HOUSTON – (April 8, 2013) – Is the era of targeted therapy for breast cancer at hand? It could be, said experts at the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine – at least for a certain population of women. In a report that appears online today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers have shown that a subset of breast cancer patients who have tumors overexpressing a protein called the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2 positive) may benefit from a combination of targeted treatments that zero in on the breast cancer cells ...

Washington, D.C.— Carnegie scientists have found that the plant species making up an ecosystem are better predictors of ecosystem chemistry than environmental conditions such as terrain, geology, or altitude. This is the first study using a new, high-resolution airborne, chemical-detecting instrument to map multiple ecosystem chemicals. The result, published in the April 8, 2013, Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a key step toward understanding how species composition affects carbon, nitrogen and other nutrient cycling, and the effects ...

Cancer survivors who had chest radiation are nearly twice as likely to die in the years after having major heart surgery as similar patients who didn't have radiation, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. Chest radiation to kill or shrink breast cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma and other cancers increases survivors' risk for major heart disease years — even decades — after radiation therapy. "While radiation treatments done on children and adults in the late 1960s, '70s and '80s played an important role in cancer survival, the treatment ...

Albert Einstein famously described quantum entanglement as "spooky action at distance"; however, up until now experiments that examine this peculiar aspect of physics have been limited to relatively small distances on Earth. In a new study published today, 9 April, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, researchers have proposed using the International Space Station (ISS) to test the limits of this "spooky action" and potentially help to develop the first global quantum communication network. Their plans include a so-called ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (April 8, 2012) – The antibiotic drug minocycline yields "modest" but meaningful improvements in functioning and mood for children with fragile X syndrome (FXS), reports a study in the April Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, the official journal of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Three months of treatment with minocycline in children with FXS resulted in greater overall improvement than placebo treatment, according to ...

Monarch butterflies have long been admired for their sense of direction, as they migrate from Canada and the United States to Mexico. According to new findings from a team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Guelph, the winged insects fly without a map, and use basic orientation and landmarks to find their way to their wintering sites, thousands of miles away. Recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, the study examined the insects' flight patterns and whether those patterns changed when the butterflies were ...

Intrauterine devices (IUDs) are as safe for teenagers – including those who have never given birth – as they are for adults, according to research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Published in the May issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the findings disprove concerns that have persisted for more than 30 years, since the removal of a harmful IUD from the market in the 1970's, and open the door for many more women – teens included – to benefit from the highly effective, long-lasting form of contraception. "Today's IUDs are not the same as the ones ...

SEATTLE – Although previous research has linked alcohol consumption to an increased risk of developing breast cancer, a new study has found that drinking before and after diagnosis does not impact survival from the disease. In fact, a modest survival benefit was found in women who were moderate drinkers before and after diagnosis due to a reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, a major cause of mortality among breast cancer survivors. The study results will be published in the April 8 edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Polly Newcomb, Ph.D., a member ...

Health systems worldwide are increasingly negotiating secret price rebates from pharmaceutical companies and Canadians risk losing out on the deal. "The pricing of medicines is now a game of negotiation, similar to buying a car at a dealership," says Steve Morgan, an expert in health policy at the University of British Columbia. "There's a list price equivalent to a manufacturer's suggested retail price; and then there's secret deals that everyone negotiates from there." In a study published today in the April issue of the journal Health Affairs, researchers interviewed ...

A study suggests that states with stricter school meal nutrition standards were associated with better weight status among students who received free or reduced-price lunches compared with students who did not eat school lunches, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) was started in 1946 to improve student nutrition by providing school lunches according to standards sets by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). However, the program has faced criticism that the lunches did ...

A new study shows that a woman's pre-pregnancy body fat (adiposity), in-pregnancy weight gain, and presence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) can all combine to steeply increase the risk of giving birth to large-for-gestational age (LGA) babies to different degrees in white non-Hispanic, black non-Hispanic, White Hispanic, and Asian women, with the highest combined risk being in White non-Hispanic women. The research is published in the journal Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) and is led by Dr Katherine Bowers and Dr ...

A University of Leeds-led study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, overturns the common assumption that evolution only occurs gradually over hundreds or thousands of years. Instead, researchers found significant genetically transmitted changes in laboratory populations of soil mites in just 15 generations, leading to a doubling of the age at which the mites reached adulthood and large changes in population size. The results have important implications in areas such as disease and pest control, conservation and fisheries management because they demonstrate that ...

Feeding an intestinal enzyme to mice kept on a high-fat diet appears to prevent the development of metabolic syndrome – a group of symptoms associated with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and fatty liver – and to reduce symptoms in mice that already had the condition. In their report published online in PNAS Early Edition, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators describe how dietary supplementation with intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP) reduced the inflammation believed to underlie metabolic syndrome by blocking a toxic molecule found on the surface ...

WASHINGTON, DC -- Only 53 percent of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients who were at high risk of carrying a BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 mutation – based on age, diagnosis, and family history of breast or ovarian cancer – reported that their doctors urged them to be tested for the genes, according to a research team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, which will be presented during the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2013 (Presentation #1358), were drawn from surveys completed by 2,258 women between 18 ...

In this News Digest: Summary of a study being published online April 8, 2013 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, reports that adding cetuximab (Erbitux) to chemotherapy enabled previously inoperable patients to undergo surgery, tripling the rates of successful surgery for liver metastasis. The combination of cetuximab and chemotherapy extended median overall survival for this population of patients by 10 months compared with chemotherapy alone. Quote for attribution to Neal Meropol, MD, American Society of Clinical Oncology Cancer Communications Committee member ...

Newborn babies' immune system development and levels of vitamin D have been found to vary according to their month of birth, according to new research. The research, from scientists at Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Oxford, provides a potential biological basis as to why an individual's risk of developing the neurological condition multiple sclerosis (MS) is influenced by their month of birth. It also supports the need for further research into the potential benefits of vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy. Around 100,000 people in the ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tumor suppression, the family business of the sibling genes p53, p63 and p73, is undermined from within by the split personalities of p63 and p73, which each produce protein forms that not only block the work of the other two genes but also shut down its own cancer-stifling fraternal twin. In a presentation at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013, scientists from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center demonstrate that tumor suppression can be restored in mice that lack p53 by knocking out the ∆N isoforms of p63 and p73 that interfere with tumor ...

The novel c-MET and VEGFR2 inhibitor, XL-184 (Cabozantinib), resulted in a significant decrease in tumor growth in 12 out of 12 colorectal cancer (CRC) patient-derived explants, with 8 of the explants exhibiting stable disease. The results of this preclinical work are presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013. "With molecularly targeted agents, we typically see 3 or 4 CRC explant models with a significant decrease in tumor growth. Here we have a drug that was active in every explant we tested. It's really exciting," says John Arcaroli, PhD, investigator at the University ...

The process of autophagy cleans cells – they wrap up the bad stuff and then dispose of it. And so it stands to reason that inhibiting autophagy would make cancer cells less able to cleanse themselves of chemotherapy and so more susceptible to the drugs. That's what the traditional anti-malaria drug, chloroquine, does – it inhibits autophagy. Existing clinical trials are testing chloroquine/chemotherapy combinations against breast cancer. Research presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 shows that some breast cancer subtypes depend on autophagy more than others – and ...

WASHINGTON, DC – Autophagy, the process by which cells that are starved for food resort to chewing up their own damaged proteins and membranes and recycling them into fuel, has emerged as a key pathway that cancer cells use to survive in the face of assault by chemotherapy and radiation. Using drugs to shut down that survival mechanism shows great promise, especially when combined with targeted agents and standard chemotherapies, but until recently, it has been unclear which patients' cancers would respond to that combination therapy. A team led by researchers from the ...

Controlling the shapes of nanometer-sized catalytic and electrocatalytic particles made from noble metals such as platinum and palladium may be more complicated than previously thought. Using systematic experiments, researchers have investigated how surface diffusion – a process in which atoms move from one site to another on nanoscale surfaces – affects the final shape of the particles. The issue is important for a wide range of applications that use specific shapes to optimize the activity and selectivity of nanoparticles, including catalytic converters, fuel cell ...

Older adults who categorise themselves as old and frail encourage attitudinal and behavioural confirmation of that identity. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by Krystal Warmoth and colleagues at University of Exeter Medical School, which is being presented today, 9th April 2013, at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Harrogate, UK. Krystal Warmoth interviewed 29 older adults in the South West of England face-to-face. Interviews conducted asked about their experiences of ageing and frailty. Self-perception and identification related to ...

When small particles flow through thin capillaries, they display an unusual orientation behaviour. This has recently been discovered by a research team led by Prof. Stephan Förster and Prof. Walter Zimmermann (University of Bayreuth, Germany) at the X-ray sources DORIS III and PETRA III of the research centre DESY in Hamburg, Germany. The discovery is of major importance for spinning processes designed for the production of synthetic fibres, and for the understanding of vascular stenosis. The scientists of Bayreuth University, the Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands), ...

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown they can coax cells to move toward a beam of light. The feat is a first step toward manipulating cells to control insulin secretion or heart rate using light. Their research is published April 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition. "We have succeeded in using light as a kind of on-off switch to control cells' behavior," says principal investigator N. Gautam, PhD, a professor of anesthesiology. "Much of the way cells behave is due to their ability to ...

The Gulf of Mexico may have a much greater natural ability to self-clean oil spills than previously believed, according to Terry Hazen, University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor's Chair for Environmental Biotechnology. The bioremediation expert presented his Deepwater Horizon disaster research findings at the 245th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. Hazen conducted research following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which is estimated to have spilled 210 million gallons ...