T Cell News and Research

Latest T Cell News and Research

Programmed cell death may provide clues to cancer and autoimmune diseases therapies

Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have found links in the cell death machinery of worms and mammals, opening new avenues for studying and targeting a process vital to development and implicated in cancer and autoimmune diseases.

16 Feb 2005

Young blood revives aging muscles

Any older person can attest that aging muscles don't heal like young ones. But it turns out that's not the muscle's fault. A study in the Feb. 17 issue of Nature shows that it's old blood that keeps the muscles down.

16 Feb 2005

Single gene variant may increase a man's risk of prostate cancer by 50%

In 2001, Mount Sinai researchers published a study in Science that showed that a gene, known as KLF6, fails to function properly in at least 50 to 60 percent of all prostate cancers. This was the first single gene shown to be responsible for the majority of cases of this disease, which affects approximately 200,000 men each year.

16 Feb 2005

Antigens produced by the Epstein Barr virus may provide an ideal target for cancer therapy

A typically innocuous virus found in 90 percent of people worldwide is the key to a new treatment for a cancer particularly common in North Africa and Southeast Asia.

16 Feb 2005

Nanoscale mechanism to externally control the function and action of a protein

"We can switch a protein on and off, and while we have controlled a specific protein, we believe our approach will work with virtually any protein," said Giovanni Zocchi, assistant professor of physics at UCLA, member of the California NanoSystems Institute and leader of the research effort. "This research has the potential to start a new approach to protein engineering."

16 Feb 2005

Schizophrenia may arise from a single genetic defect

Researchers have long puzzled over the apparently multiple causes of complex developmental disorders such as schizophrenia. Individuals seem to be predisposed to the disease by a tragic, mysterious combination of genetics, prenatal trauma, viral infection, and early experience.

16 Feb 2005

Research shows that individual NAc neurons play a role in Pavlovian learning

While the brain center called the nucleus accumbens (NAc) has been called a key component of the brain's "reward" pathways, researchers' experiments with rats have now shown that the center processes not only rewarding stimuli, but also aversive stimuli.

16 Feb 2005

New findings challenge one of the established views of how nerve cells communicate with one another

Every time we move, feel emotions, think or remember, the nerve cells, or neurons, in our body transmit messages to one another via chemical signals called neurotransmitters. Within neurons are tiny organelles called synaptic vesicles that sequester neurotransmitters and release them when needed into the synapse, or space between nerve cells, where the chemical signal is transmitted to other neurons.

16 Feb 2005

EuroVacc 02 HIV Vaccine trial begins

The European Vaccine Effort against HIV/AIDS, has announced that a phase I clinical trial of novel investigational vaccines comprising DNA-HIV-C and NYVAC-HIV-C for the prevention of HIV infection has started in Lausanne and London in February 2005.

16 Feb 2005

Genetic manipulation cuts nerve damage, boosts life span

A novel genetic manipulation significantly extends the life spans of flies by reducing the amount of wear and tear suffered by nerve cells in adults, according to new work published in Cell Metabolism. The findings support the idea that therapies designed to protect the adult nervous system by curbing the production of damaging free radicals might effectively increase longevity in other animals, including humans, the researchers said.

15 Feb 2005

New technique to identify fetal genetic material from amniotic fluid

A preliminary report suggests that cell-free fetal messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid) can be extracted from amniotic fluid (fluid around the fetus), and then be analyzed to study gene expression changes that may reflect the well-being of the fetus, according to a paper in the February 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical applications of biotechnology.

15 Feb 2005

New report detailing how animal experiments misled scientists on Vioxx

Tommorow, February 17, John J. Pippin, M.D., FA.C.C., will testify before Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials and present a new report detailing how experiments on mice, dogs, and other animals misled scientists and ultimately contributed to a tragic outcome for human patients exposed to Vioxx and other drugs.

15 Feb 2005

Link between diabetes and obesity

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis used genetically modified mice to uncover a potentially important link between diabetes and obesity.

15 Feb 2005

Angiogenesis inhibitor molecules defend against the development and spread of cancer

Research led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) helps explain how a group of angiogenesis inhibitor molecules serve as an important defense mechanism against the development and spread of cancer, offering key insights into why cancerous tumors grow at different rates among different individuals.

15 Feb 2005

Exposure of expectant mothers to urban air pollution may alter the structure of babies' chromosomes while in the womb

A new study of 60 newborns in New York City reveals that exposure of expectant mothers to combustion-related urban air pollution may alter the structure of babies' chromosomes while in the womb.

15 Feb 2005

Discovery may have implications for the treatment of hemophilia A and B

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have made a discovery that may have implications for the treatment of liver-based genetic defects such as hemophilia A and B in humans.

15 Feb 2005

Blocking estrogen may be vitally important to improving survival from lung cancer

New and effective treatments for lung cancer may rest on their ability to hinder the action of estrogen in lung cancer cells, according to two studies published in the current issue of Cancer Research.

15 Feb 2005

Green tea extract has potential as an anti-cancer agent

A new study on bladder cancer cells lines shows that green tea extract has potential as an anti-cancer agent, proving for the first time that it is able to target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

15 Feb 2005

Mesoblast signs adult stem cells agreement

Australia’s adult stem cell company, Mesoblast Limited, today announced that it had signed an agreement for production of specialised adult stem cells, known as Mesenchymal Precursor Cells (MPCs), to be used in human pilot clinical trials in patients with orthopaedic and cardiovascular diseases.

14 Feb 2005

Novel approach to treating hearing loss

GenVec today reported that encouraging preclinical findings on a novel approach to treating hearing loss have been published in the March 2005 issue of Nature Medicine.

14 Feb 2005