Body

December 5, 2013, New York, NY– A Ludwig Cancer Research study has uncovered an entirely novel mechanism by which glioblastoma (GBM), the most common kind of brain cancer, evades targeted therapies. Published in the current issue of the journal Science, the paper describes how GBM tumor cells essentially hide the signaling molecule targeted by such therapies, adding a layer of complexity to current models of drug resistance in cancer.

Johns Hopkins scientists have found evidence that cancer triggers the autoimmune disease scleroderma, which causes thickening and hardening of the skin and widespread organ damage.

A report on the discovery, published in the Dec. 5 issue of Science, also suggests that a normal immune system is critical for preventing the development of common types of cancer.

One of the most effective vaccines in history has been the yellow fever vaccine, which was developed in the 1930s and has been administered to more than 500 million people.

Scientists at Emory Vaccine Center studying immune responses to the yellow fever vaccine have identified a gene whose activation in key immune cells is a sign of a robust response. The gene, called GCN2, encodes a protein involved in sensing amino acid starvation and regulates the process of autophagy, a response to starvation or stress within cells.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine validates a prognostic tool that determines risk of death within a year of hospital admission, helping doctors match treatments to patients' values and goals of care.

"There are many prognostic indices, but until now none meant to be used immediately upon hospital admission," says Stacy Fischer, MD, CU Cancer Center investigator and assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Irvine, Calif., Dec. 5, 2013 – Groundbreaking new findings by UC Irvine and German chemists about how cataracts form could be used to help prevent the world's leading cause of blindness, which currently affects nearly 20 million people worldwide.

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered that combination drug therapy didn't work well in clinical trials for cancer patients because one drug was making the other drug ineffective.

Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher Michael Sawyer and his colleagues, including first author Vijaya Damaraju, recently published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Cancer Research.

Mice whose mothers suffered from infection or inflammation during pregnancy are at greater risk for developing behaviors similar to those seen in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell on December 5 have linked those neurodevelopmental symptoms in the mice to changes in the bacteria living in the animals' guts. What's more, when researchers treated those animals with bacteria found in the healthy gut, a number of behavioral abnormalities including anxiety-like behavior largely went away.

On your kitchen counter, it might seem as though fruit flies will show up for just about any type of fruit you leave around for them. But when given a choice about where to lay their eggs, those flies will go for citrus most of the time, new work shows. The basis for that seemingly complex food preference is surprisingly simple, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 5. It boils down to a single odorant receptor found on a single class of sensory neurons.

Stem cells hold promise for understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases, but so far they have failed to accurately model disorders that occur late in life. A study published by Cell Press December 5th in the journal Cell Stem Cell has revealed a new method for converting induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into nerve cells that recapitulate features associated with aging as well as Parkinson's disease.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Female mosquitoes, which can transmit deadly diseases like malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus and filariasis, are attracted to us by smelling the carbon dioxide we exhale, being capable of tracking us down even from a distance. But once they get close to us, they often steer away toward exposed areas such as ankles and feet, being drawn there by skin odors.

For what is believed to be the first time, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have illuminated the inner workings of an important class of enzymes located inside the outer envelopes of cells. Much to their surprise, they report, these protein cutters, called rhomboid proteases, are entirely different than nearly every other type of enzyme studied, showing no attraction to the proteins they cut and being extremely slow in making their cuts.

Yeast has a somewhat complicated love life: on the one hand, a mother cell can produce genetically identical daughter cells through mitosis (cell division); on the other hand, yeast cells, who exist in two different mating types, are able to fuse with cells of the other mating type, thereby combining two different sets of genes. Two yeast cells with a single chromosome set each become a so-called yeast zygote with two sets of chromosomes.

WHAT:

Scientists at the University of California, Riverside have shown that certain mosquito nerve cells, known as cpA neurons, cause mosquitoes to be attracted to humans by detecting exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) and odors emitted from human skin. Their findings, published Dec. 5 in the journal Cell, may have implications for the control of mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit. The study was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

PHILADELPHIA - A pathway known for its role in regulating adult stem cells has been shown to be important for hair follicle proliferation, but contrary to previous studies, is not required within hair follicle stem cells for their survival, according to researchers with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A new study, published in Cell Stem Cell, identifies a molecular pathway that can be activated to prompt hair growth of dormant hair follicles, or blocked to prevent growth of unwanted hair.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A 115-million-year-old fossilized wasp from northeast Brazil presents a baffling puzzle to researchers. The wasp's ovipositor, the organ through which it lays its eggs, looks a lot like those of present-day wasps that lay their eggs in figs. The problem, researchers say, is that figs arose about 65 million years after this wasp was alive.

A report of the findings appears in the journal Cretaceous Research.