A drug that boosts the body’s production of stem cells appears to “jump-start” the bone-healing process to a point that older adults’ bones heal as fast as young people’s, suggest preliminary results released Tuesday by U.S. researchers.
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York gave teriparatide (Forteo) to 145 people who had bone fractures that had not healed, many for six months or more. They found that 93 percent of them showed significant healing and pain control after eight to 12 weeks.
Nanotechnology has been used for the first time to destroy cancer cells with a highly targeted package of “tumour busting” genes.
The technique, which leaves healthy cells unaffected, could potentially offer hope to people with hard-to-treat cancers where surgery is not possible.
Although it has only been tested in mice so far, the researchers hope for human trials in two years.
The UK study is published online by the journal Cancer Research.
Scientists say for the first time they have understood someone’s thoughts by looking at what their brain is doing.
The hippocampus is widely known to be integral to memory, but researchers say they now see just how images are stored and recalled in this part of the brain.
Wellcome Trust scientists trained four participants to recognise several virtual reality environments.
Discernible patterns in brain activity then signalled where they were, they wrote in the journal Current Biology.
Neurons in the hippocampus, also known as “place cells”, activate when we move around to tell us where we are.
A wheelchair-mounted robotic arm controlled by thought alone has been created by scientists at the University of South Florida.
The device could give people with amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or full body paralysis the ability to perform simple day to day functions that would otherwise be impossible.
“We aren’t reading people’s thoughts,” said Redwan Alqasemi, a scientist at the University of South Florida who, along with Rajiv Dubey and Emanuel Donchin of USF, helped develop the software and hardware. “This is the first time a person with severe disabilities like ALS can perform daily activities for themselves.”
Researchers have discovered human antibodies that neutralise not only H5N1 bird flu, but other strains of influenza as well. They now hope to develop them into life-saving treatments.
The antibodies — immune system proteins that attach to invaders such as viruses —also might be used to protect frontline workers and others at high risk in case a pandemic of flu broke out, the researchers said.
A weapon against the germ that triggers the common cold could be discovered now that scientists have analyzed the DNA of an entire family of cold viruses, a study said.
Colds are difficult to treat and prevent because the rhinovirus that causes them takes many forms, becoming elusive targets for drugs, said Stephen Liggett, a geneticist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute for Genome Sciences in Baltimore who led the study.
Liggett and his team sequenced all 99 known strains of the rhinovirus in a report in the journal Science that traced the evolution of the germ.
A new drug that blocks cancer’s main source of growth has been created in the lab and proven effective in mice, cientists are reporting. It is now being readied for clinical trials in patients.
Far more potent than similar compounds already in clinical trial, the drug short-circuits the normal ability of cells to sense the need to grow and divide — a signal that cancer cells exploit to spread in the body.
The scientists are working with clinicians to test the drug’s effectiveness against a range of cancers that have proven difficult to treat.
US regulators have cleared the way for the world’s first study on human embryonic stem cell therapy.
The move comes three days after the inauguration of President Barack Obama who has been a strong supporter of embryonic stem cell research.
Since 2001 there have been limits on federal funding for stem cells.
Geron Corp, the biotech company behind the research, plans to initiate a clinical trial in patients paralysed due to spinal cord injury.
Susan Craig’s brother Roger died of a pulmonary embolism in 2007, at age 38. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in high school, he had been on antipsychotic drugs for years. At the time of his death, he was carrying 280 pounds on his 6-foot-4-inch frame.
Craig, a public relations specialist who works at Columbia University in New York City, knew that Roger’s medications could cause weight gain. But she had never been told that the drugs he was taking might be harming his heart.
An autonomous institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore has announced the discovery of a human protein called Bax-beta (Baxß), which can potentially cause the death of cancer cells and lead to new approaches in cancer treatment.
“Our research findings reveal that Baxß protein levels are normally kept at essentially undetectable levels in healthy cells by the protein degradation machine in cells known as proteasomes,” said Dr Victor Yu, who led the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) research team.
