Tag Archives: school

‘Nanosponge vaccine’ fights MRSA toxins

The nanosponges at the foundation of the experimental "toxoid vaccine" platform are bio-compatible particles made of a polymer core wrapped in a red-blood-cell membrane. Each nanosponge’s red-blood-cell membrane seizes and detains the Staphylococcus aureus (staph) toxin alpha-haemolysin without compromising the toxin’s structural integrity through heating or chemical processing. These toxin-studded nanosponges served as vaccines capable of triggering neutralizing antibodies and fighting off otherwise lethal doses of the toxin in mice. Toxoid vaccines protect against a toxin or set of toxins, rather than the organism that produces the toxin(s)…

Fungus-fighting drug may make mild flu meaner

The findings suggest that patients receiving the antifungal therapy may be functionally immunocompromised and more vulnerable to influenza and other viral infections, the researchers said. "Many critically ill cancer and bone marrow transplant patients are treated with Amphotericin B-based therapies each year," said Abraham Brass of the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS)…

Epigenetic changes may explain chronic kidney disease

In a recent Genome Biology paper, Susztak, and her co-corresponding author John Greally from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, found, in a genome-wide survey, significant differences in the pattern of chemical modifications on DNA that affect gene expression in kidney cells from patients with chronic kidney disease versus healthy controls. This is the first study to show that changes in these modifications – the cornerstone of the field of epigenetics – might explain chronic kidney disease. Epigenetics is the science of how gene activity can be altered without actual changes in the DNA sequence. …

Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption increases endometrial cancer risk

Postmenopausal women who reported the highest intake of sugar-sweetened beverages had a 78 percent increased risk for estrogen-dependent type I endometrial cancer (the most common type of this disease). This association was found in a dose-dependent manner: the more sugar-sweetened beverages a woman drank, the higher her risk. "Although ours is the first study to show this relationship, it is not surprising to see that women who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages had a higher risk of estrogen-dependent type I endometrial cancer but not estrogen-independent type II endometrial cancer," said Maki Inoue-Choi, Ph.D., M.S., R.D., who led this study as a research associate in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis. "Other studies have shown increasing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has paralleled the increase in obesity…

Two studies on the use of breast MRI

Study Finds Use of Breast MRI in Women Increasing The overall use of breast magnetic resonance imaging has increased, with the procedure most commonly used for diagnostic evaluations and screenings, according to a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. While breast MRI is being used increasingly, its sensitivity leads to higher false-positive rates and it is also more expensive…

Deletion of any single gene provokes mutations elsewhere in the genome

Summarized in a report to be published on Nov. 21 in the journal Molecular Cell, the team’s results add new evidence that genomes, the sum total of species’ genes, are like supremely intricate machines, in that the removal of a single, tiny part stresses the whole mechanism and might cause another part to warp elsewhere to fill in for the missing part. …

Balloon mis-positioning during prostate cancer treatment could affect success of radiation delivery

"Use of a balloon allows you to stabilize the anatomy. But what we show is that imprecision with balloon placement could reduce radiation dose coverage over the intended area," says Moyed Miften, PhD, FAAPM, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and chief physicist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine Department of Radiation Oncology. Specifically, Miften and colleagues including Bernard Jones, Gregory Gan, and Brian Kavanagh studied the technique known as stereotactic body radiation, in which powerful, precisely-targeted radiation is delivered only to cancerous areas of the prostate with the hope of killing tumor tissue. An endorectal balloon is needed to hold the prostate in place while this high dose is delivered…

New trigger for breast cancer metastasis identified

Now, University of Pennsylvania researchers have revealed how a reduction in mitochondrial DNA content leads human breast cancer cells to take on aggressive, metastatic properties. The work, published in the journal Oncogene, breaks new ground in understanding why some cancers progress and spread faster than others and may offer clinicians a biomarker that would distinguish patients with particularly aggressive forms of disease, helping personalize treatment approaches. The study was led by the Penn School of Veterinary Medicine’s Manti Guha, a senior research investigator, and Narayan Avadhani, Harriet Ellison Woodward Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Animal Biology. Additional Penn Vet collaborators included Satish Srinivasan, Gordon Ruthel, Anna K. …

Researchers help make pediatric eye cancer easier to detect

Although children in the United States who are treated for retinoblastoma have a 95 percent survival rate that figure drops below 50 percent for children in developing countries. However, surviving retinoblastoma is just the first hurdle. Typically, "survivors experience moderate to severe vision loss" and in some cases loss of both eyes, but early detection and treatment can increase the chances of survival and vision preservation…