There’s already enough evidence to justify increasing vitamin D levels to improve health, according to the opinion piece by Drs Michael F. Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic and Jeffrey D. Roizen of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, they propose a randomized trial to conclusively determine whether vitamin D can reduce complication rates after surgery…
They are also screened less often than women with moderate disabilities or women with only one chronic condition, according to Dr. Sara Guilcher, an affiliate scientist with the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St…
Dasatinib fights leukemia by checking the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. But when used against other cancer cells, researchers found, the drug employs a different strategy: It causes the cells to clump together, thus preventing them from migrating. Without the ability to migrate, cancer cells cannot metastasize (spread to other parts of the body)…
Dasatinib fights leukemia by checking the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. But when used against other cancer cells, researchers found, the drug employs a different strategy: It causes the cells to clump together, thus preventing them from migrating. …
Such disorders are caused by faulty DNA repair systems that increase the risk for cancer and other conditions. The findings are published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Regents Professor Michael Smerdon and post-doctoral researcher Peng Mao found that when DNA is damaged, a specific protein must first be “unbuckled” to allow easy access for the DNA “repair crew.” Without this unbuckling, entry to the damaged site is hampered by the compact arrangement of genes and protein in chromosomes called chromatin. …
Using a microengineered device that acts as an obstacle course for cells, researchers have shed new light on a cellular metamorphosis thought to play a role in tumor cell invasion throughout the body. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a process in which epithelial cells, which tend to stick together within a tissue, change into mesenchymal cells, which can disperse and migrate individually. EMT is a beneficial process in developing embryos, allowing cells to travel throughout the embryo and establish specialized tissues. But recently it has been suggested that EMT might also play a role in cancer metastasis, allowing cancer cells to escape from tumor masses and colonize distant organs…
The letters in the human genome carry instructions to make proteins, via a three-letter code. …
Development of effective new therapies for preventing or treating NASH has been stymied by limited small animal models for the disease. In a paper published online in Cancer Cell, scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine describe a novel mouse model that closely resembles human NASH and use it to demonstrate that interference with a key inflammatory protein inhibits both the development of NASH and its progression to liver cancer. “These findings strongly call for clinical testing of relevant drugs in human NASH and its complications,” said senior author Michael Karin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology in UC San Diego’s Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Signal Transduction. “Our research has shown that, at least in this mouse model, chemical compounds that include already clinically approved drugs that inhibit protein aggregation can also be used to prevent NASH caused by a high fat diet.” The increasing prevalence of NAFLD is linked to the nation’s on-going obesity epidemic. …
An ultrasound machine provides an imperfect view of the prostate, resulting in an under-diagnosis of cancer, said J. Kellogg Parsons, MD, MHS, the UC San Diego Health System urologic oncologist who, along with Christopher Kane, MD, chair of the Department of Urology and Karim Kader, MD, PhD, urologic oncologist, is pioneering the new technology at Moores Cancer Center. “With an ultrasound exam, we are typically unable to see the most suspicious areas of the prostate so we end up sampling different parts of the prostate that statistically speaking are more likely to have cancer,” said Parsons, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Urology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “The MRI is a game-changer…
An ultrasound machine provides an imperfect view of the prostate, resulting in an under-diagnosis of cancer, said J. …