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Viewpoints: Dem representatives on health spending; Star Tribune praises IPAB; NY Times on stem cells

When the debate over the fiscal 2012 budget began, the country — or, more accurately, the media — was focused on Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal. Introduced on behalf of the Republican House majority, our colleague's plan puts the interests of wealthy corporations first by slashing Medicare and Medicaid and spending trillions on a new corporate tax cut. Indeed, cutting is all it seems to do. ... That's not a jobs plan — that's an economic death sentence.

4 May 2011

Researchers develop novel spinal cord injury treatment

Rutgers researchers have developed an innovative new treatment that could help minimize nerve damage in spinal cord injuries, promote tissue healing and minimize pain.

4 May 2011

WWP2 protein appears to play a key role in tumor survival

A protein known as WWP2 appears to play a key role in tumor survival, a research team headed by a scientist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in an advance online publication of Nature Cell Biology.

4 May 2011

Brazilian researchers develop hES cell line for therapeutic transplantation

Brazilian researchers, reporting in the current issue of Cell Transplantation, discovered difficulties in establishing a genetically diverse line of human embryonic stem cells to serve the therapeutic stem cell transplantation needs of the diverse ethnic and genetic Brazilian population.

3 May 2011

NanoViricides' FluCide drug candidate greatly reduces lung viral load in animals

NanoViricides, Inc. reports that post-infection treatment with its optimized FluCide drug candidates achieved 1,000-fold reduction in the levels of infectious virus in the lungs of animals with a lethal level of influenza virus infection.

3 May 2011

Mirror neuron system in individuals with autism is not actually broken, but simply delayed

Developmental abnormalities in the mirror neuron system may contribute to social deficits in autism. The mirror neuron system is a brain circuit that enables us to better understand and anticipate the actions of others. These circuits activate in similar ways when we perform actions or watch other people perform the same actions.

3 May 2011

RBC transfusion linked to improved survival after intracerebral hemorrhage

In patients with intracerebral hemorrhage —a type of stroke caused by bleeding inside the brain—transfusion with red blood cells may improve the chances of survival, reports a study in the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

3 May 2011

Busy brain cells can both contribute to and prevent Alzheimer's

Higher levels of cell chatter boost amyloid beta in the brain regions that Alzheimer's hits first, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. Amyloid beta is the main ingredient of the plaque lesions that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's.

3 May 2011

U.Va, Coulter Foundation partner for translational research in biomedical engineering

The University of Virginia and the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation have teamed to create a $20 million endowment to foster research collaboration between biomedical engineers and clinicians, with the goal of developing new technologies to improve patient care and human health.

3 May 2011

Astex earns GBP5.9 M milestone payment from GSK for fragment-based screening platform

Astex Therapeutics, the UK-based biotechnology company developing targeted therapies for oncology and virology, announced that it has achieved multiple early milestones in its fragment-based drug discovery collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline which commenced in November 2009.

3 May 2011

JPO issues patent to Silence Therapeutics' RNAi technology

Silence Therapeutics plc announces the issuance of patent 4,705,370, titled "Further Novel Forms of Interfering RNA Molecules," by the Japanese Patent Office.

3 May 2011

Eurotrans-Bio awards 1.1 million grant to MDxHealth, NovioGendix for bladder cancer program

MDxHealth SA, a leading molecular diagnostics company in the field of personalized cancer treatment, today announced that together with partner NovioGendix B.V., a molecular diagnostics company spun out from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, the Netherlands, has received a USD 1.1 million grant from Eurotrans-Bio to progress its bladder cancer program.

3 May 2011

Beta amyloid may inhibit specific cell motors and contribute to memory loss

A protein associated with Alzheimer's disease clogs several motors of the cell transport machinery critical for normal cell division, leading to defective neurons that may contribute to the memory-robbing disease, University of South Florida researchers report.

3 May 2011

HIV drugs may also combat parasitic diseases: Study

Scientists have discovered that drugs used to treat HIV may also one day become lifesaving drugs targeted at parasitic diseases such as leishmaniasis and malaria.

3 May 2011

McMaster receives new Canadian Cancer Society grants for groundbreaking research

Three cancer studies led by Hamilton researchers are among 52 new research projects worth close to $22 million announced by the Canadian Cancer Society.

3 May 2011

Appeals court greenlights stem-cell research

The court handed the Obama administration a victory by ruling that federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research can go forward.

3 May 2011

Scientists discover new gene underlying angle-closure glaucoma

Jackson Laboratory researchers and their collaborators have reported their discovery of a gene implicated in an acute and severe form of glaucoma known as angle-closure glaucoma.

3 May 2011

Research: Two-year-old children with autism have enlarged brains

In 2005, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that 2-year-old children with autism have brains up to 10 percent larger than children of the same age without autism.

3 May 2011

New non-invasive device can measure brain's precise temperature

Doctors have long sought a way to directly measure the brain's temperature without inserting a probe through the skull. Now researchers have developed a way to get the brain's precise temperature with a device the diameter of a poker-chip that rests on a patient's head, according to findings presented May 1 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Denver.

3 May 2011

Aquaporin-4 plays a key role in brain inflammation

A new protein, called aquaporin-4, is making waves and found to play a key role in brain inflammation, or encephalitis. This discovery is important as the first to identify a role for this protein in inflammation, opening doors for the development of new drugs that treat brain inflammation and other conditions at the cellular level rather than just treating the symptoms.

3 May 2011