Georgia Tech/Emory researchers have integrated dopamine, a type of neurotransmitter, into a polymer to stimulate nerve tissues to send out new connections. The discovery, published in PNAS, is the first step toward the eventual goal of implanting the polymer into patients suffering from neurological disorders to help repair damaged nerves.
Ohio State University chemists have devised a new way to create tiny molecular rings that could one day function as drug delivery devices or antibiotics. The rings are made from polymers — large molecules that are made up of many smaller molecules — and the chemical reaction that creates them is similar to others that create polymer chains. But this new reaction solely makes rings, ones tailored to perform specific functions.
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.”
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.
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.
Cases of Tuberculosis (TB) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have increased by 10.8% from 7,321 cases reported in 2004 to 8,113 in 2005 according to new figures released today by the Health Protection Agency.
Ulrike Schmidt, Professor in Eating Disorders, will be speaking at the DANA Centre in South Kensington on 14 November 2006 at Beyond Slim, a public event organised jointly by the Institute of Psychiatry and the European Dana Alliance for the Brain. The evening will be chaired by Professor Iain Campbell and will also feature contributions from the Eating Disorders Association and a personal account from someone living with an eating disorder.
Today marks a bittersweet anniversary for one Cambridge-based national charity, as the Alzheimer?s Research Trust marks 100 years since the discovery of the disease by the German neurologist Dr Alois Alzheimer.