Tag Archives: science

Ebola whole virus vaccine shown effective, safe in primates

The vaccine, described today (March 26, 2015) in the journal Science, was developed by a group led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert on avian influenza, Ebola and other viruses of medical importance. It differs from other Ebola vaccines because as an inactivated whole virus vaccine, it primes the host immune system with the full complement of Ebola viral proteins and genes, potentially conferring greater protection. “In terms of efficacy, this affords excellent protection,” explains Kawaoka, a professor of pathobiological sciences in the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and who also holds a faculty appointment at the University of Tokyo…

Researchers map paths to cancer drug resistance

By mapping the specific steps that cells of melanoma, breast cancer and a blood cancer called myelofibrosis use to become resistant to drugs, the researchers now have much better targets for blocking those pathways and keeping current therapies effective. The findings are published in two papers Dec. 23, 2014, in the journal Science Signaling. “Clinical resistance to anticancer therapies is a major problem,” said lead author Kris Wood, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke…

Bitter food but good medicine from cucumber genetics

“You don’t eat wild cucumber, unless you want to use it as a purgative,” said William Lucas, professor of plant biology at the University of California, Davis and coauthor on the paper to be published Nov. 28 in the journal Science. That bitter flavor in wild cucurbits — the family that includes cucumber, pumpkin, melon, watermelon and squash — is due to compounds called cucurbitacins. The bitter taste protects wild plants against predators. …

Establishment of induced pluripotent stem cells from Werner syndrome fibroblasts

Werner syndrome is characterized by the premature appearance of features associated with normal aging and cancer predisposition. This syndrome occurs frequently in Japan, affecting 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 40,000 people. The therapeutic methods for this disease are very limited and it is expected that iPS cells can be used for the development of innovative therapies…

Scoring scheme predicts ability of cancer cells to spread to other parts of body

Led by Professor Jean Paul Thiery, Senior Principal Investigator, and Dr Ruby Huang, Principal Associate, both from CSI Singapore, the scientists developed a scoring scheme which monitors the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) mechanism. This process was shown to play a role in a large number of cancer-related events, including cancer invasion, metastasis, and chemo-resistance…

Viewing cancer on the move: New device yields close-up look at metastasis

The inventors, from the university’s Whiting School of Engineering and its Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT), published details and images from their new system recently in the journal Cancer Research. Their article reported on successful tests that captured video of human breast cancer cells as they burrowed through reconstituted body tissue material and made their way into an artificial blood vessel. “There’s still so much we don’t know about exactly how tumor cells migrate through the body, partly because, even using our best imaging technology, we haven’t been able to see precisely how these individual cells move into blood vessels,” said Andrew D. …

National Cancer Institute supports next-generation Austrian HPV vaccine

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supporting further clinical development of a new, improved, next-generation HPV vaccine. The vaccine was developed by a team led by Reinhard Kirnbauer from the Division of Immunodermatology at the MedUni Vienna in collaboration with Christina Schellenbacher and support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). The new vaccine had already demonstrated its excellent efficacy in a pre-clinical study in 2013…

Mushroom extract, AHCC, helpful in treating HPV

The results were presented at the 11th International Conference of the Society for Integrative Oncology in Houston today by principal investigator Judith A. Smith, Pharm.D., associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the UTHealth Medical School. Ten HPV-positive women were treated orally with the extract, AHCC (active hexose correlated compound) once daily for up to six months…