Could people with Type 1 diabetes one day replace insulin with Leptin? A research team at UT Southwestern has had promising results with animal studies and now is laying the groundwork for testing it in humans.
Continue reading ‘Researchers ready Leptin Test for Type 1 Diabetes’
The creators of the X Prize are pondering a new competition for cutting-edge scientists working in the stem cell field.
Continue reading ‘X Prize May Offer Millions for Stem Cell Breakthrough’
Now that it’s done a $39.3 billion deal for Alcon, Novartis is joining the “no-megamerger” pharma fraternity. At the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Basel, Switzerland, new CEO Joe Jiminez said Novartis might scout for acquisitions to grow its business in certain areas, but another big-time deal just isn’t in the cards.
Continue reading ‘Novartis Eyes Deals in Generics, Vaccines’
Monash University biomedical scientists have identified a new way to treat castrate resistant cells in prostate cancer sufferers — the most common cancer in Australian men. For more than 60 years the main way to treat men with prostate cancer has involved removing the hormones that fuel growth of the cancer cells. Although initially effective this treatment inevitably fails and when the tumour growth resumes, the disease in incurable. The team, from the Prostate & Breast Cancer Research Program, has discovered a way to treat these potentially fatal diseased cells, which remain in a patient after they have undergone hormone treatment.
Continue reading ‘Effective Prostate Cancer Treatment Discovery’
Why can’t I fall asleep? Will this new medication keep me up all night? Can I sleep off this cold? Despite decades of research, answers to these basic questions about one of our most essential bodily functions remain exceptionally difficult to answer. In fact, researchers still don’t fully understand why we even sleep at all. In an effort to better understand the sleep-wake cycle and how it can go awry, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are taking a different approach than the traditional brain scans and sleep studies. They are using mathematics.
Continue reading ‘The Mathematics Behind a Good Night’s Sleep’
Scorpion venom is notoriously poisonous — but it might be used as an alternative to dangerous and addictive painkillers like morphine, a Tel Aviv University researcher claims. Prof. Michael Gurevitz of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Plant Sciences is investigating new ways for developing a novel painkiller based on natural compounds found in the venom of scorpions. These compounds have gone through millions of years of evolution and some show high efficacy and specificity for certain components of the body with no side effects, he says.
Continue reading ‘Pinch Away the Pain: Scorpion Venom Could Be an Alternative to Morphine’
Regulatory proteins common to all eukaryotic cells can have additional, unique functions in embryonic stem (ES) cells, according to a study in the Journal of Cell Biology. If cancer progenitor cells — which function similarly to stem cells — are shown to rely on these regulatory proteins in the same way, it may be possible to target them therapeutically without harming healthy neighboring cells.
Continue reading ‘Unpacking Condensins’ Function in Embryonic Stem Cells’
Scientists in Massachusetts are reporting new evidence that certain high blood pressure drugs may be useful in preventing and treating diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of vision loss in people with diabetes. The study, the largest to date on proteins in the retina, could lead to new ways to prevent or treat the sight-threatening disease, they say.
Continue reading ‘More Evidence on Benefits of High Blood Pressure Drugs in Diabetic Eye Disease’
Knowing the stage of a patient’s melanoma is important when choosing the best course of treatment. When the cancer has progressed to the lymph nodes, a more aggressive treatment is needed. Examining an entire lymph node for cancer takes much effort and time. Now, a new technique might help make the process more efficient.
Continue reading ‘Sound of Melanoma: Ultrasound Can Help Doctors Find Cancer More Accurately’
In ongoing work to identify how genes interact with social environments to impact human health, UCLA researchers have discovered what they describe as a biochemical link between misery and death. In addition, they found a specific genetic variation in some individuals that seems to disconnect that link, rendering them more biologically resilient in the face of adversity.
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