, 347 million adults are estimated to live with diabetes and half of them are undiagnosed.