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Anaphylatoxin C5a may be responsible for devastating effects of atherosclerosis

For decades, doctors have looked at fitness levels, weight, and overall health risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Now, they may soon add a new risk factor to the list: activation of the complement system. The complement system is usually implicated in immune responses, but now there's a role for it in cardiovascular disease.

5 Jan 2011

Researchers create model that predicts drug effects on fetal development

When pregnant women need medications, there is often concern about possible effects on the fetus. Although some drugs are clearly recognized to cause birth defects, and others are generally recognized as safe, surprisingly little is known about most drugs' level of risk. Researchers in the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program have created a preclinical model for predicting a drug's teratogenicity based on characterizing the genes that it targets.

5 Jan 2011

Blocking activation of delta-PKC enzyme could protect lungs from neutrophil-mediated damage

All of us may be able to breathe a little easier now that scientists from Pennsylvania have found a new therapeutic target for controlling dangerous inflammation in the lungs. A new research report in the January 2011 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) suggests that blocking the activation of an enzyme called delta-protein kinase C (delta-PKC) could protect the lungs from neutrophil-mediated damage, which can result in out of control inflammation.

5 Jan 2011

Low-radiocarbon nutrition permanently reduces genetic damage to brain cells

A new method of child and maternal nutrition could prevent a specific type of genetic damage that would otherwise occur in up to 160 million brain cells in each person over their lifetime. Preventing this genetic damage could have significant implications related to aging and cancer.

5 Jan 2011

Removal of ZIP proteins from hippocampus cell protects them from injury

Researchers in the Blue Bird Circle Developmental Neurogenetics Laboratory in the department of neurology at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered that zinc enters cells through specialized protein gates known as ZIP transporters, and removing these ZIP proteins from cells in the hippocampus significantly protects them from injury.

5 Jan 2011

Increased amounts of MMP-1 enzyme may explain preeclampsia symptoms in pregnant women

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have found that a significant increase of an enzyme in the blood vessels of pregnant women with preeclampsia may explain some of the symptoms associated with the condition, including hypertension, swelling and protein in the urine.

5 Jan 2011

VENENUM Biodesign relocates to new, state-of-the-art facility in Hamilton

VENENUM Biodesign, a drug discovery company that utilizes ultra-high throughput screening (UHTS) of its compound collection to identify hits against its novel disease-based targets or its partners' targets, announced today its relocation to a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility in Hamilton, NJ in Mercer County.

5 Jan 2011

Diet low in micronutrients can contribute to metabolic syndrome

Results of an epidemiological study conducted by researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and the Corporacion Ecuatoriana de Biotecnologia showed that the metabolic syndrome, a condition that increases a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, was prevalent in a low-income urban community in Ecuador and that a poor diet low in micronutrients appeared to contribute.

5 Jan 2011

Dutch scientists provide new insights into intestinal cancer through plant study

Dutch scientists have gained important new insights into intestinal cancer from studying a plant. The disease is called Peutz-Jeghers Syndrome, a hereditary disorder where people develop intestinal polyps that turn into malignant tumors.

5 Jan 2011

Encouraging results from exon skipping gene-based therapy study for DMD

Scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London have reported encouraging results in a new gene-based therapy for Duchenne Muscular dystrophy (DMD) which at present has no known cure and affects one in 3,000 young boys.

4 Jan 2011

Low-fat lupin proteins

In emerging countries such as China or Brazil, meat consumption is rising dramatically. Indeed, worldwide consumption of red meat has quadrupled since 1961. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects increasing prosperity to lead to a doubling of global meat production by the year 2050. The question is whether our planet, with its limited farmland resources, will still be able to meet all of our needs into the future.

4 Jan 2011

ImmuVen to develop T cell receptor proteins for treating MRSA, cancer

Start-up company ImmuVen and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have entered into a license agreement under which ImmuVen will develop modified T cell receptor proteins for the purpose of treating cancer and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

4 Jan 2011

CDK1 protein deactivates EZH2 enzyme that causes cancer spread

By sticking a chemical group to it at a specific site, a protein arrests an enzyme that may worsen and spread cancer, an international research team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in the January issue of Nature Cell Biology.

4 Jan 2011

Mercator, Pepscan enter multi-program cancer research collaboration

Mercator Therapeutics, the first biopharmaceutical company to systematically use in vivo phage display technology to develop novel cancer drugs and Pepscan Therapeutics, a world leader in protein mimicry technologies for improved therapeutic peptides and anti-GPCR antibodies, today announced a multi-program research collaboration. The companies will collaborate to optimize Mercator's 'Homing Peptides' using Pepscan's proprietary CLIPS technology.

4 Jan 2011

Researchers identify new biological pathway that contribute to glaucoma

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers from the Kennedy Krieger Institute and four collaborating institutions, identified a new and unexpected biological pathway that appears to contribute to the development of glaucoma and its resulting vision loss.

4 Jan 2011

People magazine features another Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet success story

For the second time in three years, Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet success stories are celebrated in People magazine's annual Half Their Size cover story. Marty and Grace Moorehead of Phoenix lost 182 and 51 pounds respectively by following celebrity weight-loss expert Dr. Sanford Siegal's 36 year old weight-loss regimen under the supervision of their own physicians. Marty Moorehead lost half of his 360 pounds and has kept the weight off for a year. The People article is online at http://tinyurl.com/2vl2apk.

3 Jan 2011

Fungus may provide clue about human response to changes in circadian rhythm

Humans are not the only species ruled by a circadian rhythm. Even simple organisms like moulds are governed by an inner clock. Studying red bread mould may teach us how our own internal clock works. This is exactly what the Centre for Organelle Research at the University of Stavanger, Norway is doing.

30 Dec 2010

Tips to avoid allergy and asthma triggers at the gym

A New Year's resolution to get in shape is good news for your health. But if you have allergies or asthma, the hidden triggers at the gym may be bad for your condition.

30 Dec 2010

Low levels of microbe-killing molecules improve survival rate of people with CGD

Investigators at the National Institutes of Health have observed that the survival rate of people with a rare immunodeficiency disease called chronic granulomatous disease is greatly improved when even very low levels of microbe-killing molecules are present.

30 Dec 2010

Interaction of light with circadian systems

In a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aziz Sancar, MD, PhD, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the UNC School of Medicine, and his colleagues have taken an important step in understanding the underlying molecular signals that influence a broad array of biological processes ranging from the sleep-wake cycle to cancer growth and development.

30 Dec 2010