A drug derived from the hydrangea root, used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine, shows promise in treating autoimmune disorders, report researchers from the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and the Immune Disease Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston (PCMM/IDI), along with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
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Johns Hopkins brain scientists have figured out why a faulty protein accumulates in cells everywhere in the bodies of people with Huntington’s disease (HD), but only kills cells in the part of the brain that controls movement, causing negligible damage to tissues elsewhere. The answer, reported this week in Science, lies in one tiny protein called “Rhes” that’s found only in the part of the brain that controls movement.
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The discovery that adult skin cells can be ‘reprogrammed’ to behave like stem cells has been a major scientific boon, providing a way to tap the potential of embryonic stem cells without the associated ethical quandaries. Now, in a study appearing online in JBC, researchers have created a line of such reprogrammed stem cells from adult pigs.
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Preventing vascular congestion is an important mediator in heart failure, reports a study in the June issue of the Journal of Cardiac Failure, published by Elsevier. The authors previously demonstrated that venous endothelium is a key regulator of central blood volume, organ perfusion and hemostasis in heart failure (HF).
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Latent HIV genes can be ’smoked out’ of human cells. The so-called ’shock and kill’ technique, described in a preclinical study in BioMed Central’s open access journal Retrovirology, might represent a new milestone along the way to the discovery of a cure for HIV/AIDS. Dr. Enrico Garaci, president of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (the Italian Institute of Health) and Dr.
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The Society for Biomolecular Sciences (SBS) announces the delivery of their Annual Meeting posters and abstracts with online commenting through Poster Hall 2.0 developed by Conference Archives, Inc. The SBS e-poster website, accessible to SBS members, brings together posters and abstracts from the 2008 and 2009 SBS Annual Conference & Exhibitions.
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Scientists and engineers at UC Santa Barbara and other researchers have developed a nanoparticle that can attack plaque - a major cause of cardiovascular disease. The new development is described in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The treatment is promising for the eventual development of therapies for cardiovascular disease, which is blamed for one third of the deaths in the United States each year.
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In a variety of organisms, from zebrafish to fruit flies to humans, stem cells have the potential to differentiate into a variety of tissues–and, in some cases, to give rise to a complete new organism. Stem cell research, therefore, has attracted the attention of a range of biologists–reproductive biologists, cancer biologists, cell and developmental biologists, and others–who have all recognized its importance and therapeutic potential.
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More than one kind of stem cell is required to support the upkeep and repair of the lungs, according to a new study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Scientists at Duke University Medical Center painstakingly followed and counted genetically labeled cells in the mouse lung for over a year, under differing conditions, to learn more about natural renewal and healing processes.
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Cancer develops when cells known as cancer stem cells begin to divide in an uncontrolled manner. Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified roles for the gene PTEN, which is already well known for its ability to suppress tumor growth, and for several pathways linked to PTEN in the growth of cells that give rise to breast cancer.
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