Life Sciences and Chemistry

A research team at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) led by Dr. Howard Lipshitz has discovered that a protein previously linked to mammalian embryo implantation, as well as tumour metastasis, plays similar roles in fruit fly development. This research is reported in the featured article in the March 9, 2004 issue of the scientific journal Current Biology.

“We were surprised to find such high evolutionary conservation of the structure, expression and function of these proteins – cal

The anti-microbial activity of promising peptides shown in laboratory studies to kill several medically important fungi, some of which are resistant to current drugs, can be enhanced further by protecting the peptides from enzymes programmed to destroy them, University at Buffalo oral biologists have found.

A protease inhibitor cocktail containing compounds that inactivate the enzymes that normally would degrade the small pieces of protein enabled the potential treatments for oral infections

In recent years, scientists have unearthed a trove of subterranean microbial oddities, bugs that live and thrive in bizarre and extreme environments, and that accomplish remarkable feats to survive there.

Now, the flooded depths of an abandoned iron mine in southwestern Wisconsin have yielded yet another novelty: microbes that produce nanometer-scale crystals of extraordinary length. The discovery of the willowy microscopic crystals may open a broad new window to human understanding of bio

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a major mechanism to explain normal and abnormal smooth muscle growth, a finding that could help in the development of novel therapeutics for disorders like hypertension and asthma.

Their work appears in today’s issue of Nature.

Smooth muscle cells are essential for the formation and function of the cardiovascular system, as well as many internal organs such as the stomach, intestine, bladder and uterus. Abno

Advance could solve major challenge in tissue engineering

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have successfully induced the growth of new networks of functional blood vessels in mice. In the March 11 issue of Nature, the team from the Steele Laboratory in the MGH Department of Radiation Therapy describes how their technique led to the growth of long-lasting blood vessels without the need for genetic manipulation. The accomplishment may help solve one of the primary c

Protein offers possibility of finding new cancer therapies

Researchers at New York University School of Medicine have found that a protein called APC plays a role in controlling a web of molecular interactions that can transform normal cells into cancerous ones. The finding may provide new possibilities for devising cancer therapies that target this protein.

“A tumor cell lacks the ability to limit its own growth,” says Michele Pagano, M.D., Associate Professor of Pathology,