Just a small fraction of patients who have a stroke receive the only drug — TPA — available to treat the condition. Now doctors and scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have developed a potential new treatment that will reach a milestone in the next few months, when the experimental treatment is tested for the first time in people who have suffered a stroke or “brain attack.”
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.
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.
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.
Using the medium of dance, “Ferocious Beauty: Genome” turns the spotlight on human genomics in a setting other than a scientific laboratory. Demonstrating the topic’s relevance to the entire community, the production explores the future of genetic science and its impact on human life. The timely performance is especially relevant to the Rochester community, as host to the newest genomics research facility in the Midwest the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Ohio State University, have identified a cellular protein that acts as a regulator for blood flow by blocking blood vessel relaxation induced by nitric oxide (NO). This mouse study appears in the November 2, 2006, online issue of Blood*.
Overweight aged male mice whose high calorie (fat) diet was supplemented by resveratrol, a natural compound found in common foods like grapes, wines and nuts, had better health and survival than aged overweight mice who did not receive it, according to a study published online in the Nov. 1 issue of Nature. The study was conducted and supported in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Infants who die of sudden infant death syndrome have abnormalities in the brainstem, a part of the brain that helps control heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, temperature and arousal, report researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The finding is the strongest evidence to date suggesting that innate differences in a specific part of the brain may place some infants at increased risk for SIDS.
Researchers have used a single compound to increase the lifespan of obese mice, and found that the drug reversed nearly all of the changes in gene expression patterns found in mice on high calorie diets–some of which are associated with diabetes, heart disease, and other significant diseases related to obesity. The research, led by investigators at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging, is the first time that the small molecule resveratrol has been shown to offer survival benefits in a mammal. The study is reported in the November 1 advanced online edition of Nature.
Forget so-called ?energy drinks.? A new analysis by University of Georgia researchers finds overwhelming evidence that regular exercise plays a significant role in increasing energy levels and reducing fatigue.