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Burdock Root

Cord Blood Awareness Month: Understanding Still Low, Despite Medical Advancements
Despite rapid advances using a child"s own cord blood stem cells in regenerative therapies to repair damaged tissue due to injury or disease, most pregnant women today don"t learn about the ability to save their newborn"s cord blood. According to research published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, 3 out of every 4 pregnant women consider themselves only "minimally informed."
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Good Males Are Bad Fathers
Contrary to predictions, males of high genetic quality are not very successful when it comes to fertilizing eggs. A new study on seed beetles by Swedish and Danish scientists Goran Arnqvist and Trine Bilde shows that when a female mates with several males, the males of low genetic quality are the most successful in fertilizing eggs. The study is published in this week"s issue of Science.
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Enzyme Involved In Inflammatory Bowel Disease Discovered At Penn State College Of Medicine
Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine, working with biochemists, geneticists and clinicians at the University of Bern, Switzerland and in the United Kingdom, have discovered an enzyme that has a key role in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The team, co-led by Judith Bond, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State College of Medicine, and Daniel Lottaz, Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, could potentially lead to therapies to help the half-a-million Americans affected by ulcerative colitis and Crohn"s disease, collectively referred to as IBD.
Cardiovascular

New Tool May Help With Early Detection Of Deadly Pancreatic Cancer

A new diagnostic tool developed by Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) scientists has shown promising results when used with patients of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer due to the difficulty of diagnosing it in its early stages. The method, which studies carbohydrate structures in the bloodstream, could lead to the development of blood tests that can detect cancer more effectively. "Tumor cells sometimes shed proteins into a patient"s bloodstream," said VARI Senior Scientific Investigator Brian Haab, Ph.D., whose lab published its findings in the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. "These proteins can have carbohydrate structures attached to them that might be able to tell us not only if a patient has cancer, but also more about the cancer and how to treat it." Associating specific carbohydrate alterations on proteins with cancer could provide better cancer detection than the measuring of protein levels alone, the current, most-commonly-used method of blood testing for many types of cancer. Haab said that specific alterations also could be connected to specific cancer characteristics, such as the ability to spread or resistance to therapy. Some carbohydrate alterations also could have distinct functions in cancer progression, which might have therapeutic value. Researchers used the method to study blood samples from pancreatic cancer patients at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Illinois. They identified the prevalence of a variety of alterations on different proteins. "Interestingly, the protein with the most alterations was not previously recognized as a marker for pancreatic cancer, perhaps because the protein level alone did not provide good cancer detection," said Tingting Yue, a Michigan State University graduate student working at VARI and lead author of the study. "This protein is found in pre-malignant lesions and could be valuable for early detection if we can find unique alterations associated with it." "We greatly need improved diagnostic tests to find tumors at the earliest possible stages to provide the most appropriate and effective treatment for pancreatic cancer patients and to improve their chances of recovery," said Randall E. Brand, M.D., Professor of Medicine at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, another of the study"s authors. "These results are an encouraging step toward that goal." Joe Gavan Van Andel Institute


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