Animal, human health benefits anticipated from new biomedical instrument
The instrument is a modified wide-bore 600-megahertz magnetic resonance imaging spectrometer that will be equipped with a custom imaging probe. …
Tag Archives: technology
Potential drug target to nip cancer in the bud
The research was conducted by Dr Dmitry Bulavin and his team at A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), with their findings published in the 14 October 2013 issue of the scientific journal, Cancer Cell. The team discovered that Wip1 phosphatase is a key factor that causes point mutations to sprout in human cancers. These types of mutations stem from errors that are made during DNA replication in the body, causing one base-pair in the DNA sequence to be altered. These mutations can cause cancers to take root, or to become resilient to treatment. …
Combining imaging techniques for quicker, gentler biopsies for breast cancer
How can you tell if a breast tumor is malignant? This isn’t a question that ultrasound and X-rays, or even magnetic resonance scans, can answer alone. Doctors must often extract tissue samples from an affected area with a fine needle for detailed examination…
Study offers new theory of cancer development
Now, a team at Harvard Medical School has devised a way to understand patterns of aneuploidy in tumors and predict which genes in the affected chromosomes are likely to be cancer suppressors or promoters. …
3D vision goggles improve surgeon’s view in minimally invasive lung surgery
The technology is called 3-D video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS). …
Imaging breast cancer with light
If effective, the new device, called a photoacoustic mammoscope, would represent an entirely new way of imaging the breast and detecting cancer. Instead of X-rays, which are used in traditional mammography, the photoacoustic breast mammoscope uses a combination of infrared light and ultrasound to create a 3-D map of the breast…
Nanodiamonds: A cancer patient’s best friend?
Diamonds are sometimes considered as a girl’s best friend. Now, this expression is about to have a new meaning. Indeed, nanometric scale diamond particles could offer a new way to detect cancer far earlier than previously thought…
Newly discovered gene regulator could precisely target sickle cell disease
The researchers — led by Daniel Bauer, MD, PhD, and Stuart Orkin, MD, of Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s — reported their findings today in Science. Prior work by Orkin and others has shown that when flipped off, BCL11A causes red blood cells to produce fetal hemoglobin that, in SCD patients, is unaffected by the sickle cell mutation and counteracts the deleterious effects of sickle hemoglobin. BCL11A is thus an attractive target for treating SCD. …
Biomarker, potential targeted therapy for pancreatic cancer discovered
These findings, being published in the Oct. 4, 2013, online edition of PLOS ONE, also show that the use of a biotherapy consisting of a lysosomal protein, known as saposin C (SapC), and a phospholipid, known as dioleoylphosphatidylserine (DOPS), can be combined into tiny cavities, or nanovesicles, to target and kill pancreatic cancer cells…
Foods toxins that can cause cervical, liver cancer
The research won the National Award in Food Science and Technology in the Science Professional in Foods category organized jointly by CONACYT (National Council of Science and Technology) and the Mexican Coca-Cola Industry. It explains that both types of cancer can be originated by the ingestion of food contaminated with aflatoxins produced by the fungi Aspergilus flavus and A. …