Cancer Research

Indulging in an isotope-enhanced steak or chicken fillet every now and again could add as much as 10 years to your life, some researchers say. Scientists have shown for the first time that food enriched with natural isotopes builds bodily components that are more resistant to the processes of aging. The concept has been demonstrated in worms and researchers hope that the same concept can help extend human life and reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases of ageing, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. A team led by Mikhail Shchepinov, formerly of…

More powerful computers are allowing scientists and engineers to conduct simulations that grow more realistic each year. While companies are using these tools to slash the costs of producing everything from airliners to antibiotics, researchers in Houston are using them to refine their search for the genetic causes of disease. In a new study published today in the journal PLoS Genetics, statisticians and genetic epidemiologists from Rice University and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center used computer simulations to trace genetic changes over thousands of generations in a…

Researchers at the University at Buffalo have described a novel pathway by which estradiol, the primary estrogen in humans, aids in maintaining bone density, a function critical to avoiding osteoporosis. It is well known that estrogen is essential for healthy bone, and that when the production of estrogen is reduced, as occurs normally in postmenopausal women and pathogenically after exposure to radiation or chemotherapeutic drugs, bones become brittle and break easily. However, the mechanisms involved aren’t clearly understood. The new study found that one way estradiol helps to maintain…

The cancer drug asparaginase fails to help cure some children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) because molecules released by certain cells in the bone marrow counteract the effect of that drug, according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The researchers showed that mesenchymal cells in the bone marrow create a protective niche for leukemic cells by releasing large amounts of asparagine, an amino acid that nearby leukemic cells must have to survive but do not make efficiently. This extra supply of asparagine helps leukemic cells survive treatment with…

Today, during the 85th General Session of the International Association for Dental Research, scientists are reporting that the use of saliva for clinical detection of major human diseases is only a few years away. Intense research is ongoing to discover diagnostic saliva biomarkers. A necessary prerequisite is to know, in a comprehensive manner, the informative biomarkers in saliva: the diagnostic alphabets. Like languages, which are synthesized from a foundation of alphabets, there are multiple diagnostic languages and thus diagnostic alphabets in saliva. The salivary proteome and the…

UCLA scientists have designed and mass-produced billions of fluorescent microscale particles in the shapes of all 26 letters of the alphabet in an “alphabet soup” displaying “exquisite fidelity of the shapes.” The letters are made of solid polymeric materials dispersed in a liquid solution. The research will be published March 29 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, where it will be illustrated on the cover. The scientists anticipate that their “LithoParticles” will have significant technological and scientific uses. “We can even choose the font style; if we wanted Times New Roman, we…

In today’s online edition of Genome Research, a husband-and-wife research team from Thomas Jefferson University report the discovery of a gene that, when mutated, may suppress colorectal cancer. To conduct the study, the researchers used a strain of mice that develop polyps, or small growths of tissue, in the digestive tract—the harbingers of cancer. When these mice possessed one copy of the mutated gene, the incidence of small intestinal and colon polyps were reduced by about 90%. “This gene may give us a novel target to aid in the diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of cancer,” says Dr…

Ever since 1887, when Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie discovered the mathematical group called E8, researchers have been trying to understand the extraordinarily complex object described by a numerical matrix of more than 400,000 rows and columns. Now, an international team of experts using powerful computers and programming techniques has mapped E8--a feat numerically akin to the mapping of the human genome--allowing for breakthroughs in a wide range of problems in geometry, number theory and the physics of string theory. "Although mapping the human genome was of fundamental importance…

A small molecule derived from the spacer domain of the tumor-suppressor gene Rb2/p130 has demonstrated the ability to inhibit tumor growth in vivo and could be developed into an anti-cancer therapeutic, according to researchers at Temple University's Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine. The researchers reported their findings, "A small molecule based on the pRb2/p130 spacer domain leads to inhibition of cdk2 activity, cell cycle arrest and tumor growth reduction in vivo," in the March 22 issue of the journal Oncogene (http://www.nature.com/onc). Rb2/p130 was…

A new study suggests how a notorious cancer gene may contribute to tumor growth. The insight emerged from a long-running study of a protein called PMR1, the key player in an unusual mechanism that cells use to quickly stop production of certain important proteins. Researchers discovered that PMR1 is activated – or “turned on – by another molecule, an energy-packing protein called Src (pronounced “sark”). Discovered in 1977, Src became the first “oncogene” – mutated genes that help make cells cancerous. Oncogenes are altered forms of genes that control cell growth and cell division. These…