A team of researchers from USC and NYU has developed and patented a small molecule that interferes with cancer progression with minimal side effects. The molecule prevents two critical proteins from interacting by mimicking the surface topography of one protein – like wearing a mask – which tricks the other protein into binding with it. This stops a so-called "transcription factor" that controls the transcription of genetic information. That transcription factor is what would have created an aberrant gene expression, contributing to the cancer growth. Because of the ...

Much like using dimmer switches to brighten or darken rooms, biochemists have identified a protein that can be used to slow down or speed up the growth of brain tumors in mice. Brain and other nervous system cancers are expected to claim 14,320 lives in the United States this year. The results of the preclinical study led by Eric J. Wagner, Ph.D., and Ann-Bin Shyu, Ph.D., of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and Wei Li, Ph.D., of Baylor College of Medicine appear in the Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature. "Our work ...

Children delivered by cesarean section and those given antibiotics during early infancy appear more prone to developing allergic inflammation of the esophagus — the muscular tube that connects the mouth to the stomach — according to results of a study by investigators from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and Harvard Medical School. The findings, published online May 2 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, reveal that early antibiotic treatment and C-section delivery may somehow precipitate disease development by altering a child's microbiota ...

LOS ANGELES (May 13, 2014) – When professional surfer Richie Lovett began experiencing hip pain at 31, he attributed it to his athletic lifestyle. But after months of discomfort and preliminary tests, the Australian native learned the pain was caused by a cancerous tumor in his femur or thigh bone. "As a professional athlete, I was blindsided by the news that I had cancer," said Lovett. "I realized very quickly that cancer would have a profound effect on my life. I knew I needed an experienced oncologist to tackle this disease, so I began an international search to find ...

Eight years ago Rudolf Grimm's research group was the first to observe an Efimov state in an ultracold quantum gas. The Russian physicist Vitali Efimov theoretically predicted this exotic bound state of three particles in the 1970s. He forecast that three particles would form a bound state due to their quantum mechanical properties, under conditions when a two-body bound state would be absent. What is even more astounding: When the distance between the particles is increased by factor 22.7, another Efimov state appears, leading to an infinite series of these states. Until ...

HEIDELBERG, 13 May 2014 – More than 60 years ago Otto Warburg recognized that cancer cells differ from normal cells in the metabolic pathway they use for the oxidation of sugar. Rather than the typical series of oxidative steps that take place in the citric acid cycle, cancer cells metabolize sugar via the glycolytic pathway irrespective of whether oxygen is present or not. In The EMBO Journal, researchers in the United States report that the reason for this difference in colon cancer is changes in the Wnt signaling pathway, an essential communication pathway operating ...

Ambitious mitigation efforts, however, could decrease the pollution by 50 percent. The analysis is the very first to quantify this. "Nitrogen is an irreplaceable nutrient and a true life-saver as it helps agriculture to feed a growing world population – but it is unfortunately also a dangerous pollutant," says Benjamin Bodirsky, lead-author of the study. In the different forms it can take through chemical reactions, it massively contributes to respirable dust, leads to the formation of aggressive ground-level ozone, and destabilizes water ecosystems. Damages in Europe ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Infertility is generally thought of as a woman's problem. In fact, more than 3 million men across America also experience it. Today, researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) describe a key event during sperm development that is essential for male fertility. A team led by CSHL Professor Alea Mills explains how a protein controls DNA packaging to protect a man's genetic information. The sperm is a simple delivery vehicle for a man's genetic information. The highly specialized cell is little more than a DNA bundle powered by molecular ...

New rules banning fishermen from throwing away unwanted fish they have caught could harm wildlife – and fail to improve fish stocks, a University of Strathclyde report has found. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggests new reforms to the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) – ending the practice of throwing away unwanted fish caught at sea – may have unintended consequences. The new CFP took effect on 1 January 2014 and will phase out the discarding of fish between 2015 and 2019. The aim is to improve fish stocks – but Professor ...

A group of researchers led by Johns Hopkins scientists say they have identified a genetic marker that may be associated with the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), whose causes and mechanisms are among the least understood among mental illnesses. The results of the research are published online May 13 by the journal Molecular Psychiatry. "If this finding is confirmed, it could be useful," says study leader Gerald Nestadt, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of ...

A shared population of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria circulates both in humans and companion animals, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. "Our study demonstrates that humans and companion animals readily exchange and share MRSA bacteria from the same population," says senior author Mark Holmes, senior lecturer in preventive veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge in England. MRSA naturally lives on the skin and also causes difficult-to-treat ...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that people living with depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions are twice as likely to have tried e-cigarettes and three times as likely to be current users of the controversial battery-powered nicotine-delivery devices, as people without mental health disorders. They are also more susceptible to trying e-cigarettes in the future in the belief that doing so will help them quit, the scientists said. The FDA has not approved e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid. The study will ...

Researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles have discovered that by targeting a particular receptor, chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells can be killed in an acute form of childhood leukemia, offering the potential for a future treatment for patients who would otherwise experience relapse of their disease. Nora Heisterkamp, PhD, and colleagues at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles have discovered that by targeting the B-cell activating receptor (BAFF-R), chemotherapy-resistant precursor B acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells (pre-B ALL) can ...

Treating older men with early-stage prostate cancer who also have other serious underlying health problems with aggressive therapies such as surgery or radiation therapy does not help them live longer and, in fact, can be detrimental, according to a study by UCLA researchers. The study followed the cases of more than 140,500 men aged 66 and older diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer between 1991 and 2007 from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Medicare database. Men who also suffered from multiple major medical conditions such as a history of ...

AURORA, Colo. (May 12, 2014) – Being released from prison or jail is a difficult time for the millions of Americans returning to their communities from correctional facilities. Add to the list of challenges a high risk of winding up in the emergency department or the hospital. That's according to a new study from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, provides support for efforts to improve access to insurance and readily available health care for this vulnerable group. "This study comes at a ...

La Jolla, Calif., May 12, 2014 -- A new study carried out by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces (Germany), the Free University of Berlin (Germany), UC San Diego, and Shinshu University (Japan) has identified a novel molecule that prevents T-cells from orchestrating asthma brought on by allergens. The findings, published on May 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show promise for a new potent therapeutic agent to treat asthma, a chronic disease affecting ...

A Jackson Laboratory research team led by Professor Lenny Shultz, Ph.D., reports that a protein involved in wound healing and tumor growth could be a potential therapeutic target. In one of nature's mixed blessings, the mechanisms that work to heal cuts and wounds, rebuilding damaged cells, can also go out of control and cause cancer. But understanding those mechanisms could lead to new ways of stimulating healing in wound patients and dialing back cancerous proliferation. An inactive rhomboid protease, iRhom2, is normally a short-lived protein that controls a cascade ...

National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded researchers at the University of Washington have concluded that Antarctica's fast-moving Thwaites Glacier will likely disappear in a matter of centuries, potentially raising sea level by more than a half-a-meter (two feet). Data gathered by NSF-funded airborne radar, detailed topography maps and computer modeling was used to make the determination. The glacier acts as an ice dam, stabilizing and regulating movement toward the sea of the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet contains enough ice to cause another 3 to ...

DETROIT – A Henry Ford Hospital research team has identified specific genes that may lead to improved survival of glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of cancerous brain tumor. The molecular data is expected to aid further research into genes that either help or impede the survival of patients diagnosed with the tumor, which can invade and rapidly grow in any part of the human brain. "Studies such as ours that help define molecular alterations associated with short-term survival likely will help define the reasons why our current treatments don't succeed in these ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. — A collaborative study involving Kansas State University researchers has discovered a new gene expression mechanism in porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS, virus — an important swine pathogen that costs the U.S. pork industry more than $600 million a year. The discovery provides a new avenue for scientists to explore strategies to control and prevent the disease. Ying Fang, Ph.D., associate professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State University, led a study that looked at the unique gene expression mechanism of ...

With an aging population comes an increase in hip and knee joint replacement surgeries, totaling almost one million procedures per year in the United States. To provide better information on the outcomes of these surgeries, help inform patient choice, and improve the quality of the nation's hospitals, a team of Yale School of Medicine researchers have developed a measure for hospitals based on the complications following their patients' hip and knee replacements. The team published an article in the May issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery showing there are ...

Using next generation DNA sequencing, Dartmouth scientists have identified potentially actionable mutations in cancers of the appendix. Their study, "Molecular Profiling of Appendiceal Epithelial Tumors Using Massively Parallel Sequencing to Identify Somatic Mutations," was published in the journal Clinical Chemistry today. When specific mutations for a cancer type are identified, patients can be treated with chemotherapy or other targeted agents that work on those mutations. Little is known about the molecular biology of two types of appendix tumors, low-grade appendiceal ...

The U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory has created a faster, cleaner biofuel refining technology that not only combines processes, it uses widely available materials to reduce costs. Ames Laboratory scientists have developed a nanoparticle that is able to perform two processing functions at once for the production of green diesel, an alternative fuel created from the hydrogenation of oils from renewable feedstocks like algae. The method is a departure from the established process of producing biodiesel, which is accomplished by reacting fats and oils with alcohols. "Conventionally, ...

A research team from the Friedman Brain Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has published evidence that shows that subtle changes of inhibitory signaling in the reward pathway can change how animals respond to drugs such as cocaine. This is the first study to demonstrate the critical links between the levels of the trafficking protein, the potassium channels' effect on neuronal activity and a mouse's response to cocaine. Results from the study are published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron on May 7, 2014. The authors investigated the role of ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Lowering temperatures for two hours each day reduces the height of corn without affecting its seed yield, a Purdue study shows, a technique that could be used to grow crops in controlled-environment facilities in caves and former mines. Raising the crops in isolated and enclosed environments would help prevent genetically modified pollen and seed from escaping into the ecosystem and crossing with wild plants. Cary Mitchell, professor of horticulture, said the technique could be particularly useful for growing transgenic crops to produce high-value ...