Amid the glowing results for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients using Gleevec the past three years, the one reality check has been that a majority of the patients with advanced disease eventually relapse and die of the leukemia. An article to be published in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research shows that, in the lab, the molecular mutations that produce a resistance to Gleevec can be overcome. Brian Druker, M.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research at the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute, and colleagues report that a compound called PD180970 successfully stopped the activity of several mutations found in patients who developed a resistance to Gleevec.
Lobes of unexpectedly hot gas speeding away from a black hole in our galaxy have been discovered with NASA 's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The high temperature and the distance of the lobes from the black hole indicate that violent collisions are occurring between clumps of gas expelled from the vicinity of the black hole. A key finding was evidence indicating rapidly moving hot iron atoms. "Just like a super-highway, it's a dangerous world out there," said Simone Migliari on the University of Amsterdam, lead author on a paper from a September 6, 2002 issue of Science magazine. "Blobs of gas are getting rear-ended at speeds in excess of a hundred million miles per hours!"
Researchers have successfully tested micro-sized gelatin particles that may one day deliver therapeutic genes to treat a type of kidney disease. The biodegradable gelatin particles are so small that at least 10 would fit on the period at the end of this sentence. Researchers believe such particles could carry therapeutic genes to the glomerulus, a tiny cluster of capillaries within the kidney that filters toxins from the blood. This filtration system becomes blocked when patients develop glomerular disease.
Scientists have found a new wrinkle in the developmental biology dogma that cell differentiation occurs irreversibly as stem cells give rise to increasingly specialized types of offspring cells. The researchers have shown that certain mouse cells retain an ability to oscillate between very distinct blood cell types ? B-cells and macrophages ? long after what has been commonly regarded as the point of no return.
It is commonplace for patients with Acute Lung Injury (ALI) to be injected with a dye, known as contrast material, before undergoing a CT (computerized tomography) scan of their lungs. Contrast material helps enhance the image so that doctors can evaluate the state of a patient?s lungs. New research published in Critical Care shows that using contrast material could worsen the condition of patients suffering from ALI because it causes the lungs to fill up with fluid, making it more difficult for patients to breathe.
Using a novel gene therapy approach that boosts the body?s immune system, a researcher has cured cancer in laboratory mice. In experiments reported in the Dec. 15 issue of Cancer Research, Chung Lee and colleagues at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University applied the gene therapy technique to render immune cells insensitive to transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta), a powerful, naturally occurring substance in the body called an immunosuppressor that enables cancer cells to evade surveillance by the immune system. The approach boosted the mice?s immune system, which virtually eliminated cancerous tumors in the animals' lungs and prostate gland.
Successfully predicting stock market swings is as futile as searching for the fountain of youth, some people believe. UCLA physicist and complex-systems theorist Didier Sornette is not among them. Sornette says he has found patterns that occur in market crashes dating back for centuries. Their statistical signatures are evident long in advance, he concludes. Sornette has developed algorithms ? based on sophisticated mathematics, statistical modeling techniques and collective behavior theory ? that enable him to analyze more than two dozen stock markets worldwide. Applying techniques of physics to economic data, he has developed a quantitative model that can predict the signatures of a coming stock market crash.
Research out of Israel has led to the discovery of a gene responsible for a type of anemia primarily found in a number of Bedouin families, called congenital dyserythropoietic anemia-1 (CDA-1). The findings, published the December issue of The American Journal for Human Genetics, could lead to effective detection and eventually treatment of the disease. In addition, understanding the role of this gene?s protein product in the body could provide important clues to other types of anemia, as well as to the general mechanisms of blood cell formation.
Researchers in Los Angeles have combined a special protein that targets cancer cells with neural stem cells to track and attack malignant brain tumor cells. Glioblastoma multiforme, or gliomas, are a particularly deadly type of brain tumor. They are highly invasive with poorly defined borders that intermingle with healthy brain tissue, making them nearly impossible to remove surgically without catastrophic consequences. Furthermore, cells separate from the main tumor and migrate to form satellites that escape treatment and often lead to recurrence.
An international conference of European scholars and scientists, with funding from the government of Flanders, goes on record supporting research leading toward safe and effective human germ line genetic modification, saying that it does not violate human rights, including any "so-called right to be born with a human genome that has not been modified by artificial means."
In the last few years, researchers have discovered more than 500 objects in the Kuiper belt, a gigantic outer ring in the outskirts of the solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Of these, seven so far have turned out to be binaries--two objects that orbit each other. The surprise is that these binaries all seem to be pairs of widely separated objects of similar size. This is surprising because more familiar pairings, such as the Earth/moon system, tend to be unequal in size and/or rather close together. To account for these oddities, scientists from the California Institute of Technology have devised a theory of Kuiper belt binary formation.
Breast cancer tumors that stop responding to the drug tamoxifen actually change their cellular characteristics and become responsive to other types of drugs, including Herceptin, according to oncologists at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. "In the process of becoming resistant to tamoxifen, the tumors alter their qualities and become receptive to Herceptin and other drugs that target the HER-2 receptor," said Kimberly Blackwell, M.D., assistant professor of oncology at Duke.
Using a powerful new instrument at the South Pole, a team of cosmologists has produced the most detailed images of the early Universe ever recorded. The research team, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has made public their measurements of subtle temperature differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. The CMB is the remnant radiation that escaped from the rapidly cooling Universe about 400,000 years after the Big Bang. Images of the CMB provide researchers with a snapshot of the Universe in its infancy, and can be used to place strong constraints on its constituents and structure. The new results provide additional evidence to support the currently favored model of the Universe in which 30 percent of all energy is a strange form of dark matter that doesn't interact with light and 65 percent is in an even stranger form of dark energy that appears to be causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. Only the remaining five percent of the energy in the Universe takes the form of familiar matter like that which makes up planets and stars.
High-power ultrasound, currently used for cell disruption, particle size reduction, welding and vaporization, has been shown to be 99.99 percent effective in killing bacterial spores after only 30 seconds of non-contact exposure in experiments. In the experiments, bacterial spores contained in a paper envelope, were placed slightly (3mm) above the active area of a specially equipped source of inaudible, high frequency (70 to 200 kHz) sound waves and hit for 30 seconds. There was no contact medium, such as water or gel, between the ultrasound source and the spores as is typically used in low-power, medical diagnostic ultrasound. The experiments mark the first time that Non-Contact Ultrasound (NCU) has been shown to inactivate bacterial spores.
Researchers have discovered that molecules in aging bones are unable to remain in step with one another during the complex molecular dance that results in healthy bones. The missteps by aging cells responsible for bone formation trigger cells that tear down bone. The result is the thinning of the bones characteristic of osteoporosis, according to preliminary research by Bernard Halloran, PhD, of the Laboratory for Human Aging and Bone Research at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
