Body

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, June 10, 2009 – Metoclopramide, a drug approved in the U.S. for nausea, vomiting and heartburn poses no significant risks for the fetus according to a large cohort study published in the June 11 issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, "The Safety of Metoclopramide Use in the First Trimester of Pregnancy" (N Engl J Med 2009;360:24 June 11, 2009).

University of Arizona biologist Bruce Walsh has identified a new species of moth in southern Arizona. Normally, this is not a big deal. The region is one of the most biologically rich areas in the country and collectors have been finding hundreds of new species for decades. This one, however, is different.

Walsh is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute. He is best known in the science community as an authority on plant and animal breeding, having written one of the leading textbooks on the subject.

Tamoxifen is a widely used and highly successful drug in the treatment of breast cancer, though resistance to tamoxifen is still a concern in recurrent disease (affecting 25-35% of patients), since therapy resistant metastatic tumor cells are a major cause of death. In a study in this month's Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, researchers have uncovered a protein profile that may accurately predict whether a cancer will be tamoxifen resistant.

Though it looks like a tiny purple blowtorch, a pencil-sized plume of plasma on the tip of a small probe remains at room temperature as it swiftly dismantles tough bacterial colonies deep inside a human tooth. But it's not another futuristic product of George Lucas' imagination. It's the exciting work of USC School of Dentistry and Viterbi School of Engineering researchers looking for new ways to safely fight tenacious biofilm infections in patients – and it could revolutionize many facets of medicine.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University study shows that introducing a new hybrid of the American chestnut tree would not only bring back the all-but-extinct species, but also put a dent in the amount of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere.

Researchers at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital – along with colleagues at the University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia – may have found a chink in the armour of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), the microorganism which causes AIDS. They have pinpointed the key cellular machinery co-opted by HIV-1 to hijack the human cell for its own benefit. Their study was published in May in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Washington, DC – June 10, 2009 – Versartis, Inc., an emerging company developing novel biologics with enhanced properties for patients with metabolic diseases, today presented data for its long-acting product candidates, VRS-317 (hGH-rPEG) for treatment of growth hormone deficiency and for VRS-826 (IL-1ra-rPEG) for treatment of type 1 and type 2 diabetes, at the Endocrine Society's Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Researchers at The Wistar Institute have defined a key target of an evolutionarily conserved protein that regulates the process of aging. The study, published June 11 in Nature, provides fundamental knowledge about key mechanisms of aging that could point toward new anti-aging strategies and cancer therapies.

LA JOLLA, CA – June 8, 2009 –A team of researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and other institutions has discovered a new way by which DNA repairs itself, a process that is critical to the protection of the genome, and integral to prevention of cancer development.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A soil microbe that uses chemical warfare to fight off competitors employs an unusual chemical pathway in the manufacture of its arsenal, researchers report, making use of an enzyme that can do what no other enzyme is known to do: break a non-activated carbon-carbon bond in a single step.

Their study, appearing this week in the journal Nature, provides the first three-dimensional structure of the enzyme, hydroxyethylphosphonate dioxygenase (HEPD) and proposes a mechanism by which it performs its task.

Seeking ways to improve blood recovery after chemotherapy or bone marrow transplant, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have discovered that fat cells, which accumulate in bone marrow as people age, inhibit the marrow's ability to produce new blood cells. Their study, published online June 10 by the journal Nature, suggests that blocking this fatty infiltration could help enhance patients' recovery after transplant.

Researchers trying to uncover why premature birth is a growing problem in the United States and one that disproportionately affects black women have found that pre-pregnancy depressive mood appears to be a risk factor in preterm birth among both blacks and whites.

Black women, however, have nearly two times the odds of having a preterm birth compared to white women, according to Amelia Gavin, a University of Washington assistant professor of social work and lead author of a new study that appears online in the June issue of the Journal of Women's Health.

HOUSTON -- (June 11, 2009) – Two signals – an external one from retinoic acid and an internal one from the transcription factor Neurogenin2 – cooperate to activate chromatin (the basic material of chromosomes) and help determine that certain nerve progenitor cells become motor neurons, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu) in a report in the current issue of the journal Neuron.

A problem at the interface of two mathematical areas, topology and algebraic geometry, that was formulated by Friedrich Hirzebruch, had resisted all attempts at a solution for more than 50 years. The problem concerns the relationship between different mathematical structures. Professor Dieter Kotschick, a mathematician at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, has now achieved a breakthrough.

CINCINNATI—New research by a team of scientists at the University of Cincinnati (UC) shows that bisphenol A (BPA) may be harmful for the heart, particularly in women.

Results of several studies are being presented in Washington, D.C., at ENDO 09, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, June 10-13.

A research team lead by Scott Belcher, PhD, Hong Sheng Wang, PhD, and Jo El Schultz, PhD, in the department of pharmacology and cell biophysics, found that exposure to BPA and/or estrogen causes abnormal activity in hearts of female rats and mice.