Sickle Cell Disease Wiped Out In Selected Patients By 'Half-Match' Bone Marrow Transplants
9/24/2012
In a preliminary clinical trial, investigators at Johns Hopkins have shown that even partially-matched bone marrow transplants can eliminate sickle cell disease in some patients, ridding them of painful and debilitating symptoms, and the need for a lifetime of pain medications and blood transfusions...
New Strategies Needed To Combat Disease In Developing Countries
9/23/2012
So-called lifestyle diseases are gaining ground with epidemic speed in low-income countries. The traditional health focus in these countries has been to combat communicable diseases such as malaria, HIV and tuberculosis. However, research from the University of Copenhagen suggests that dividing campaigns into combating either non-communicable or communicable diseases is ineffective and expensive...
A Conversation With Rohit Pappu About Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
9/23/2012
Students are taught that a protein's 3-dimensional shape is critical to its function, but it turns out that many proteins exist in a state of 'disorder' and yet are functional If you open any biology textbook to the section on proteins, you will learn that a protein is made up of a sequence of amino acids, that the sequence determines how the chain of amino acids folds into ...
Blood Pressure Lowered In Healthy Adults By Low Calorie Cranberry Juice
9/23/2012
Regularly drinking low-calorie cranberry juice may help get your blood pressure under control, according to new findings presented at the American Heart Association's High Blood Pressure Research 2012 Scientific Sessions...
Cell Death Discovery May Help Prevent Infertility, Early Menopause
9/22/2012
The discovery of a cell death mechanism may lead to new ways to protect female fertility, bringing hope to women who risk becoming infertile through cancer treatment or early menopause, thanks to a new study from Australia that was published online Thursday in the journal Molecular Cell...
Precancerous Polyp Detection Rates Increased By Split-Dose Preparation For Colonoscopy
9/22/2012
A new study from researchers at the Mayo Clinic Arizona showed that system-wide implementation of a split-dose preparation as the primary choice for colonoscopy significantly improved both polyp detection rates and adenoma (precancerous polyp) detection rates, overall quality of the preparation, and colonoscopy completion rates...
Nanoparticles have shown great promise in the targeted delivery of drugs to cells, but researchers at the University of Georgia have refined the drug delivery process further by using nanoparticles to deliver drugs to a specific organelle within cells...
Eight Cancers Targeted With $3 Billion Investment By MD Anderson Cancer Center
9/21/2012
The "Moon Shots Program" has been launched as part of an aggressive drive to convert the scientific discoveries related to eight major cancers into clinical advances that reduce mortality, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced. According to the American Cancer Society, by 2015 there will be an estimated 11.3 million cancer survivors in the USA...
New cancer drugs must be thoroughly tested in preclinical models, often in mice, before they can be offered to cancer patients for the first time in phase I clinical trials. Key components of this process include pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies, which evaluate how the drug acts on a living organism...
Potential Cell Therapy For Bowel Disease Suggested By Research
9/21/2012
New research shows that a special population of stem cells found in cord blood has the innate ability to migrate to the intestine and contribute to the cell population there, suggesting the cells' potential to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)...