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Scientists discover sign of early development of pancreatic cancer

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other institutions have discovered a sign of the early development of pancreatic cancer - an upsurge in certain amino acids that occurs before the disease is diagnosed and symptoms appear.

29 Sep 2014

MD-CARE Act Amendments become law

Capping a two-year advocacy campaign led by Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, today President Barack Obama signed the MD-CARE Act Amendments of 2014 into law, providing a significant victory to the Duchenne and broader muscular dystrophy communities.

27 Sep 2014

BRD4 protein appears to play key role in keeping stem cells in immature "pluripotent" state

A protein implicated in several cancers appears to play a pivotal role in keeping stem cells in an immature "pluripotent" state, according to a new study by NYU Langone Medical Center scientists.

26 Sep 2014

Two genes that cause pediatric glaucoma increases risk of future stroke up to ten times

Every year in Canada about 50,000 people suffer from a stroke, caused either by the interruption of blood flow or uncontrolled bleeding in the brain. While many environmental risk factors exist, including high blood pressure and smoking, stroke risk is also frequently inherited. Unfortunately, remarkably little is known regarding stroke's genetic basis.

26 Sep 2014

Three institutions collaborate to develop vaccine to treat pneumonia

The long-observed association between pneumonia and heart failure now has more physical evidence, thanks to research in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

26 Sep 2014

More reliable cardiorespiratory fitness data can be obtained using lean mass proportional measures

A recent study by the University of Eastern Finland shows that scaling maximal oxygen uptake and maximal workload by body weight confounds measures of cardiorespiratory fitness. It has been a common practice in exercise testing to scale the results by body weight and, according to researchers, this practice should be abandoned. More reliable data on cardiorespiratory fitness can be observed by using lean mass proportional measures.

25 Sep 2014

Elsevier honored at BMA Medical Book Awards ceremony

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced today that 28 of its professional and scholarly products were honored at the British Medical Association's annual BMA Medical Book Awards ceremony at BMA House in London on Sept. 22, 2014.

25 Sep 2014

Northwestern scientists develop first animal model for ALS dementia

The first animal model for ALS dementia, a form of ALS that also damages the brain, has been developed by Northwestern Medicine- scientists. The advance will allow researchers to directly see the brains of living mice, under anesthesia, at the microscopic level. This will allow direct monitoring of test drugs to determine if they work.

25 Sep 2014

New pediatric heart-defect patches enhance electrical connections between cells

Carbon nanotubes serve as bridges that allow electrical signals to pass unhindered through new pediatric heart-defect patches invented at Rice University and Texas Children's Hospital.

24 Sep 2014

Tissue-level model of human airway musculature could pave way for patient-specific asthma treatments

The majority of drugs used to treat asthma today are the same ones that were used 50 years ago. New drugs are urgently needed to treat this chronic respiratory disease, which causes nearly 25 million people in the United States alone to wheeze, cough, and find it difficult at best to take a deep breath.

24 Sep 2014

Foot drop stimulator may facilitate recovery from common complication of stroke

Kessler Foundation scientists have published a study showing that use of a foot drop stimulator during a task-specific movement for 4 weeks can retrain the neuromuscular system. This finding indicates that applying the foot drop stimulator as rehabilitation intervention may facilitate recovery from this common complication of stroke.

24 Sep 2014

Avalon Ventures, GSK jointly launch two new early-stage life science companies

Avalon Ventures today announced the launch of two new companies formed through its collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to fund and launch up to 10 early-stage life science companies.

23 Sep 2014

Immature blood vessels linked to poor sunitinib response

Patients with clear-cell renal cell carcinoma with relatively mature blood vessels respond better to sunitinib and have fewer metastatic sites than those with immature vessels, a study has found.

22 Sep 2014

Sequencing the Asian liver fluke genome: an interview with Dr Neil Young

Opisthorchis viverrini is a parasitic flatworm (or liver fluke) endemic throughout Thailand, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Vietnam and Cambodia. Humans are infected with this parasite when they eat a fluke encysted in inadequately cooked/preserved freshwater fish.

21 Sep 2014

Health law, Medicare remain hot topics in campaign commercials

Politico reports that, although the health law and other related issues may not be the flashpoints they were in other recent election years, they still have muscle on the campaign trail.

19 Sep 2014

Getting a flu vaccination helps moms help their babies

Only about half of all pregnant women in the U.S. get a flu shot each season, leaving thousands of moms-to-be and their babies at increased risk of serious illness.

19 Sep 2014

Research could help eventual treatment of degenerative muscle, brain diseases

Our genetic information is stored in DNA, tiny strands of nucleic acid that contain instructions for the functioning of our bodies. To express this genetic data, our DNA is copied into RNA molecules, which then translate the instructions into proteins that perform tasks in our cells.

19 Sep 2014

Sanofi, MyoKardia partner to develop targeted therapeutics for cardiomyopathies

Sanofi and MyoKardia, Inc., a privately-held company leading the development of precision therapies for genetic heart disease, announced today a worldwide collaboration to discover and develop first-of-its-kind targeted therapeutics for heritable heart diseases known as cardiomyopathies, the most common forms of heart muscle disease.

18 Sep 2014