About 20 years ago, scientists discovered the gene that causes Huntington's disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disorder that affects about 30,000 Americans. The mutant form of the gene has many extra DNA repeats in the middle ...
Jan 16, 2013
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(Medical Xpress)—According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 3 of every 100 babies in the U.S. are born with a birth defect. Among boys, one of the most common defects is the displacement of the urethral opening ...
Jan 16, 2013
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(Medical Xpress)—As anyone familiar with the X-Men knows, mutants can be either very good or very bad—or somewhere in between. The same appears true within cancer cells, which may harbor hundreds of mutations that set ...
Dec 27, 2012
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(Medical Xpress)—Neurobiologists at the Research institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna have discovered one of the key genes required to make a brain. Mutations in this gene, called TUBB5, cause neurodevelopmental ...
Dec 14, 2012
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The cancer-causing form of the gene Myc alters the metabolism of mitochondria, the cell's powerhouse, making it dependent on the amino acid glutamine for survival. In fact, 40 percent of all "hard-to-treat" cancers have a ...
Nov 13, 2012
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A completely new way of delivering anti-cancer drugs to tumours, using 'minicells' derived from bacteria, has been tested for the first time in humans and found to be safe, well-tolerated and even induced stable disease in ...
Nov 8, 2012
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(Medical Xpress)—Arterial stiffening has long been considered a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Keeping arteries soft and supple might reduce disease risk, but the mechanisms of how arteries stave off hardening ...
Nov 1, 2012
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A study in The Journal of Cell Biology shows how a transcription factor called STAT3 remains in the axon of nerve cells to help prevent neurodegeneration. The findings could pave the way for future drug therapies to slow ...
Oct 29, 2012
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As is true of many brain structures, the hippocampus, which plays a central role in memory and learning, is made up of multiple cell types organized into domains controlling different functions. Distinct from many other brain ...
Oct 16, 2012
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LAM, short for pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis, affects about 1 in 10,000 women of childbearing age and is characterized by proliferation of smooth muscle-like cells in the lung, destruction of lung tissue, and growth ...
Oct 3, 2012
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