Brain cells derived from human embryonic stem cells improved the condition of rats with Parkinson’s-like symptoms dramatically, but the treatment caused a significant problem — the appearance of brain tumors — that scientists are now working to solve. The study is featured on the cover of the November issue of Nature Medicine.
Cancer researchers have found that a gene that is involved in regulating aging also blocks prostate cancer cell growth. They have shown that the enzyme SIRT1 can block the growth of treatment-resistant prostate cancer cells that overexpress a mutation for the androgen receptor. The scientists hope the newly found connection will aid in better understanding the development of prostate cancer and lead to new drugs against the disease.
A new study has shown that exercise can reduce sleep-disordered breathing in children, which appeared in the November issue of Obesity. Exercise can reduce snoring among overweight children, even if it doesn’t result in weight loss.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is ranked the overall #1 hospital in New York City, according to New York magazine’s 2006 “Best Hospitals” issue.
By fine-tuning “fine-needle aspiration” biopsies with a super-fast genetic microarray technology, a team of surgeons from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City says they can greatly enhance the accuracy of these tests.
How drugs such as adrenalin do primarily one thing — in this case, increase the heart rate — now makes more sense to scientists.
Two nearly 6-foot tall, remote-controlled robots are now on staff at The Methodist Hospital, caring for critically ill patients suffering from stroke or other neurological problems.
Potentially blinding blood vessel growth in the cornea resulting from eye injury or even surgery can be reduced by more than 50 percent with a new manmade protein, researchers say.
Inhibiting a particular cancer-causing gene can enhance the cell-killing effects of radiation, a team of radiation oncologists and cancer biologists has found. Using a combination of zebrafish and antisense technology, they’ve shown that the drug flavopiridol works by blocking the activity of a gene, cyclin D1, which is overexpressed in about half of all breast cancers. Similar techniques in the future, the scientists say, may enable researchers to better gauge the effects of drugs.
With the help of tiny, transparent zebrafish embryos, researchers are hoping to prove that a microscopic nanoparticle can be part of a “new class of radioprotective agents” that help protect normal tissue from radiation damage just as well as standard drugs. They’ve shown that the nanoparticle, DF-1 — a soccer ball-shaped, hollow, carbon-based structure known as a fullerene — is as good as two antioxidant drugs and FDA-approved Amifostine in fending off radiation damage from normal tissue.