Life Sciences and Chemistry

Cells that produce insulin have been unexpectedly found in the fat, liver and bone marrow of diabetic mice, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in a report that appeared today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“In fact, the appearance of insulin-producing cells occurs in both type 1 (juvenile) and type 2 (adult-onset) diabetic mice,” said Dr. Lawrence Chan, chief of the BCM endocrinology section and professor in the department of medicine and molecular

A group of researchers from The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute and from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) has identified a small synthetic molecule that can control the fate of embryonic stem cells.

This compound, called cardiogenol C, causes mouse embryonic stem cells to selectively differentiate into “cardiomyocytes,” or heart muscle cells, an important step on the road to developing new therapies for repairing damage

Two-pronged approach synergizes growth

Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have advanced a decades-old quest to get injured nerves to regenerate. By combining two strategies – activating nerve cells’ natural growth state and using gene therapy to mute the effects of growth-inhibiting factors – they achieved about three times more regeneration of nerve fibers than previously attained.

The study involved the optic nerve, which connects nerve c

A research team at Cornell University has succeeded in converting nitrogen into ammonia using a long-predicted process that has challenged scientists for decades.

The achievement involves using a zirconium metal complex to add hydrogen atoms to the nitrogen molecule and convert it to ammonia, without the need for high temperatures or high pressure.

“The value of our work is that we have answered the very basic chemical question of how to take this very inert and unreactive [nitrog

The work offers potential insights into disease processes, including cancer

Researchers at Jefferson Medical College and Jefferson’s Kimmel Cancer Center are gaining a better understanding of the cues that help guide cells to the right places in developing embryos. Steven Farber, Ph.D., assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and his co-workers have found that statins, the group of anti-cholestero

Scientists at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center have scientifically validated for the first time that stem cells in umbilical cord blood can infiltrate damaged heart tissue and transform themselves into the kind of heart cells needed to halt further damage.

Clinical proof of this principle has existed for a decade, as Duke physicians have used cord blood to correct heart, brain and liver defects in children with rare metabolic diseases. But until now they lacked the molecular evidence t