Heic1103e.jpg (JPEG Image, 3273x1741 pixels) - Scaled (40%) Blocking a gene stops cancer cells spreading. 24 January 2011Last updated at 11:19 By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News Blocking a gene could prevent cancer cells spreading A gene which encourages cancer to move around the body has been discovered by the University of East Anglia. Experiments on tissue cultures, published in Oncogene, suggest that blocking it would prevent cancers spreading. The researchers hope their work will lead to a new generation of cancer drugs within the decade. Cancer Research UK said the study improved understanding of the disease, but was still at the laboratory stage.
There are treatments for primary cancers, but tumours have the potential to spread. Cells can break off and travel around the body, through the bloodstream or lymph fluid, and start a new or secondary tumour where they land, a process known as metastasis. Breast cancers are known to spread to lymph nodes, the bones and the lungs. These secondary tumours are notoriously difficult to treat. The rogue gene. 2010: The year in medical breakthroughs | Need to Know. What were the major medical studies of 2010?
And how will they affect the treatment of disease in the U.S.? Need to Know asked leaders in the fields of HIV, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Here’s what they had to say. HIVDoctors believe a man is cured from HIV after a bone marrow transplant. Timothy Ray Brown, also known as “the Berlin patient,” received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukemia. Fortunately, the patient, who was infected with HIV, was able to receive a bone marrow transplant from a donor who not only matched the patient’s “tissue type” but also lacked an essential receptor or “door” that HIV uses to enter cells.
In science, it is not possible to prove a negative. Widespread use of this treatment approach is unlikely. “We believe that research into ways to cure HIV are warranted and need better funding,” said AIDS Research Alliance’s vice-president and medical director Dr. Source: AIDS Research Alliance. Stem Cell Transplant Cures HIV In 'Berlin Patient' Lab-Grown Lungs - The 50 Best Inventions of 2010. Growing new body parts has always been more science fiction than science reality, but that balance may quickly be shifting, at least in the lab. Relying on more sophisticated biosimulators that can better mimic body conditions, researchers have re-created the delicate architecture of a rat lung accurately enough for it to assume 95% of a normal lung's inhaling and exhaling functions. The key to their respiratory success was starting with a skeletal rat-lung template, including a matrix of blood vessels and collagen and other connective tissue, then seeding it with stem cells and nutrients to generate lifelike tissue that exchanged oxygen and carbon dioxide just like normal lung tissue.
The ultimate goal is to replicate the feat on a larger scale: to replace enough human lung tissue to aid patients with emphysema or lung cancer. Next 3-D Bioprinter. Key enzyme that regulates the early growth of breast cancer cells identified. New University of Georgia research, published this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that blocking the action of an enzyme called GnT-V significantly delays the onset and spread of tumors in mice with cancer very similar to many cases of human breast cancer.
When the GnT-V enzyme activity in the cells was increased in mammary gland cells, they increased proliferation and began to take on many characteristics of cancer cells. Using a mouse model of human breast cancer, tumors appeared when the enzyme was deleted, but onset was delayed an average of 10 weeks in the mice. "In human terms," said Michael Pierce, director of the UGA Cancer Center and study co-author, "the corresponding delay would be many months and maybe years. You basically are slowing everything down and keeping the cancer from forming and progressing very early. " Pierce likened the cancerous stem cells to the queen of an ant colony. Pushing black-hole mergers to the extreme: Scientists achieve 100:1 mass ratio in simulation. Scientists have simulated, for the first time, the merger of two black holes of vastly different sizes, with one mass 100 times larger than the other. This extreme mass ratio of 100:1 breaks a barrier in the fields of numerical relativity and gravitational wave astronomy.
Until now, the problem of simulating the merger of binary black holes with extreme size differences had remained an unexplored region of black-hole physics. "Nature doesn't collide black holes of equal masses," says Carlos Lousto, associate professor of mathematical sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology and a member of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation. "They have mass ratios of 1:3, 1:10, 1:100 or even 1:1 million. This puts us in a better situation for simulating realistic astrophysical scenarios and for predicting what observers should see and for telling them what to look for.
A paper announcing Lousto and Zlochower's findings was submitted for publication in Physical Review Letters. New Bacteria-Killing Light Can Destroy Superbugs With the Flip of a Switch. Sterilization is hands down one of the most important technologies ever developed by mankind, but though we've known how to do battle with bacterial pathogens in places like the operating room for decades, superbugs like MRSA and Clostridium difficile persist in hospital environments, often causing serious medical complications. But now, researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow have devised a novel means to drive dangerous pathogens to cell suicide by simply bathing them in a pleasant violet light. Light-based sterilization is nothing new – ultraviolet light can do a number on pathogens, though it also does damage to humans – but the new method uses a narrow spectrum of visible, harmless light wavelengths known as HINS (High Intensity, Narrow Spectrum) light to do the trick.
HINS light excites molecules within bacteria such that they produce a chemically lethal response, in essence pushing bacteria to kill themselves. And what of the violet hue? Carbon nanotubes prove useful in cancer cure treatment. Houston (TX) - Medical researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University have discovered that carbon nanotubes can be used to cure cancer! So far the process has only been tested on animals, but the tumors were completely destroyed with only minimal damage to surrounding tissue. The treatment involved four rabbits that were given liver tumors. The researchers injected a solution of single-walled carbon nanotubes directly into the tumor area. They then used a property of carbon nanotubes to combat the tumors. The researchers found that the heat killed the cancer cells without any significant side effects. Our scientists continue to find more and more uses for carbon nanotubes.
A cure for the common cold may finally be achieved as a result of a remarkable discovery in a Cambridge laboratory - Science, News. The discovery opens the door to the development of a new class of antiviral drugs that work by enhancing this natural virus-killing machinery of the cell. Scientists believe the first clinical trials of new drugs based on the findings could begin within two to five years. The researchers said that many other viruses responsible for a range of diseases could also be targeted by the new approach.
They include the norovirus, which causes winter vomiting, and rotavirus, which results in severe diarrhoea and kills thousands of children in developing countries. Viruses are still mankind's biggest killers, responsible for twice as many deaths as cancer, essentially because they can get inside cells where they can hide away from the body's immune defences and the powerful antibiotic drugs that have proved invaluable against bacterial infections. "In any immunology textbook you will read that once a virus makes it into a cell, that is game over because the cell is now infected. The Most Dangerous Drug. A new study in The Lancet rates the harmfulness of 20 psychoactive drugs according to 16 criteria and finds that alcohol comes out on top. Although that conclusion is generating headlines, it is not at all surprising, since alcohol is, by several important measures (including acute toxicity, impairment of driving ability, and the long-term health effects of heavy use), the most dangerous widely used intoxicant, and its abuse is also associated with violence, family breakdown, and social estrangement.
A group of British drug experts gathered by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) rated alcohol higher than most or all of the other drugs for health damage, mortality, impairment of mental functioning, accidental injury, economic cost, loss of relationships, and negative impact on community. Over all, alcohol rated 72 points on a 100-point scale, compared to 55 for heroin, 54 for crack cocaine, and 33 for methamphetamine.
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