Life Sciences and Chemistry

The Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) and Ghent University have started up a new biopharmaceutical company named Peakadilly nv. Peakadilly will develop and market a new generation of molecular diagnostics − so-called protein bio-markers − using innovative proteomics technology developed by the research group under the direction of Joël Vandekerckhove. The markers can be used in the development of medicines, making the process much more efficient, effective a

Breast cancer is the most frequent form of cancer in women around the world. The fact that this cancer is more frequent in the developed world suggests that life style and environmental factors may be involved. Nutritional factors are particularly important, given people’s continual exposure through dietary habits. Among them, dietary fats are the main element involved in breast cancer. Fats do not cause cancer, however some of them, such as animal fats or certain vegetable fats, accelerate th

Patients infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) are six times as likely to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) than individuals that are virus free, according to research presented today at the Third Annual Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting. HCV infected patients have a seventeen fold higher risk for developing diffuse large B-Cell lymphoma, researchers from British Columbia documented. Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is the most common variety of NHL, comprising approximate

A drug that reduces symptoms of systemic lupus in mice may turn out to be effective against hardening of the arteries and thus prevent heart attacks, according to two poster presentations today at the American College of Rheumatology meeting in San Antonio.

Nilamadhab Mishra, M.D., of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said the drug, called Trichostatin A or TSA, “may have a therapeutic benefit in atherosclerosis,” which causes coronary artery disease by blocking ke

Mice with kids’ muscle tumors raise hope for new treatments

In a pair of new studies, University of Utah scientists took early but significant steps to fight a particularly deadly childhood muscle cancer by identifying some of the genetic events that cause the disease and then engineering mice that develop the tumors. The genetic events might be targets for new drugs that could be tested on the mice.

The disease, named alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, “is a very mean childh

From language to literature, from music to mathematics, a single protein appears central to the formation of the long-term memories needed to learn these and all other disciplines, according to a team of researchers led by scientists at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. Their findings appear in the October 15 issue of Science.

The protein is known as mBDNF, which stands for mature brain-derived neurotrophic factor.