Cancer Research

HOLMDEL, New Jersey, July 22 /PRNewswire/ --
- New European customers signify worldwide requirements for quality management and regulatory compliance solutions
Sparta Systems, Inc. (Sparta), the maker of TrackWise(R), and the market leader in enterprise quality and compliance management software, today announced that it has furthered its market expansion in Europe with the addition of several new pharmaceutical and biotech companies to its extensive roster of more than 200 TrackWise customers. These organizations will deploy the company's market-leading TrackWise quality management software…

REHOVOT, Israel and JERSEY CITY, New Jersey, July 22 /PRNewswire/ --
- Test Developed and Validated by Columbia University Medical Center Based on Rosetta Genomics' Proprietary MicroRNA Technology
- The Test Differentiates Squamous From Non-Squamous Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), Classifying Squamous-Cell Carcinoma of the Lung With Sensitivity of 96 Percent and Specificity of 90 percent
- This is the First CLIA Approved Test Which Leverages microRNAs' Sensitivity as Biomarkers for Accurate Diagnosis of Lung Cancer
Rosetta Genomics, Ltd. (NASDQ: ROSG) announces today that the first…

Cyanobacteria, also referred to as blue-green algae or pond scum, is found in nearly every habitat, from oceans to fresh water to bare rocks to soil, and is a source of many unique chemical structures.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) College of Pharmacy are collaborating with the Ohio State University and two other organizations to discover new cancer therapies derived from natural sources such as pond scum and plants from tropical rainforests.
UIC researchers, led by principal investigator Jimmy Orjala, assistant professor of pharmacognosy, will collect small…

An abundant chromosomal protein that binds to damaged DNA prevents cancer development by enhancing DNA repair, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report online this week in PNAS. The protein, HMGB1, was previously hypothesized to block DNA repair, senior author Karen Vasquez, Ph.D., associate professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Carcinogenesis at the Science Park - Research Division in Smithville, Texas.
Identification and repair of DNA damage is the frontline defense against the birth and reproduction of mutant cells that cause cancer and other…

A researcher at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has pinpointed stem cells within the spinal cord that, if persuaded to differentiate into more healing cells and fewer scarring cells following an injury, may lead to a new, non-surgical treatment for debilitating spinal-cord injuries.
The work in PLoS Biology is by Konstantinos Meletis, a postdoctoral fellow at the Picower Institute, and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Their results could lead to drugs that might restore some degree of mobility to the 30,000 people worldwide afflicted each year with spinal-cord…

LONDON, July 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The SEAS (Simvastatin and Ezetimibe in Aortic Stenosis) study has investigated the effects of intensive cholesterol lowering with the combination of simvastatin (40 mg daily) and ezetimibe (10 mg daily) in patients with aortic stenosis.
Aortic stenosis (which involves partial blockage of the aortic valve in the heart) is a relatively common disease among older people in Western populations. Left untreated, it can progress to death from heart failure or cardiac arrest. Aortic valve replacement for severe symptoms is the second most frequent type of heart…

SUNNYVALE, California, July 21 /PRNewswire/ --
- Long-term study confirms treatment could help 3.3 million U.S. sufferers
BARRX Medical, Inc. today announced that 98.4 percent of patients having a precancerous condition of their esophagus called Barrett's esophagus were free of the disease 2.5 years after non-surgical, endoscopic treatment with the HALO ablation system. The results were published this month in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, a leading scientific publication for gastrointestinal physicians and researchers. Barrett's esophagus develops as a result of chronic gastroesophageal…

Logic says that just as air and water preceded life, so must the 'niche', the hospitable environment that shelters adult stem cells in tissue and provides factors necessary to keep them young and vital, must have emerged before its stem cell dependents.
A team of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies led by Leanne Jones, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Laboratory of Genetics, now suggests that this is not always the case. They report in the July 20 advance online edition of Nature that the cells that comprise a specialized niche in the testis of fruit flies actually…

Overweight mothers give birth to offspring who become even heavier, resulting in amplification of obesity across generations, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in Houston who found that chemical changes in the ways genes are expressed a phenomenon called epigenetics -- could affect successive generations of mice.
"There is an obesity epidemic in the United States and it's increasingly recognized as a worldwide phenomenon," said Dr. Robert A. Waterland, assistant professor of pediatrics nutrition at BCM and lead author of the study that appears in the International Journal of…

For the first time, researchers have successfully grown functional human blood vessels in mice using cells from adult human donors — an important step in developing clinical strategies to grow tissue, researchers report in Circulation Research: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The researchers combined two different types of progenitor cells in a culture dish of nutrients and growth factors, then washed off the nutrients and implanted the cells into mice with weakened immune systems. Once implanted, the progenitor cell mixture grew and differentiated into a small ball of healthy…