Biomedicine News and Research

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New discovery may improve treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and type 2 diabetes

Proteins are large molecular chains that move around cells carrying vital information on the activity of the organism. The role of each protein depends largely on the form it takes, but the proteins occasionally lose this form when they collide and bind with other proteins.

15 Dec 2005

Face transplant woman doing well

French surgeons say that the 38-year-old recipient of the world's first partial face transplant regained consciousness 24 hours after her operation and is doing well.

5 Dec 2005

Patient-specific stem cell lines - now a real possibility

Immune rejection problems could affect any one of us. This unique research shows that producing individual patient cell lines for our own future needs is now something we might all want to consider.

28 Nov 2005

Personalized medicine to improve the outcome for breast cancer patients

As cancer remains a leading cause of death in the United States, early detection and treatment are critical keys to improving the survival rate. Yet, an individual's response to treatment varies considerably, even among cancers of the same histological type.

12 Oct 2005

The biomedical and sociological effects of sleep restriction

In spring 2005 a large European research and training network was established to investigate the causes and implications of poor sleep from the medical as well as from the social point of view.

3 Oct 2005

Workshop - stem cells in reproduction and in the brain

"Once we have found the factors by which body cells can be re-programmed into stem cells, then therapeutic cloning might become superfluous," said Hans R. Scholer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Munster, Germany, at an international scientific symposium on stem cell research in Kobe, Japan.

10 Sep 2005

State-of-the-art portable biosensing device based on micro and nanotechnologies

A state-of-the-art portable biosensing device based on micro- and nanotechnologies will empower doctors to rapidly and accurately forewarn patients of their genetic risk of developing diseases such as cancer.

23 Aug 2005

Reproductive tourism is on the increase in Europe

Reproductive tourism is on the increase in Europe, but rather than condemning it, we should regard it as a "safety valve" that helps us to avoid moral conflict, according to a European ethics expert.

20 Jun 2005

Researchers make new advances in determining the structure of all possible DNA sequences

Oregon State University researchers have made significant new advances in determining the structure of all possible DNA sequences – a discovery that in one sense takes up where Watson and Crick left off, after outlining in 1953 the double-helical structure of this biological blueprint for life.

3 May 2005

Nano-sized particles enable researchers to visualize a tumor using only infrared light

Nano-sized particles embedded with bright, light-emitting molecules have enabled researchers to visualize a tumor more than one centimeter below the skin surface using only infrared light.

7 Feb 2005

New methods of gene delivery using lasers

Leading laser scientists at the University of St Andrews have developed a new method of delivering genes to cells using laser light. The new technique, which is cheap and powerful, could have important implications for future studies in biomedicine and healthcare.

26 Jan 2005

How to uncover the secrets of disease-relevant proteins

Cancer researchers have developed a guide for piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of genome research - to elucidate cellular mechanisms that lead to diseases such as cancer is a big challenge of biomedicine.

23 Dec 2004

Scientists have identified the gene which produces the hereditary Park8 variant of Parkinson’s

Research began when doctors discovered that various members of the same family had Parkinson’s. There are many kinds of Parkinson’s and some are hereditary.

4 Nov 2004

Researchers trim count of human genes to 20,000-25,000

Scientific description of the finished human genome sequence, reducing the estimated number of human protein-coding genes from 35,000 to only 20,000-25,000, a surprisingly low number for our species.

21 Oct 2004

Carbon nanotubes offer a new approach to gene therapy

Many genes that are related to particular diseases have now been identified. Scientists are trying to use this knowledge to treat diseases.

11 Oct 2004

Mouse stem cells may help restore hearing loss in humans

The work is important because, in humans, inner ear sensory hair cells are a precious commodity. Humans are born with only about sixteen thousand of these sound detectors in each ear, which can be easily damaged by age, certain illnesses, exposure to loud sounds, and some medications. Once damaged, the cells do not easily grow back. And with the cell loss comes so-called irreversible hearing loss.

26 Aug 2004

Human antibodies that thwart the SARS virus in mice can be mass-produced quickly

Human antibodies that thwart the SARS virus in mice can be mass-produced quickly using a new laboratory technique developed by an international research team collaborating with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

12 Jul 2004

Speakers will predict the future of where the field of cancer diagnosis and treatment is going in the next ten years

Nexxus, the West of Scotland Bioscience Network will hold the second event of the Horizons in Biomedicine Series today at 6.30pm at the Glasgow Science Centre.

25 May 2004

Five million village doctors in rural China to be re-trained

A memorandum which is to lead to the re-training of five million village doctors in rural China is to be signed on 23 May in Beijing, China. The memorandum goes back to the initiative of Terence Ryan, Professor of Dermatology at the University of Oxford, who has been instrumental in drawing it up and will participate in the signing.

14 May 2004

Asthma study turns up new information on viral infections

Researchers know that viral infections can exacerbate asthma and, in turn, make people with the condition more sensitive to environmental exposures such as endotoxin. But how viral infections contribute to this sensitivity in airway cells has not been clear. A recent study led by investigators from the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Iowa City shows, for the first time, that viral infections may increase environmental sensitivity in lung epithelial (surface) cells by changing expression of receptors on those cells.

25 Mar 2004