An approved drug for fighting obesity is helping scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine uncover clues about how to stop the growth of cancerous tumors.”Our discovery makes an exciting treatment target because theoretically you don’t have to worry about harming nearby healthy tissue,” said senior researcher Steven J. Kridel, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Cancer Biology. [click link for full article]

A set of molecular biomarkers might better predict the recurrence of bladder cancer than conventional prognostic features such as the stage or grade of the malignancy at the time it is discovered, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found. [click link for full article]

Rush University Medical Center is one of the first medical centers in the country, and currently the only site in Illinois, participating in a novel clinical trial to determine if a subject’s own stem cells can treat a form of severe coronary artery disease.The Autologous Cellular Therapy CD34-Chronic Myocardial Ischemia (ACT34-CMI) Trial is the first human, Phase II adult stem cell therapy study in the U.S. [click link for full article]

It makes for bobbing balloons and squeaky voices, but now helium is also helping people with severe respiratory problems breathe easier.Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have discovered that by combining helium with 40 per cent oxygen allowed patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to increase their exercise capacity by an average of 245 per cent. [click link for full article]

Obese individuals often suffer from the metabolic syndrome, which is a combination of medical disorders that increase an individual’s risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Deregulation of a protein known as mTOR (which is a nutrient sensor that when activated increases energy expenditure by the cell’s of the body) has been implicated in the development of obesity and the metabolic syndrome in humans. [click link for full article]

Defects in the heart and/or blood vessels (cardiovascular defects) in both humans and mice can result from mutations in any one of a number of genes encoding proteins that are part of the Notch signaling cascade. However, it has not been determined which cell type these mutations affect to cause these cardiovascular defects. [click link for full article]

Although treatment regimens involving the infusion of tumor-reactive T cells into patients with skin cancer (melanoma) have shown clinical benefit, there is plenty of room to improve the protocols to increase therapeutic benefit. [click link for full article]

The results of a study in mice by researchers from Erasmus University, The Netherlands, have indicated that an inhaled drug currently used to treat individuals with pulmonary arterial hypertension (raised blood pressure in the blood vessels in the lungs that leads to shortness of breath, dizziness, and fainting) might provide a new therapeutic to treat individuals with asthma.Iloprost is a stable analog of the naturally occurring soluble factor PGI2. [click link for full article]

Scientists at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), the University of Iowa and Roche Molecular Systems are the first to identify a new gene variant that makes women more susceptible to developing heart disease. The affected gene is called Leukotriene C4 Synthase (LTC4S) and its variant could be identified through a genetic test at birth. [click link for full article]

The study, conducted by Liliana E. Pezzin, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine at the Medical College, along with co-investigators Gary B. Green, M.D., MPH, and Penelope Keyl, Ph.D., at Johns Hopkins, appears in the February 2007 issue of Academic Emergency Medicine.Chest pain is the most common initial symptom in patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease. [click link for full article]