Life Sciences and Chemistry

Results presented at the Cardiovascular Cell and Gene Therapy Conference II

MacroPore Biosurgery, Inc. (MacroPore; Frankfurt: XMP) (MACP.DE) (XMP:GR) today announced pre-clinical findings that suggest for the first time that adipose-derived regenerative cells have the potential to engraft injured myocardium and express markers consistent with differentiation into cardiac myocytes. These results provide early indication that adipose-derived regenerative cells, which include adult stem

Two Dutch researchers have developed a method for managing so-called batch productions. During a batch production, substances react in a reactor vessel according to a certain recipe to produce an end product. After the reaction the reactor is emptied and a new reaction with the same recipe is started.

Chemist Eric van Sprang and chemical engineer Henk-Jan Ramaker have developed a control method that also takes the relationship between various process parameters into account. The current met

Researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam have discovered a common link between cancer cells and stem cells. Together with colleagues from the University of Zurich, Merel Lingbeek and NWO pioneer Prof. Maarten van Lohuizen published their findings on 18 March 2004 in Nature.

Because cancer cells and stem cells can both reproduce themselves in unlimited numbers, it was suspected that they have something in common. That suspicion proved to be correct. Together with their

An international team of researchers from the University of Helsinki, GeneOS Ltd. and partner institutions announced today that it has made significant discoveries on the causes of asthma. The team’s study, published in the April 9, 2004 edition of Science, reports two novel asthma genes and a set of diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

The implications of the finding are that physicians may be able to identify atopic asthma and allergy patients earlier than is currently poss

A protein involved in the release of neurotransmitters in the brain is essential to learning and memory in mice, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have found.

A study published today in Neuron offers the first evidence that lack of this protein – known as RIM1 alpha – causes profound deficits in the learning process. The discovery is a major step in understanding the molecular events that underlie learning and memory – complex processes that can be impaired in human ne

Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA reports in the April 6, 2004 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that introduction of the MeCP2 protein into post-mitotic nerve cells of MeCP2 mutant mice rescues the symptoms of Rett Syndrome. This raises the possibility that neurons are functionally normal in a newborn child and that neural dysfunction manifests itself only later due to prolonged MeCP2 deficiency. If correct, therapeut