SUNDAY - June 3, 2007---------------------------- Previous Week News Alerts / Return to Today's News Alerts

Another Reason to Quit - Smoking May Damage Your Sperm.
Health Canada's Environmental and Occupational Toxicology Division, has found in mice that cigarette smoke mutated the DNA of sperm cells - published in the journal Cancer Research. Such germline mutations are permanent. "If inherited, these mutations persist as irreversible changes in the genetic composition of offspring," said Carole Yauk who led the study. Yauk and colleagues studied the stem cells that produce sperm in mice, finding 1.7 times as many DNA mutations in the cells of the smoke-exposed mice compared to unexposed mice after 12 week, and 1.4 times as many mutations after six weeks.

An "Elegant" Idea Proves Its Worth 25 Years Later.
The simple notion of copying the bodys' own "natural waste" disposal chemistry to mop up potentially toxic nitrogen has saved an estimated 80 percent of patients with urea cycle disorders - most of them children - according to a report in this weeks New England Journal of Medicine. The work summarizes a quarter century of experience with the treatment. An estimated one in 40,000 live births is a child with a urea cycle disorder, distinguished by excess nitrogen which yields ammonia, which is poisonous and in urea cycle disorders, causes brain damage, retardation, coma and even death. Saul Brusilow, M.D., thought to make up for the missing urea cycle enzymes. Despite the immediate clinical success of the treatment, the drug combination was finally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration only in 2005. Today, Johns Hopkins teaches all medical students to consider hyperammonemia and immediately do blood tests when they see a combative, lethargic or comatose newborn or child. The research was funded by the Johns Hopkins University General Clinic Research Centers, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, Childrens National Medical Center, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Center for Research Resources.

Common Cancer Gene Sends Death Order to Tiny Killer.
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered one way the p53 gene does what it's known for - stopping colon cancer cells. Their report will be published in the June 8 issue of Molecular Cell. The research team identified a tiny bit of genetic code, a microRNA called miR-34a that participates in p53's uncanny ability to kill cells likely to become malignant because of damaged genes in their nuclei. MicroRNAs are small chains of ribonucleic acid (RNA) made by the same machinery that produces other types of RNA in the cell, such as the messenger RNAs that carry the instructions to make proteins. Once produced, microRNAs stick to messenger RNAs and, like crumpled paper jammed in a copy machine, prevent proteins from being made. "With no p53 gene or miR-34a to stem tumor development, there's no brake in pancreatic cells and uncontrolled growth leads to cancer," says Anirban Maitra, M.B.B.S., associate professor of pathology, oncology and genetic medicine. The team is looking for missing miR-34a in other cancers. If it's a widespread phenomenon, the work could lead to treatments that aim to restore the missing microRNA to cancer cells.

Pregnant Mom's Flu Vaccine Kick-starts Fetal Immune System.
In the June 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a team of researchers led by Rachel Miller from Columbia University used the MHC tetramer staining technique to study cord blood B and T cell immune responses following maternal vaccination against influenza with Fluzone during pregnancy. The vaccination of pregnant women against influenza is considered safe and is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors detected anti-Fluzone antibodies in approximately 40% of cord blood specimens examined. These results and further data reported in the study establish that B and T cell responses to antigens occur in utero following maternal vaccination against influenza, supporting the theory that the human neonatal immune system is not deficient or incompetent but, rather, capable of responding to environmental exposures.

Human Stem Cells Restore Motor Function in Paralyzed Rats.
Rats paralyzed due to loss of blood flow to the spine returned to near normal ambulatory function six weeks after receiving grafts of human spinal stem cells (hSSCs), researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine report. The study, led by Martin Marsala, M.D., UC San Diego professor of anesthesiology, is published in the June 29, 2007 issue of the journal Neuroscience, which is now online. “We demonstrated that when damage has occurred due to a loss of blood flow to the spine’s neural cells, by grafting human neural stem cells directly into the spinal cord we can achieve a progressive recovery of motor function,” said Marsala. Paraplegia from spinal cord ischemia is a serious complication that occurs in 20 to 40 percent of patients undergoing a surgical process called aortic cross-clamping. When the surgeon works on the aorta, a major blood vessel, to correct a potentially lethal aneurysm, blood flow from the heart must be temporarily blocked with a clamp. “The important difference between spinal cord ischemia and spinal cord trauma, such as might occur in a diving or car accident, is that in the ischemia model, no mechanical damage has occurred to the spinal cord,” said Marsala. “The spinal cord and brain motor centers are still partially connected, but there has been a selective loss of inhibitory neurons in the spinal cord. Since these cells are necessary for coordinated motor activity, our research aims to replace these lost neurons by grafting new spinal stem cells, which repopulates the pool of degenerated neurons.” “Other human stem cell transplants in the spinal cord have focused on repairing the myelin-forming cells,” said co-author Karl Johe, a researcher at Neuralstem, the company that manufactures the hSSCs used in the study. “In this study, we succeeded at reconstructing the neural circuitry, which had not been done before.”  The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) recently awarded Marsala a $2.4 million grant for his research utilizing stem cells to repair spinal cord injury resulting from transient ischemia.  He is also collaborating with the University of Michigan on a new $5 million stem cell research project, with Marsala focusing on the potential use of stem cells to treat the paralyzing disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease.


SATURDAY - June 2, 2007---------------------------- Previous Week News Alerts / Return to Today's News Alerts

Fetal Brain Damage Linked To Maternal Cannabis Use.
A critical step in brain development is governed by endogenous cannabinoids, "the brain's own marijuana". Studies conducted at Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet, with participation of scientists from Europe and the United States, are now published in Science and show that these endogenous molecules regulate how certain nerve cells recognize each other and form connections. The scientists believe that their findings will significantly advance our understanding of how cannabis smoking during pregnancy may damage the fetal brain.

Flu-Fighting Fetuses.
A fetus contains many kinds of immune cells, yet most immunologists believe those cells are too immature to target specific allergy-causing molecules, or antigens. That's because no antigen-specific antibodies had ever been found in umbilical cord blood. Instead, immunologists assumed that a fetus could only launch general attacks on infections, while relying on the mother's immune system for antigen-specific responses. But Rachel Miller, an allergist and immunologist at Columbia University, believed the fetal immune system was more advanced than researchers were giving it credit for. Miller and colleagues studied a group of 126 women who received a flu vaccine during pregnancy. When those women gave birth, the researchers took samples of each newborn's cord blood. They collected 70 usable samples and used a technique that had never been applied to cord blood to look at the immune response at the cellular level. That way they could identify, cell by cell, whether a fetus had produced specific antibodies in response to the flu vaccine. They found that 40% of the samples contained antigen-specific T and B immune cells and antibodies. Miller says it's unclear why only some of the fetuses exhibited an immune response, but she says what's significant is that the flu-specific antibodies were there at all. Some were IgM antibodies, which are too large to pass through the placenta from mother to child, meaning they were undoubtedly produced by the fetus. Far from being defenseless, the fetal immune system is quite capable of responding to infection, the team reports today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

British Gov. Recommends NO Alcohol When Trying To Conceive.
The British Health Department said it issued the guidelines to ensure that pregnant women receive a consistent message about the risks associated with alcohol consumption. A recent government survey found that 9% of pregnant women were drinking more than the recommended levels. According to the National Organisation on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, more than 6,000 infants are born annually in Britain with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which is linked to alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The recommendations replace current guidelines that say such women drink only one or two units of alcohol once or twice weekly. It also brings the country in line with guidelines in Australia, Canada, France and the U.S. that recommend abstinence from alcohol consumption.

Sheep Offer Model For Undernourishment In Pregnant Teens.
Two papers selected for publication in the August 2007 issue of Biology of Reproduction demonstrate that adolescent female sheep that become pregnant before they have achieved their full growth may not be able to supply enough nourishment for their fetuses to develop without physical deficits. A team of scientists, headed by Dr. Jacqueline Wallace of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, found that limiting the food intake of adolescent ewes during pregnancy impairs the nutrient supply to their fetuses and slows the growth of soft tissue in the fetuses. The researchers say: "Our results suggest that biomarkers of growth and nutritional status at the time of conception and at mid-pregnancy, and the use of ultrasound to detect whether placental growth and function have been perturbed, may prove beneficial in the optimal management of adolescent pregnancies."

DM1 Breakthroughs at The University of Virginia.
Each year, parents of an estimated one in 20,000 newborns are shocked to learn their child has type 1 congenital myotonic dystrophy (CDM1), a progressive and crippling genetic disorder. Although prenatal tests are available, many children are not diagnosed until they are born. "In these instances, mothers don't know that they have type 1 myotonic dystrophy (DM1) - a common form of muscular dystrophy - because they have mild symptoms or none at all," notes Mani S. Mahadevan, M.D. a pathologist at the University of Virginia Health System and winner of the 2007 Rachel Fund Award for myotonic dystrophy (DM) research. DM1 is the USA's most prevalent inherited neuromuscular disorder, afflicting men and women equally. In general, parents with DM1 pass it along to half of their children. Affected sons and daughters usually begin exhibiting symptoms in their teens or twenties. CDM1 is the severest form of DM. Afflicted newborns are floppy like rag dolls, suffering from poor sucking and swallowing responses, respiratory ailments and impaired motor development - twenty-five percent die within a month. In 1992, as a member of a Canadian research group, Dr. Mahadevan helped discover the genetic mutation that causes DM1 - a gene called myotonic dystrophy protein kinase (DMPK) making extra copies of a nucleotide sequence consisting of cytosine, thymine and guanine (CTG). In normal individuals, the DMPK gene has between five and 30 copies of the CTG sequence. People with DM1 have 50 to several thousand copies. Babies with CDM1 have more than 1000 of them. At the University of Virginia (UVa), Dr. Mahadevan has gone to the next level to prove that DM is caused by toxic RNA (ribonucleic acid). Using mice, his team attached many added CTG repeats to the DNA of a gene that made the muscles in mice glow green under a microscope - better to observe what occurred as the DNA converted into RNA and the proteins determining cell function. The UVa researchers devised an 'on switch' to activate DM when the mice drank water containing the antibiotic doxycycline. Within a few weeks, the doxycycline caused the mice to produce RNA made toxic by extra CTG repeats. The mice became unable to relax their muscles, developed heart rhythm abnormalities - symptoms of DM1. When researchers removed the antibiotic, mice stopped producing toxic RNA and returned to normal. Only mice with severely damaged hearts did not recover. The UVa study appeared in the September 2006 issue of Nature Genetics.


FRIDAY - June 1, 2007---------------------------- Previous Week News Alerts / Return to Today's News Alerts

How Stress in Pregnancy Affects the Fetus.
Research published in May's edition of Clinical Endocrinology shows that from 17 weeks, the amount of stress hormone in the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus is positively related to that in the mother's blood. This is the first report of this relationship noted at such an early stage in pregnancy. Research was led by Prof Vivette Glover at Imperial College London and Dr Pampa Sarkar at Wexham Park Hospital Berkshire. They studied 267 women, taking a blood sample from the mother and a sample from the amniotic fluid - measuring the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in both samples. At gestational age of 17 weeks or greater they found the higher the mother's cortisol levels, the greater the cortisol in the amniotic fluid. Amniotic fluid is predominantly produced by the fetus, and reflects the exposure of the fetus to various substances including hormones. Recent work on animals shows that high levels of stress in pregnancy can affect brain function and behavior in her offspring. While evidence in the scientific literature suggests that maternal stress in humans can affect the developing child, the mechanisms and period of time when the fetus is susceptible is still being defined.

How HIV And Malaria Combine To Affect Pregnant Women.
Malaria, a parasitic disease spread by mosquitoes, kills more than one million people every year. Affecting mostly children, malaria also severely affects first time pregnant women, accounting for an estimated 400,000 cases of severe anaemia and 200,000 infant deaths each year. HIV further aggravates pregnancy-associated malaria (PAM) creating an urgent need for effective therapies. Researchers found that some pregnant women are protected from PAM by an antibody clearing the parasites from the placenta. However, HIV-infected women lose these antibodies and again are made susceptible to PAM. The study was funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Team grant in Malaria, Genome Canada through the Ontario Genome Institute, and the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre/MCMM. Published in PLoS Medicine

Muscle Repair Depends on Multiple Cell Types.
Until now, researchers had assumed that satellite cells had similar properties. New discoveries show that the developmental fate of a given satellite cell depends on its physical orientation immediately after cell division. Michael Rudnicki is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute international research scholar at the Ottawa Health Research Institute, and director of the institute's molecular medicine program. The results of his study are published in the June 1, 2007, issue of the journal Cell. The researchers had long speculated whether satellite cells were true stem cells, more committed cells, or de-differentiated myoblasts (more mature muscle cell precursors). Rudnicki knew of no examples of mammalian de-differentiation, in which a cell backpedals from being a committed cell to becoming a more plastic, multipotent cell. So he and his group used a genetic system to mark cells that expressed a gene called Myf5, which is turned on in mature muscle cells. The group saw startling, even shocking, evidence that when satellite cells divided in a planar orientation, meaning both daughter cells were sandwiched between the muscle and the collagen tube, they almost always resulted in two identical daughter cells (either Myf-5-negative or Myf5-positive). But, when satellite cells that did not express Myf5 divided, and one daughter cell touched the muscle fiber and the other was in contact with the collagen - the resulting daughter cells were different. Usually, the cell touching the muscle fiber expressed Myf5, while the cell in contact with collagen did not. They then injected satellite cells into mice lacking functional satellite cells. Most of the Myf5-positive cells underwent terminal differentiation or died. The Myf5-negative cells not only survived, but infiltrated the muscle, reestablishing both the Myf5-negative and Myf5-positive populations of satellite cells.

“Nurse T Cells” Decide Life and Death for Infection-Fighting Cells.
Infection-fighting cells, known as thymocytes or T cells, live in the thymus, an organ in the upper portion of the chest. Loss of the thymus results in severe immunodeficiency and increased susceptibility to infection. T cells produced by the thymus recognize harmful invaders, and attempt to eliminate disease-infected cells. "In early studies, it was suggested thymic nurse cells only removed non-functional thymocytes," said Eve Barak, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Molecular and Cellular Biology. "This research shows that nurse cells are performing a much bigger role in the thymus than we thought." Thymic nurse cells have been reported to take up as many as 50 destined-to-die thymocytes into their own cell bodies. Discovered in 1980, their existence was debated as many scientists didn't believe a cell could internalize another cell, said Jerry Guyden, a biologist at the City College of New York and lead researcher. The thymus exists in most vertebrates as a similar structure functioning as the human thymus. Animal thymic tissue sold in butcher shops are known as sweetbreads. Reported in the June issue of the journal Experimental Biology and Medicine.




THURSDAY - May 31, 2007---------------------------- Previous Week News Alerts / Return to Today's News Alerts

Similac Formula for Premature Infants Recalled.
About 5,000 cases of 2-ounce bottles of Similac Special Care 24 Cal/fl. oz. Ready-to-Feed Premature Infant Formula with Iron have been recalled because they don't contain as much iron as indicated on the label, the Associated Press reported. Infants who are fed the recalled formula for more than a month after they're discharged from hospital may be at increased risk of developing anemia due to insufficient iron intake, Abbott Laboratories of Columbus, Ohio said in statement. The recall includes three lots with stock code number 59582 and lot numbers 46815D5, 47847D5 and 52023D5 printed on the outside carton and case and lot numbers 44427X8, 44427X81 and 50005X8 printed on the bottom of the bottles, the AP reported. The lots were distributed in the United States between November 2006 and May 2007. For more information, consumers can all Abbott's Ross Products Division at 1-888-899-9182.

Teen Births Decline in U.S.
Between 1997 and 2004, the rate of girls under age 18 giving birth in U.S. hospitals declined by about 25 percent - from 55 to 41 admissions per 100,000 girls. Even so, the United States still has the highest teen pregnancy and birth rates in the industrialized world, says the latest News and Numbers from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The highest rate of girls under 18 giving birth was in the South (52 per 100,000 girls) and lowest in the Northeast (27 per 100,000). The rate in the Midwest was 36 per 100,000 and the rate in the West was 42 per 100,000.

Children Can Problem Solve Math Without Formal Instruction.
Published in the journal Nature, a study suggests that children do not need to master either the logic of place value or the addition table in order to perform approximate addition and subtraction. Children's difficulty with learning school arithmetic may stem from the need to produce an exact number when solving problems. Elementary education in mathematics might be improved - and children's interest in the subject enhanced - if children's talent for approximate calculation could be built upon in the classroom, the authors suggest. The authors - lead researcher Camilla Gilmore, now at the University of Nottingham, with Elizabeth Spelke, Marshall L. Berkman Professor of Psychology and Shannon McCarthy, a research assistant in the department of psychology, both of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard - found evidence for these abilities in children from a broad range of backgrounds, when studies were conducted in both a quiet "laboratory" setting and in the classroom.

Is Your Tongue in Your Genes?
All languages rely on consonants and vowels to distinguish words. But some languages, such as Chinese, also use changes in pitch. These so-called tonal languages are very common in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia but rare in Europe, Australia, and other parts of Asia. Yet even among these populations, there is variation in ability to perceive tones. In a recent study, neuroscientist Patrick Wong and his colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, found that adult speakers of English (a nontonal language) were either good or poor at distinguishing tones in an artificial language. The brains of the successful subjects had more gray matter in a part of their auditory cortex implicated in pitch perception. Inspired, language researchers Dan Dediu and Robert Ladd at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom set out to see whether there might be a genetic basis for these differences. They guessed the differences might be related to variations in two genes, ASPM and microcephalin, thought to be involved in brain development. Two variants of these genes, ASPM-D and microcephalin-D, appear to have arisen fairly recently in human evolution. Science, 22 December 2006, p. 1872.

Can an Electric Hat Fight Tumors?
For years, electric fields were rumored to cause cancer. Now there's reason to believe they might fight it - and even destroy it. Researchers have used low-intensity, intermediate-frequency electric fields to combat the aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The new approach exploits a cog in the cell-division pathway. When cells divide, a molecular motor - the microtubule spindle - helps segregate chromosomes into daughter cells. Resembling a set of strings, the spindle is made of electrically polar macromolecules that are sensitive to electric fields. Previous work has shown that a 200-kHz field applied to these macromolecules disrupts the spindle formation - cells stop dividing and eventually die. In eight out of ten cases, the electric fields increased patient life expectancy. The median survival time was 62 weeks compared to a 29-week average for more than 800 patients at a similar stage of GBM disease treated with chemotherapy. The tumors stopped growing in four patients and shrank in another four. In one case, a patient's tumor completely disappeared and has remained tumor-free for 2.5 years; going into the study she had a projected survival of about 6 months, says physician Eilon Kirson of NovoCure. Tumors continued to grow in two other patients. Reported online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lithium Eases Symptoms of Fatal Neurological Disorder.
Mice engineered to carry a mutant gene that causes a condition that precisely mimics human spinocerebellar ataxia type 1, were treated with lithium and then subjected to a battery of tests to assess balance, coordination, learning and memory. Mice given lithium showed improved coordination, learning and memory even if therapy was started after the symptoms began. Huda Y. Zoghbi and her group at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at the Baylor College of Medicine, documented improvement in the morphology of the specialized cells that conduct nerve impulses in the hippocampus, a region of the brain important for learning and memory. Her group also looked at the effects of lithium on Purkinje cells, which are large, highly branched neurons that help direct motor activity. The drug had less of an effect on Purkinje cells, possibly because the cells are usually the first to succumb to the toxic effects of spinocerebellar ataxia type 1. Damage to dendrites, the elegant branching arbors of brain cells that help conduct nerve impulses, is a hallmark of spinocerebellar ataxia, Zoghbi said: "Changes in dendrite patterning occur in several neurons with spinocerebellar ataxia. Dendrites start to disappear slowly with the onset of the condition and the Purkinje cells are the first to be hit, followed by hippocampal neurons. What we really need to do now is a pilot study, just a small trial with a handful of patients to see if it's safe in this patient population.”


WEDNESDAY - May 30, 2007---------------------------- Previous Week News Alerts / Return to Today's News Alerts

Do These World-First Images Hold Key to Cancer Cure?
Researchers at Dundee University managed to film healthy, live cells within an embryo dividing and redividing after developing a new way of using a powerful microscope. This is the first time this stem cell pattern of division has been witnessed in real time. Stem cells can form any kind of cell in the body and it is thought that cancers may occur when those in body tissue make some kind of "mistake". "What we are starting to do now is the perturbations that lead down those lines. What does that look like and what do the cells do? What happens when you make a mistake in cell division? "Stem cells have this ability to divide over and over again and produce cells that can differentiate. "When you are dividing, life is risky. It's a scary time when mistakes can happen. There's a lot of interest in how those mistakes occur and ultimately lead to disease." says lead researcher, Dr Jason Swedlow, of Dundee University's College of Life Sciences.

New beta cells without stem cells?
Adult non-progenitor cells maintain the population of insulin-secreting ß cells, according to two papers published this month. The findings, produced by two independent groups led by Doug Melton at Harvard University and Jake Kushner at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, contradict a popular hypothesis that ß cell regeneration relies on specialized progenitor cells. They have proposed several sources of ß cell regeneration, including stem cells in the pancreas, bone marrow, or pancreatic ducts, and exocrine pancreas cells that could trans-differentiate. In 2004 Melton published data showing ß cells arose from pre-existing ß cells."Still, this theory has remained very controversial," Kushner told The Scientist. "We were shocked to find no specialized progenitor cells," Kushner told The Scientist. Nearly no ß cells contained both markers. Instead, it appears that ß cells only undergo cell division at specific times, Kushner said, because even when the researchers administered both markers over a period of weeks, ß cells contained only one marker -- demonstrating those cells had divided only once during that time period.

US Company Creates IVF Patients' Personal Stem Cell Lines.
StemLifeLine, a Bay Area-based life sciences company, announced today that it received approval from the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) to engage in the operation of a tissue bank in accordance with Division 2, Chapter 4.1 of the Health and Safety Code. With this Tissue Bank license, individuals who have undergone in vitro fertilization (IVF) may now use StemLifeLine's service to develop personal stem cell lines from their remaining stored embryos. StemLifeLine is the first life sciences company to offer this unique service through IVF centers. After successfully working with StemLifeLine, clients will have access to their own high quality, genetically-matched stem cells, which they may use in the future if stem cell therapies become available.

Higher Number of Genes Adds Up to Risk of Autoimmune Disease.
Geneticists have identified a link between the number of copies of a specific gene an individual has and their susceptibility to autoimmune diseases like lupus. Research using DNA has revealed that people who have a below average number of copies of a gene, known as FCGR3B, have an increased risk of developing diseases caused when the body’s immune system attacks its own tissue. The research by Professor Tim Aitman of the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial College London, and colleagues, is published in Nature Genetics. ‘‘Our discovery highlights the importance of gene copy number variation, that is differences in the number of copies of a specific gene a person carries, in genetic predisposition to common human diseases. The next step is to find out whether genes that are closely related to this susceptibility gene, FCGR3B, also vary in copy number and predispose to similar diseases.’’ says Professor Altman.

UK to Invest £17m ($68m) to Create Biomarkers as Medical Tools.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council explaines the United Kingdom's new medical initiative: “We’ve been using cholesterol and blood pressure as indicators or biomarkers of heart disease for years. Now we’re going to evaluate promising markers that will speed the development of safer, more effective and better targeted treatments for a range of diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease. They will also contribute to the development of new ways to diagnose diseases.” The 18 new projects, 7 of which are supported in partnership with the British Heart Foundation, involve innovative collaborations with industry that should greatly accelerate the translation of scientific knowledge for patient benefit. In total, £8 million has been awarded by MRC and £1million by the British Heart Foundation. The pharmaceutical and biotech industries will contribute another £8 million across the projects, either through direct financial support, the provision of drugs or reagents, the commitment of scientists’ time or access to technology. A condition of all the awards is that the results will be freely accessible through publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Cuts Threaten Research.
A growing number of high-profile U.S. biomedical researchers are urging Congress and the White House to stop funding cuts for medical research. Stanford University biochemist Roger D. Kornberg -- who won a Nobel Prize last year for work he began three decades ago -- told the Washington Post he doubted he would have been to do the work in the current research funding environment. Kornberg won the Nobel Prize for determining how information in the DNA of a gene is copied to provide instructions for building and running a living cell. "In the present climate especially, the funding decisions are ultraconservative," he told the newspaper. "If the work that you propose to do isn't virtually certain of success, then it won't be funded." The researchers say the trend is undermining prospects for the kinds of breakthroughs that have led to new treatments for cancer, heart disease and diabetes -- and raised hopes for making progress against Alzheimer's disease and spinal cord injuries.



TUESDAY - May 29, 2007---------------------------- Previous Week News Alerts / Return to Today's News Alerts

For the Tiniest Babies, the Closest Thing to a Cocoon.
Kimberli Johnson’s baby was born much too soon, trading the serenity of the womb after 24 weeks of gestation for the chaotic world of a neonatal intensive care unit. In the six months that Mrs. Johnson sat by Ellie’s isolette, she began to understand firsthand the jarring discrepancy between the aquatic nest that her daughter had left too early and the new environment into which she had been thrust and was now expected to grow. After Ellie left the hospital, Mrs. Johnson used her experiences to join what has become a growing trend in the care of premature babies by helping design private rooms in neonatal intensive care units, or NICUs, that strive to replicate the qualities of the womb: its darkness, relative quiet and full entanglement with the mother’s biological rhythms. Source: The New York Times.

DNA Findings Could Identify Candidates for Prostate Cancer.
Last year, with the help of deCODE Genetics Inc., an Icelandic biotech company working on genetics and disease, scientists found a section of DNA that was consistently altered in 19 percent of Caucasian patients and 41 percent of African American patients with prostate cancer, said Dr. John Witte, a director of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Institute for Human Genetics. It is the first area in the human genome to be tied so strongly to the disease, he said. Laboratories around the world have since linked that region of DNA to prostate cancer in many different ethnic groups, including African American men, who are more likely to get the disease at a younger age and die from it than men of other races. However, this stretch of DNA, called 8q24, has very few known genes. The National Institutes of Health is pushing academic centers with prostate tissue and blood from thousands of patients to collaborate on research in this genetic area. No one knows how important this region is or how long it will take to create a genetic test, but it could be as soon as a few months to a few years.

U.S. Women, Especially Minorities, Short on Folate.
Among white women in this federal health survey, 40 percent reported getting at least 400 mcg of folate or folic acid each day. The numbers were even smaller among minority women: only 19 percent of black women and 21 percent of Hispanic women were getting enough of the vitamin. The findings suggest that many women should be taking folic-acid-containing vitamins to bolster their intake from food, say lead investigator Dr. Quan-He Yang and colleagues at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. In general, women were more likely to get the recommended amount of folic acid from supplements than from food. There was again a racial disparity, however, with Hispanic and African-American women being less likely to get 400 mcg of folic acid from vitamins. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, May 2007.

MRC Welcomes FSA Decision To Add Folic Acid To Flour, UK.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) has welcomed the Food Standards Agency's (FSA) decision to recommend the mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid.
The decision was informed by an international clinical trial conducted by the MRC, published in 1991, which showed that giving pregnant women supplements of folic acid reduced the risk of major birth defects of the brain and spine. These neural tube defects such as spina bifida are relatively common and often fatal. According to the FSA, countries including the USA, Chile and Canada have already fortified flour with folic acid. Since the USA introduced the measure around ten years ago, it has seen a drop of more than a quarter in such birth defects.

Hot Water Wash Rids Laundry of Allergens.
Doing your laundry in hot water - 60 degrees C (140 degrees F) - kills 100 percent of allergy-causing dust mites, compared to 6.5 percent of dust mites when using warm water - 40 degrees C (104 degrees F), South Korean researchers find. Hot water is also more effective at ridding laundry of other allergens such as dog dander and pollen, according to lead researcher Jung-Won Park of Yonsei University in Seoul. He also offered an effective alternative to using hot water - wash laundry at a lower temperature (between 30-40 degrees C - 86-104 degrees F), and then rinse the laundry in cold water twice, for three minutes each time. The study was slated for presentation Sunday at the American Thoracic Society's international conference in San Francisco. Another study to be presented at the same meeting finds that exposure to bacterial "endotoxin" up to age 3 may help lower children's risk of developing wheezing or the allergic skin condition eczema. Endotoxin is made by certain types of bacteria. In this study, researchers at the Arizona Respiratory Center in Tucson looked at 484 children and found that the lower the amount of endotoxin in their homes, the more likely the children were to have wheezing or eczema by age 3. The higher the endotoxin levels, the less likely they were to develop these conditions..

New Treatment for Common Genital Infection.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Tindamax (tinidazole) to treat bacterial vaginosis (BV), the most common vaginal infection among women of childbearing age. It's the first new oral therapy in a decade to treat BV, which affects almost one-third of women in the United States, said the drug's maker Mission Pharmacal. Caused by an overgrowth of certain bacteria, BV often does not have symptoms. When they are present, symptoms may include vaginal discharge, burning during urination, and itching. Tindamax treats the entire reproductive tract, including the upper tract where the bacteria have been shown to migrate. Left untreated, BV can increase a woman's risk of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases including chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV, the drug maker said. Among pregnant women, BV can increase a woman's risk of early pregnancy loss and premature delivery.



MONDAY - May 28, 2007---------------------------- Previous Week News Alerts / Return to Today's News Alerts

Putting the Hex on Fragile X.
Fragile X is one of the most common causes of mental retardation, generated by the inheritance of a defective gene called fmr1. Affecting about one in 4000 people, its manifestations include diminished abilities to learn and memorize, as well as anxiety in the presence of strangers and an overall stressful disposition. In the new experiments, researchers from VU University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, used lab mice containing the deactivated fmr1 gene, which also display learning deficiencies. They analyzed mouse nerve cells from the prefrontal cortex - an important part of the brain for learning and memory. These cells showed a diminished capacity to store information for more than a few minutes, a trait known in normal individuals as long-term potentiation. They found that the defect lengthens a part of neurons called the dendritic spine, which makes it more difficult for the cells to transfer calcium ions, a critical ability for maintaining strong electrochemical signals between neurons. Although Fragile X syndrome tends to inhibit brain cells from storing information, the research shows that exposing Fragile X mice to stimulating environments improves the communication between the nerve cells. Reported in the May 24th issue of the journal Neuron.

New Treatment For Crohn's Disease Appears Promising.
Results from an international multi-center Phase II clinical trial suggest that extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) may be effective in treating patients with clinically active (or symptomatic) Crohn's disease who cannot tolerate or are refractory to immunosuppressants and/or anti-TNF agents. During ECP treatment, a small portion of the patient's white blood cells are collected and treated with 8-methoxypsoralen, a drug that belongs to a class of naturally occurring compounds known as psoralens. Once activated by exposure to UVA (ultraviolet-A) light, the activated 8-methoxypsoralen induces apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in the white blood cells, which are then promptly returned to the patient. In this way the patient is only exposed to minute amounts of drug. ECP is usually performed on an outpatient basis over several treatment visits. This story has been adapted from a news release issued by The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Insects Provides Clues to Neurodegenerative Diseases.
By studying the addition of sugars to proteins - a process called glycosylation - in the nervous system of insects, Temple University researcher Karen Palter believes she may be able to better understand human neurodegenerative diseases. Currently, her lab is involved in two collaborative research projects exploring the glycosylation process that could eventually help produce therapeutic drugs more efficiently while helping understand neurodegenerative diseases such as epilepsy, memory loss and ataxia.

Researchers Find Big Batch of Breast Cancer Genes.
Researchers have found four common mutations in FGFR2 associated with breast cancer in women after menopause who do not have known relatives with breast cancer. "This is a truly landmark breakthrough for breast cancer research, because these genes are the first confirmed common genetic risk factors for breast cancer," said Jianjun Liu of the Genome Institute of Singapore, who took part in one of the studies. Reporting in the journals Nature and Nature Genetics, researchers said the discoveries are the most important genes associated with breast cancer since BRCA1 and BRCA2 were identified. However, "It is premature to recommend screening women for these gene variants, at least until the scientific community has further combed through the genome-wide findings and found all the variants that are associated with increased risk," said David Hunter of Harvard University, part of a team at the U.S. National Cancer Institute who looked at more than 2,200 women of European ancestry as part of this study.

Turning off Gene Makes Mice Smarter.
"It's pretty rare when you can make an animal smarter," said Dr. James Bibb, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who led the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Bibb and colleagues used genetic engineering techniques to breed mice that could be manipulated to switch off Cdk5, a gene that controls production of a brain enzyme linked to diseases marked by the death of neurons in the brain, such as Alzheimer's. "We have shown that we can turn off a gene in an adult animal. That has never been done before," he added. When they had tried to breed mice that completely lacked the gene, the pups died at birth. Bibb said they put the mice though a series of tests and found the altered mice did better than normal mice. "Everything is more meaningful to these mice," he said. "The increase in sensitivity to their surroundings seems to have made them smarter." Bibb said his work was inspired by the 1999 discovery of "Doogie" mice, a smarter breed of mice developed at Princeton University that were named after the TV program "Doogie Houser," a show that featured a child prodigy. Those mice were bred by manipulating NR2B, a gene that also plays a role in associative memory. "It turns out Cdk5 was controlling the regulation of NR2B," Bibb said.