The tissue-engineered esophagus formed on a relatively simple biodegradable scaffold after the researchers transplanted mouse and human organ-specific stem/progenitor cells into a murine model, according to principal investigator Tracy C. Grikscheit, MD, of the Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine program of The Saban Research Institute and pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles…
“This has the potential to dramatically change how we treat cancer,” says Dr. Pramod Srivastava, director of the Carole and Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at UConn Health and one of the principal investigators on the study. “This research will serve as the basis for the first ever genomics-driven personalized medicine clinical trial in immunotherapy of ovarian cancer, and will begin at UConn Health this fall,” Srivastava says. UConn bioinformatics engineer Ion Mandoiu, associate professor of computer science and engineering, collaborated as the other principal investigator for the study, which has been in development for the past four years…
The gene ErbB2, commonly called HER2, is highly expressed in about 25 percent of breast cancers. Scientists have now found the protein Erbin, thought to be an anti-tumor factor, also is highly expressed in these cancers and essential to ErbB2’s support of breast cancer. When scientists interfere with the interaction between the two in mice, it inhibits tumor development and the usual spread to the lungs, according to an international team reporting in the journal PNAS. The team documented the overexpression of both in 171 cases of mostly aggressive human breast cancer as well. …
“Our goal is to provide information about trends and patterns to bring to light what’s going on around the world so that funds can be allocated and policy developed as needed,” says Lindsay Boyers, medical student at Georgetown University, working in the lab or Robert Dellavalle, MD, PhD, MSPH investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, associate professor of dermatology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the paper’s senior author. The paper used data from the Global Burden of Disease Study, an ongoing project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to collect a billion data points describing the distribution of the world’s diseases. Of the 269 diseases in the GBD database, this study compares rates in developed versus developing countries of Ebola, malignant melanoma, basal and squamous cell carcinoma, decubitus ulcer, bacterial skin diseases, cellulitis, varicella (including chickenpox, congenital varicella infection, and herpes zoster), syphilis, measles, and dengue. Specifically, findings show that in 2010 the measles death rate was 197 times greater in developing countries than in developed countries, but this ratio was down from 345-to-1 in 1990. …
Previously considered protective, SIRT6 is part of a family of seven proteins called sirtuins that help regulate genomic stability and prevent some of the genetic flaws associated with aging. …
This switch is driven by p53, the well-documented tumor-suppressing protein. The UNC researchers showed that increasing the level of p53 in scar-forming cells significantly reduced scarring and improved heart function after heart attack. The finding, which was published today in the journal Nature, shows that it is possible to limit the damage wrought by heart attacks, which strike nearly one million people in the United States each year. Heart disease accounts for one in four deaths every year…
University of Iowa researchers have found a gene in a soil-dwelling amoeba that functions similarly to the main tumor-fighting gene found in humans, called PTEN. …
Treatments for retinoblastoma have progressed dramatically in recent years, one being a procedure called ophthalmic artery infusion chemotherapy. A tiny catheter is inserted into an artery that provides blood flow (and chemotherapy) directly to the eye and tumor. Originally introduced in the late 1980s, direct ophthalmic artery infusion significantly increases treatment effectiveness while reducing side effects. Unfortunately, many children with retinoblastoma are not good candidates for conventional ophthalmic artery infusion — in particular younger, smaller patients with advanced disease, according to Todd Abruzzo, MD, director of Interventional Neuroradiology at Cincinnati Children’s. …
The ARMC5 gene was discovered by independent workgroups studying benign tumors — so-called adrenal adenomas — in connection with Cushing’s syndrome. In this disease, the body produces too much of the hormone cortisol. Now, for the first time, a mutation of ARMC5 has been characterized as the cause behind the growth of meningeal tumors. …
University of Iowa researchers have found a gene in a soil-dwelling amoeba that functions similarly to the main tumor-fighting gene found in humans, called PTEN. When healthy, PTEN suppresses tumor growth in humans…