Discovery may lead to targeted therapies to interrupt cancer development

(Philadelphia, PA) – Researchers at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania have determined that a key enzyme, Pim-2, is responsible for the survival of cancer cells. The finding – which will appear in the August 1 edition of the journal Genes & Development – represents an important advance in understanding why cancer cells survive in the body (working against the body&#146

New insight is important step forward in personalized cancer care

A new Canadian-led study in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine shows that a simple genetic test can determine if chemotherapy will be effective in treating a patient’s colon cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in North America.
The study, led by doctors and researchers from Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital, examined 570 tissue samples from colon cance

A UCSF-led team has demonstrated that the cerebral cortex, the site of higher cognitive functions, not only perceives pain, but plays a role in regulating pain, and that it does so in part through the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, suggesting a possible target for therapy.

The finding, published in the July 17 issue of Nature, provides some of the first neuroanatomical evidence that the cerebral cortex not only receives pain signals from nerve cells in lower regions of the brain,

Abnormally high calcium levels spurred on by a mutated gene may lead to the death of neurons associated with Huntington’s disease, an inherited genetic disorder, characterized by mental and physical deterioration, for which there is no known cure.

This discovery by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, published in the current issue of Neuron, sheds new light on the process that causes the selective death of neurons in the region of the brain called the striatu

In a 17-year experiment on Vermont’s Camel’s Hump, three Dartmouth researchers find that lead moves very slowly though the soil. Using the highly accurate technique of isotopic analysis for the first time at this field site, the researchers traced several varieties of lead with different atomic weights.

Their study was published online on July 12 on the Environmental Science & Technology Web site, a journal of the American Chemical Society.

“This definitively supports a few

In the fishbowl of life, when hordes of well-fed predators drive their prey to the brink of extinction, sometimes evolution takes the fast track to help the hunted survive — and then thrive to outnumber their predators.

This rapid evolution, predicted by Cornell University biologists in computer models and demonstrated with Pac-Man-like creatures and their algae food in laboratory habitats called chemostats, could play an important role in the ecological dynamics of many predator-