Study Finds Potential Way to Make an AIDS Vaccine from Reuters
The discovery of immune system particles that attack the AIDS virus may finally open a way to make a vaccine that could protect people against the deadly and incurable infection, U.S. researchers said. They used new technology to troll through the blood of 1,800 people infected with the AIDS virus and identified two immune system compounds called antibodies that could neutralize the virus.
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Excitement Over Hedgehog Pathway Inhibitors as Novel Cancer Drugs from Medscape Medical News A novel anticancer therapy that acts as an inhibitor of the hedgehog pathway has sparked quite a bit of excitement among experts. Although the clinical results come from a phase 1 trial, the responses that have been seen in some patients have been dramatic, and this approach has "tremendous potential," says Andrzej Dlugosz, MD, Poth Professor of Cutaneous Oncology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
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Killer Cell Secret Key to Immunological Puzzle from Laboratory News Natural killer cells are a subset of white blood cells within the immune system, that are the frontline mechanism for destroying the body’s own cells that are potentially harmful, such as cancer cells or cells infected with pathogens. It has been a great immunological puzzle to explain how these cells are able to distinguish between cells to leave alone and cells to destroy.
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Swine Flu Remains Mild as Vaccine Advances from The Wall Street Journal The H1N1 swine-flu virus is sickening many people around the world, but so far isn't becoming more virulent, health experts said, giving a bit of breathing room to pharmaceutical companies and officials rushing to deliver a vaccine.
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Three Genetic Variants are Found to Be Linked to Alzheimer's from The New York Times Two teams of European scientists say they have discovered new genetic variants associated with Alzheimer's disease. The variants account for about 20 percent of the genetic risk of the disease, and may lead to a better understanding of its biology, the scientists say.
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"Gold Plated" Breath Test Accurately Diagnoses Lung Cancer from Medscape Medical News A sensor made from gold nanoparticles is able to distinguish the breath of lung cancer patients from that of healthy individuals, report researchers from Israel. The results of a new study show that this technology has the potential to form the basis of an inexpensive and noninvasive diagnostic tool for lung cancer.
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Open Source DNA: A New Solution to Guarantee Privacy and Scientific Freedom in Genetic Research from Science Daily Last year, after a published paper found serious security holes in the way DNA data is made publicly available, health institutes in the United States and across the world removed all genetic data from public access. Dr. Eran Halperin of Tel Aviv University's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology said he wants to put this valuable DNA information back in circulation, and has developed the tool to do it — safely.
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Survival Prolonged in Mouse Model of Rare Brain Disease by Transplanted Human Stem Cells from Medical News Today A new study finds substantial improvement in a mouse model of a rare, hereditary neurodegenerative disease after transplantation of normal human neural stem cells. The research findings, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, show that the transplanted cells provided a critical enzyme that was missing in the brains of the experimental mice and represent an important step toward what may be a successful therapeutic approach for a currently untreatable and devastating disease.
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Newly Found Mosquito May Carry Malaria from United Press International A species of mosquito in South Africa new to researchers may carry the ability to transmit malaria, researchers in Johannesburg said. The mosquito, known for the time being as Anopheles funestus-like, was found in and near villages near Karonga, a town on Lake Malawi's western shore, IRIN reported. More
Dilemmas Surround Patient Testing for Genetic Mutations from Oncology Nursing News Advances in medical technologies can also bring ethical dilemmas, as very often the technology advances faster than our ability to grasp the consequences of using it. The case of genetic testing for cancer susceptibility can provide helpful information to patients; however, this knowledge also raises questions about who should be tested, how to act on the information after testing, and to whom (and how) the knowledge should be conveyed. More
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