Chemicals commonly used to treat heartburn also display fighting power against the oral bacteria linked with gum disease, according to researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center and G?teborg University in Sweden.
In this era of molecular medicine, controversy among cancer researchers is increasing as to whether the laboratory cells they study — and upon which human treatment is based — accurately reflect the biology of “real” tumors growing in a person’s body. Some argue that cancer cells that learn to live in a flat lab dish cannot reflect cancer in the body, but others say that without any other way to study cancer, they seem to have performed well.
The only drugs currently available for Alzheimer’s patients are those that alleviate symptoms, but a team of scientists led by Paul Aisen, MD, director of the Memory Disorders program at Georgetown University Medical Center, is testing a new class of drugs that actually target the molecule believed to cause the disease. Aisen and his colleagues report that a compound called tramiprosate reduced levels of a marker for the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in a Phase II clinical trial in the November 1 electronic version of Neurology.
A breakthrough finding on the mechanism of myelin formation by Jonah Chan, assistant professor of cell and neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, could have a major impact on the treatment of diseases such as multiple sclerosis and demyelination as a result of spinal cord injuries.
The unassuming C. elegans nematode worm, a 1-millimeter workhorse of the genetics lab, is quite similar to human beings in its genetic susceptibility to nicotine dependence, according to University of Michigan researchers.
Researchers have identified three proteins that appear to be highly predictive of chronic lung rejection up to 20 months before the rejection occurred. Lung transplants are a common therapy for many end-stage lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension. If doctors can predict which patients are beginning to reject the transplanted organ, they could try to head it off.
Researchers have found a highly unusual distribution of two proteins in the lungs and airways of people with cystic fibrosis, a discovery that could be a step in determining how the disease progresses. The proteins, first uncovered as a result of the human genome project, are thought to play a role in the body’s immune system.
Chronic alcohol abuse disrupts the proteins that keep fluids out of the lung, lowers a protective antioxidant, disrupts immune defenses and can lead to a condition known as “alcoholic lung,” according to research to be presented at the conference, “Physiological Genomics and Proteomics of Lung Disease.” The findings give insight into how excessive drinking can harm the molecular life of the lung and lead to serious illness, including pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS.
With the help of some high tech equipment, well-defined mouse models and analytical know how, researchers are trying to understand why a flu virus kills some people but not others. Studies to be presented at “Physiological Genomics and Proteomics of Lung Disease” found that a strain of mice more likely to die of influenza infection mounts a dramatically enhanced immune response in the lungs compared to a strain of mice that generally develops milder disease.
The lungs of patients suffering chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) attempt to repair damaged elastic fibers, a new finding that contradicts the conventional wisdom on the capabilities of the adult lung. The researchers found that synthesis of elastin, a gene linked to elastic fiber growth, is increased in the moderately diseased tissue of COPD patients. Elastic fibers allow the lung to expand and contract with breathing.