Body

A new study by a team of researchers led by Crislyn D'Souza-Schorey, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, sheds light on the molecular basis by which tumor cells modulate their surroundings to favor cancer progression.

DALLAS – Nov. 5, 2009 – Since her teens, Jennifer Jablon had watched family members deal with breast cancer during their 40s, 50s, and 60s. She wondered whether it would be her fate too.

In her mid-50s, Jennifer's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and tested positive for the recently identified BRCA1 gene, indicating a genetic predisposition to breast cancer.

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Results of a long QT syndrome (LQTS) study published in the current issue of Circulation play an important role in understanding genetic testing's role in diagnosing disease, according to the senior author, Michael Ackerman, M.D., Ph.D. A pediatric cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Ackerman directs Mayo's Long QT Syndrome Clinic and is the director of the Mayo Clinic Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory.

CHICAGO, November 5, 2009 – A new study indicates dentists can play a potentially life-saving role in health care by identifying patients at risk of fatal heart attacks and referring them to physicians for further evaluation.

Published in the November issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association, followed 200 patients (101 women and 99 men) in private dental practices in Sweden whose dentists used a computerized system, "HeartScore," to calculate the risk of a patient dying from a cardiovascular event within a 10-year period.

NEW YORK (November 5, 2009) -- Substances naturally produced by the human body may one day help prevent paralysis following a spinal cord injury, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College. A recent $2.5 million grant from the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Board will fund their research investigating this possibility.

Arnhem, November 2009 – The November issue of European Urology, the official journal of the European Association of Urology, features an article focussing on prostate specific antigen (PSA) velocity and early cancer detection. It has been suggested that changes in PSA over time aid prostate cancer detection.

SEATTLE – For the first time, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have reported the use of a radiolabeled antibody to deliver targeted doses of radiation, followed by a stem cell transplant, to successfully treat a group of leukemia and pre-leukemia patients for whom there previously had been no other curative treatment options.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Despite their fearsome fangs, male sabertoothed cats may have been less aggressive than many of their feline cousins, says a new study of male-female size differences in extinct big cats.

A drug already approved for the treatment of lymphoma may also slow the growth of the most deadly bone cancer in children and teens, according to an early-stage study published online today in the International Journal of Cancer. The study drug, Bortezomib, was found to be effective against bone cancer in human cancer cell studies and in mice. While key experiments were in animals, the cancer studied closely resembled the human form and the drug has already been proven to be safe in human patients.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – A key player in a cascade that likely begins with stress and leads to high blood pressure and kidney damage has been identified by researchers who say the finding may lead to better ways to control both.

Medical College of Georgia researchers have found endothelin, a powerful blood vessel constrictor and inflammatory peptide, increases the number of T cells in the kidneys, which helps recruit other immune cells, causing inflammation and destruction.

Melatonin, a natural hormone segregated by the own human body, is an excellent sleep regulator expected to replace somniferous, which is much more aggressive, to correct the sleep/wakefulness pace when human biological clock becomes altered. Those are the conclusions of research carried out by Darío Acuña-Castroviejo and Germaine Escames, professors of the Institute of Biotechnology (Biomedical Research Centre of the University of Granada), who have been carrying out a complete analysis of the properties of this natural hormone segregated by the pineal gland for years.

Seattle, WA—The Journal of Infectious Diseases has released a special edition, Global Rotavirus Surveillance: Preparing for the Introduction of Rotavirus Vaccines. This special edition provides a significant contribution to the understanding of rotavirus disease burden and the impact of rotavirus vaccines, which have the potential to save an estimated 228,000 lives annually.

Spanish researchers have studied the fossil record of hadrosaurs, the so-called 'duck-billed' dinosaurs, in the Iberian Peninsula for the purpose of determining that they were the last of their kind to inhabit the European continent before disappearing during the K/T extinction event that occurred 65.5 million years ago. Most notable among these fossils is the discovery of a new hadrosaur, the Arenysaurus ardevoli, found in Huesca, Spain.

Heidelberg, 5 November 2009 - Embryonic development is like a well-organised building project, with the embryo's DNA serving as the blueprint from which all construction details are derived. Cells carry out different functions according to a developmental plan, by expressing, i.e. turning on, different combinations of genes. These patterns of gene expression are controlled by transcription factors: molecules which bind to stretches of DNA called cis-regulatory modules (CRMs), and, once bound, switch the relevant genes on or off.

The same genes that are chemically altered during normal cell differentiation, as well as when normal cells become cancer cells, are also changed in stem cells that scientists derive from adult cells, according to new research from Johns Hopkins and Harvard.