| Aug 31,2001 |
Antisense therapy in oncology: new hope for an old idea?
|
|
There is a potential role for antisense oligonucleotides in
the treatment of disease. The principle of antisense technology is the
sequence-specific binding of an antisense oligonucleotide to target mRNA,
resulting in the prevention of gene translation.
|
| Aug 30,2001 |
Endothelin and Heart Failure
|
|
The availability of potent and orally active nonpeptide
endothelin (ET) receptor antagonists has generated a host of information on the
pathophysiolo-gical role of ET-1 in a number of preclinical models including
hypertension, renal failure, heart failure and pulmonary hypertension.
|
| Aug 29,2001 |
A new era in pyrogen testing
|
|
Pyrogens are substances (usually of biological origin) that cause
fever after injection. The best-studied pyrogen is lipopolysaccharide (LPS, also
known as endotoxin), found in the membrane of Gram-negative bacteria.
|
| Aug 28,2001 |
Bone Builders: The Discoveries Behind Preventing and Treating Osteoporosis
|
|
Ask an actress to portray an old woman and
chances are she’ll start by stooping over so she appears to have a curved
spine, or “dowager's hump.” Until recently, such a posture was thought to be
a frequent and inevitable consequence of a woman's aging.
|
| Aug 27,2001 |
IN PURSUIT OF MEANINGFUL LEARNING
|
|
How many of you have said to yourself or to your colleagues, “I
want my students to understand physi-ology.”? The answer is obvious. We all
want our students to understand physiology, not just memorize it. Or at least we
all say we do. This paper will focus on what we need to do to help our students
learn with understanding.
|
| Aug 26,2001 |
Whole-cell biocomputing
|
|
The ability to manipulate systems on the
molecular scale naturally leads to speculation about the rational design of
molecular-scale machines. Cells might be the ultimate molecular-scale machines
and our ability to engineer them is relatively advanced when compared with our
ability to control the synthesis and direct the assembly of man-made materials.
|
| Aug 25,2001 |
Germany Breaks New Ground in Stem Cell Treatment
|
|
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German hospital said on
Friday it had successfully treated a heart patient using adult stem cells, a
first for the medical world.
|
| Aug 24,2001 |
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MONOAMINES, GLUTAMATE, AND GABA IN SCHIZOPHRENIA
|
|
In spite of its proven heuristic value, the dopamine
hypothesis of schizophrenia is now yielding to a multifactorial view, in which
the other monoamines as well as glutamate and GABA are included, with a focus on
neurotransmitter interactions in complex neurocircuits.
|
| Aug 23,2001 |
Human Hypertension Caused by Mutations in WNK Kinases
|
|
Hypertension is a major public health problem of
largely unknown cause. Here, we identify two genes causing
pseudohypoaldosteronism type II, a Mendelian trait featuring hypertension,
increased renal salt reabsorption, and impaired K+ and H+
excretion.
|
| Aug 22,2001 |
Signal Transduction in Smooth Muscle
|
|
The mechanisms by which smooth muscle cells
transduce external stimuli (e.g., pharmacological and mechanical) into
functional responses have been the subject of investigation by many laboratories
for decades.
|
| Aug 21,2001 |
XIAP-Apoptotic brake and promising therapeutic target
|
|
The
X-linked Inhibitor of Apoptosis, XIAP, is a key mem-ber of the
newly discovered family of intrinsic inhibitors of apoptosis (IAP)
proteins. IAPs block cell death both in vitro and in vivo by
virtue of inhibition of distinct caspases. |
| Aug 20,2001 |
Nitric oxide
synthases- structure, function and inhibition |
|
This
review concentrates on advances in nitric oxide synthase (NOS)
structure, function and inhibition made in the last seven years,
during which time substantial advances have been made in our
understanding of this enzyme family. |
| Aug 19,2001 |
Human Leukocyte Antigen Gene
Polymorphism and the Histocompatibility Laboratory |
|
The human leukocyte
antigens (HLA) encoded by genes within the major
histocompatibility complex display an impressive degree of
polymorphism. This variability is apparently maintained in human
populations through the need to successfully display a wide
range of processed foreign peptides to the T cell antigen
receptor. |
| Aug 18,2001 |
Molecules in focus - p73 |
|
The
discovery of p73 as a family member of p53 has instigated a
number of studies in search of its function, regulation, and
involvement in tumorigenesis. p73 has been identified as a
transcription factor that can regulate p53-dependent
transcriptional targets. |
| Aug 17,2001 |
T cell homeostasis and systemic autoimmunity |
|
It has recently been documented that survival and
homeostasis of peripheral mature T cells depend on self-recognition. |
| Aug 16,2001 |
The immune tolerance network and rheumatic disease-Immune tolerance comes to the clinic
|
|
Autoimmune diseases pose some of the most
baffling scientific questions and daunting clinical chal-lenges in internal medicine. With rare exception, we do
not know what causes these diseases, and we have neither safe nor sufficiently effective therapies. |
| Aug 15,2001 |
Dendritic Cells as Vectors for Therapy |
|
Vaccines against
infectious diseases are the success story of immunology. They
have eradicated smallpox and spared countless people from
tetanus, measles, polio, and hepatitis. |
| Aug 14,2001 |
Sports medicine |
|
Sports medicine now comprises two main areas: the health
benefits of regular physical activity and the health problems associated with sport and physical activity. |
| Aug 13,2001 |
Genes, Genetics, and Epigenetics- A Correspondence
|
|
Over the
past months, as this special issue took shape, the Editors of
Science have monitored an exchange of seven letters initiated
by three queries from M. Bacon. These queries concern the
popular definitions of "genes," "genetics,"
and "epigenetics." |
| Aug 12,2001 |
GENE THERAPY FOR DIABETES
(Figure)
|
|
The
focus of this review is on how gene therapy can be used in beta
cell replacement strategies. Gene transfer to beta cells as well
as recent advances in beta cell growth and development will be
discussed. |
| Aug 11,2001 |
Intrinsic errors in genome annotation |
|
Genome sequencing is
usually followed by routine annotation of protein function based
on the assumption that similar sequences will have similar
functions. Here, we introduce a simple calculation to estimate
the magnitude of any possible annotation errors. |
| Aug 10,2001 |
Analysis of complex brain disorders with gene expression microarrays:
schizophrenia as a disease of the synapse |
|
The
level of cellular and molecular complexity of the nervous system
creates unique problems for the neuroscientist in the design and
implementation of functional genomic studies. Microarray
technologies can be powerful, with limitations, when applied to
the analysis of human brain disorders. |
| Aug 9,2001 |
Faster, better, cheaper genotyping |
|
Scanning
the genome for subtle genetic variations across thousands of
individuals may help researchers find genes that underpin
susceptibility to common diseases. Marina Chicurel considers the
technological requirements. |
| Aug 8,2001 |
Signaling pathways in apoptosis as potential targets for cancer therapy |
|
Apoptotic pathways might be significantly altered in cancer cells
relative to untransformed cells, and these differences might
present a therapeutic window that can be exploited for development
of cancer drugs. |
| Aug 7,2001 |
Image
metrics in the statistical analysis of DNA microarray data |
|
In this
paper, we perform statistical analysis on images of microarrays
and show that quanti-tating the amount of fluorescent DNA bound to
microarrays is subject to considerable uncertainty because of
large and small-scale intensity fluctuations within spots,
nonadditive background, and fabrication artifacts. |
| Aug 6,2001 |
Progress
in cancer vaccines by enhanced self-presentation |
|
The balance between immunity
and tolerance is regulated at the immunologic synapse between T
cells and specialized bone marrow-derived dendritic cells that
present antigens to T cells. |
| Aug 5,2001 |
Trace
amines: Identification of a family of mammalian G protein-coupled
receptors |
|
Tyramine,
b-phenylethylamine, tryptamine, and octopamine are biogenic amines
present in trace levels in mammalian nervous systems. Although
some ‘‘trace amines’’ have clearly defined roles as
neurotransmitters in invertebrates, the extent to which they
function as true neurotransmitters in vertebrates has remained
speculative. |
| Aug 4,2001 |
Drug discovery-an operating model for a new era |
|
Despite the advent of new science and technologies, drug developers will need to make radical changes in their operations if they are to remain competitive and innovative |
| Aug 3,2001 |
Autoimmune Disease: Why and where it occurs |
|
Here we adopt the view that all autoimmune diseases are initiated by response to a single antigen, which may or may not be restricted to a single organ. later in the disease, the response usually broadens, by a process called determinant spreading, to include other parts of the same molecule and other antigens in the same tissue. |
| Aug 2,2001 |
Next generation therapeutics-Human antibodies as next generation therapeutics |
|
Antibodies and antibody derivatives constitute twenty five percent of therapeutics currently in development, and a number of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies have recently reached the market. All antibodies approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, however, contain mouse protein sequences. These partially murine antibodies, therefore, have the potential to elicit allergic or other complications when used in human patients. Recent developments aim to reduce or eliminate murine components, and fully human antibodies are rapidly becoming the norm. A number of technologies exist which enable the development of 100% human antibodies. |
| Aug 1,2001 |
Protein technologies -Protein interaction databases |
|
Life depends on the interaction of proteins. The availability of the complete human genome sequence has highlighted the need for a tool to analyse protein interactions and several databases have been compiled for this purpose. These databases document, categorize, and analyze interacting proteins and the cellular functions of the interactions. |
