Body

In-growth and new generation of blood vessels, which must take place if a wound is to heal or a tumor is to grow, have been thought to occur through a branching and further growth of a vessel against a chemical gradient of growth factors. Now a research team at Uppsala University and its University Hospital has shown that mechanical forces are considerably more important than was previously thought. The findings, published today in the journal Nature Medicine, open up a new field for developing treatments.

ORLANDO - When combined with standard chemotherapy, an international Phase III trial has shown that the oral targeted therapy vandetanib improves progression-free survival for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, according to research from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

ORLANDO - A vaccine for one of the most lethal cancers, advanced melanoma, has shown improved response rates and progression-free survival for patients when combined with the immunotherapy drug, Interleukin-2, according to researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Boston, MA – June 1, 2009 – REGiMMUNE Corporation today announced that its lead product candidate RGI-2001, in combination with a low-dose of Sirolimus, demonstrated enhanced efficacy in transplantation tolerance induction in models of skin transplantation and acute Graft-versus-Host disease (GvHD). This data is being presented today in a poster titled "Donor-Specific Tolerance Induction by a Liposomal Formulation of KRN7000 (RGI-2001) Alone and in Combination with Low-Dose Sirolimus" at the 2009 American Transplant Congress being held in Boston.

ROSEMONT, Ill.— People with the spine disease called degenerative spondylolisthesis* -- who choose surgical treatment -- experience substantially greater relief from pain over time compared to those who do not have surgery, according to a study published in the June 2009 issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS). In the past, physicians had been uncertain whether surgery provided significantly greater relief for patients, but these results help to confirm the advantages to surgery.

Computer scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have developed a new way of cloning facial expressions during live conversations to help us better understand what influences our behaviour when we communicate with others.

Published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Language & Speech, the new technique tracks in real time facial expressions and head movements during a video conference and maps these movements to models of faces – producing a 'cloned' face.

Most of our cells possess an internal clock, a group of genes displaying a cyclic expression pattern that reaches a peak once a day. A large number of circadian genes are expressed by organs such as the liver, whose activity needs to be precisely regulated over the course of the day. A team of researchers of the National Centre of Competence in Research Frontiers in Genetics, based at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, reveals that an important regulator of this molecular oscillator is a specific microRNA.

(PHILADELPHIA) – Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have uncovered variation around two genes that are associated with an increased risk of testicular cancer. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer among young men, and its incidence among non-Hispanic Caucasian men has doubled in the last 40 years -- it now affects seven out of 100,000 white men in the United States each year. The discovery, published in the May 31, 2009 online issue of Nature Genetics, is the first step toward understanding which men are at high risk of disease.

ORLANDO (May 31, 2009)—Fox Chase Cancer Center investigators report that a two-drug blockade of mTOR signaling appears safe in metastatic kidney cancer in a phase I trial. Early data suggests that a combination of temsirolimus and bryostatin may be active in patients with rare forms of renal cell cancer, which are less likely to respond to other targeted therapies.

Elizabeth Plimack, M.D., M.S., a medical oncologist and attending physician at Fox Chase will report the trial results on Sunday, May 31 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

LA JOLLA, CA—A study led by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has catapulted the field of regenerative medicine significantly forward, proving in principle that a human genetic disease can be cured using a combination of gene therapy and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology. The study, published in the May 31, 2009 early online edition of Nature, is a major milestone on the path from the laboratory to the clinic.

Chicago (June 1, 2009) – The International Serious Adverse Events Consortium (SAEC) announced today initial results from its research designed to discover genetic markers that may predict individuals at risk for serious drug induced liver injury (DILI). The SAEC is a nonprofit research corporation, launched in the fall of 2007, comprised of and funded by 10 leading pharmaceutical companies and the Wellcome Trust. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also contributes to the scientific and strategic direction of this novel research effort.

Alexandria, VA – The world's largest ear, nose, and throat professional medical association, the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS), today released a manual detailing best practices for the creation of new clinical practice guidelines. The manual is published as a supplement to the June issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

Westchester, Ill. — A study in the June 1 issue of the journal SLEEP found that waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) are consistent, independent risk factors for all severity levels of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) in children, suggesting that as with adult SDB, metabolic factors are important risk factors for childhood SDB.

Biologists have for several years modeled how different species are likely to respond to climate change. Most such studies ignore differences between populations within a species and the interactions between species, in the interest of simplicity. An article in the June issue of BioScience, by Eric Post of Pennsylvania State University and five colleagues, shows how these limitations can be avoided. Their approach, which relies on multi-stage analyses of how populations fluctuate over time, could allow biologists to model responses to climate change with improved accuracy.

UCLA scientists have linked for the first time intestinal inflammation with systemic chromosome damage in mice, a finding that may lead to the early identification and treatment of human inflammatory disorders, some of which increase risk for several types of cancer.