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The team's findings are published in  JAMA Oncology . "Mesothelioma is highly lethal and has no cure. Often, it is not diagnosed until at a late stage, when many tumors have already formed," said principal investigator Lucian Chirieac, MD, a thoracic oncology pathologist in the Department of Pathology at BWH and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. "Although this mutation only exists in a small percentage of cases, this discovery points to a potential therapeutic avenue for these patients." There are about 3,000 new cases of mesothelioma each year in the U.S., and only about 300 of those are peritoneal mesothelioma, which forms in the lining of the abdomen. Most cases of mesothelioma result decades after exposure to asbestos or radiation therapy. But in rare cases, young patients who have never been exposed to either risk factor are diagnosed with the disease. One such case led Chirieac and his colleagues to their unexpected finding. "Thi...

Congenital TTP is characterized by blood clots in small blood vessels throughout the body. If untreated, people with TTP can develop strokes, heart attacks, or kidney damage. Today, the most common therapy for TTP consists of plasma infusions, in which individuals with severe cases of the disease must go to a hospital to receive the blood product from a donor to replenish the missing enzyme in the blood . However, many patients become intolerant to plasma. They develop severe allergic reactions, which make it nearly impossible to treat them. If they can receive treatment, it's under very close supervision and with precautions. "Today, TTP patients are under-treated because of the complications associated with blood plasma infusions, which has remained the standard treatment for at least half a century," said senior study author Bruce Ewenstein, MD, PhD, of Shire in Cambridge, MA. "Plasma as a source of enzyme replacement is a sledgehammer approach to treatment, ...

Conceptual illustration of two DNA robots collectively performing a cargo-sorting activity on a DNA origami floor, transporting fluorescent molecules with totally different colours from initially unordered areas to separated locations. Appreciable creative license has been taken. Credit score: Demin Liu Think about a robotic that might make it easier to tidy your own home: roving about, sorting stray socks into the laundry and soiled dishes into the dishwasher. Whereas such a sensible helper should be the stuff of science fiction, Caltech scientists have developed an autonomous molecular  machine that may carry out comparable duties -- on the nanoscale. This "robotic," manufactured from a single strand of DNA, can autonomously "stroll" round a floor, choose up sure molecules and drop them off in designated areas. The work was accomplished within the laboratory of Lulu Qian, assistant professor of bioengineering. It seems in a paper within the...

Now researchers at Duke Cancer Institute have not only untangled an unusual wiring system that cancer cells use for carbohydrate metabolism, but also identified a natural compound that appears to selectively shut down this system in laboratory studies. "The Warburg Effect has been known for decades, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood," said Jason Locasale, assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Cancer Biology at Duke and senior author of a study published Sept. 14 in the journal  Cell Metabolism . "We started with the idea that if you understand how it works, you should be better able to control it, and we think we might have some insight on that, as well." Locasale and colleagues, including lead author Maria Liberti, studied cancer cells to determine how their metabolism changes so dramatically from that of normal cells, which use oxygen to break down sugar. Cancer cells, instead, use fermentation, which is less efficie...

Pores and skin TRM (seen in crimson) 'sense' infections and 'alarm' host tissue to recruit effector cells (inexperienced) to the pores and skin the place they contribute to viral clearance. Regardless of upkeep of pores and skin TRM in septic hosts (CLP), tissue-wide recruitment of effector cells was vastly diminished leading to enhanced susceptibility to secondary pores and skin infections. Web site-specific administration of chemokines (CXCL9-10) restored homing indicators that have been diminished in septic hosts to allow recruitment of effector cells to the pores and skin. Thus, this method may show helpful to boost the septic affected person's T-cell-mediated immunity in the course of the interval of immunosuppression. Credit score: Scott Anthony & Isaac Jensen at College of Iowa, CCAL In mice, an infection-induced situation referred to as sepsis could enhance the chance of life-threatening secondary an infection by stopping recruitmen...

"Numerous sweeteners exhibit undesirable off-tastes, limiting their use in food products and beverages," says lead author Maik Behrens of the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke. "Our findings in this study provide us with the tools and knowledge to find ways leading to superior sweetener blends." High-potency sweeteners are widely used to replace energy-rich, tooth-decay-inducing sugars in food items to meet the requirements of health-conscious consumers. But in addition to stimulating sweet taste receptors, sugar substitutes also activate bitter taste receptors (known as TAS2Rs) at high concentrations, resulting in an undesired off-taste. To overcome this problem, the food industry is constantly searching for novel sugar substitutes and frequently resorts to using blends combining non-caloric sweeteners in a single formulation. The earliest blend allowing higher sweetness levels with reduced bitter off-taste combined saccharin with cyclama...

For many students, college involves a lot of socializing at parties and at bars, and alcohol is a common factor in these social environments. Excessive alcohol use, in the form of binge drinking, is extremely common among college students, and one study has estimated that as many as one third of young North Americans and Europeans binge drink. So, what defines binge drinking? The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism describes a binge as drinking five or more drinks for men and four or more for women within a two-hour period, and for many college students, these limits wouldn't equate to a particularly heavy night. Previous research has linked binge drinking to a variety of negative consequences including neurocognitive deficits, poor academic performance, and risky sexual behavior. While numerous studies have shown that the brains of chronic alcoholics have altered brain activity, there is also evidence that bingeing can change adolescents' brains. Eduardo L...

In the first study of its kind looking at babies outside the United States, researchers from the University of Adelaide's Adelaide Medical School investigated 41 cases of SIDS deaths and discovered striking abnormalities in chemical serotonin within the brain. Serotonin, otherwise known as 5-HT, is a neurotransmitter found in different parts of the human body, including the central nervous system. Among its many roles, serotonin is involved in the regulation of sleep, and also control of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. This latest research, published in the  Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology , confirms and supports the concept that brainstem dysfunction, resulting in significantly altered serotonin expression, is associated with some SIDS deaths. SIDS is the sudden unexpected death of an infant under one year of age that cannot be explained after a thorough investigation, including an autopsy. It is the leading cause of death in infants bet...

Researchers say that sure variations of the TOMM40 gene, situated on the 19th chromosome outlined above, are closely related to creating Alzheimer's illness. Credit score: Picture/Nationwide Middle for Biotechnology Data, U.S. Nationwide Library of Medication The infamous genetic marker of Alzheimer's illness and different types of dementia, ApoE4, is probably not a lone wolf. Researchers from USC and the College of Manchester have discovered that one other gene, TOMM40, complicates the image. Though ApoE4 performs a larger position in some forms of aging-related reminiscence capability, TOMM40 could pose a good larger threat for different sorts. TOMM40 and APOE genes are neighbors, adjoining to one another on chromosome 19, and they're typically used as proxies for each other in genetic research. At instances, scientific analysis has targeted mainly on one APOE variant, ApoE4, because the No. 1 suspect behind Alzheimer's and dementia-related remin...

It was just one more example of how hard it continues to be for women's sports to receive any attention at all, unless it is somehow filtered through a very dismissive male gaze. While mainstream broadcast coverage now treats the games women play a bit more seriously, much of that now mostly respectful coverage is still being relegated to the sideline, according to an ongoing, decades-long study by USC researchers that was published Sept. 12 in the journal  Gender & Society . The research team found that L.A.-based network affiliates devoted 3.2 percent of airtime to women's sports on news broadcasts, down from 5 percent from 1989, the first year of the study. ESPN's SportsCenter has been even worse, devoting 2 percent of airtime to women's sports, a proportion that has remained flat since the study began tracking the show in 1999. "When compared to the start of the study, women used to be framed in ways that were overtly sexist. Now the sexism is subtl...