Health

Amid the glowing results for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients using Gleevec the past three years, the one reality check has been that a majority of the patients with advanced disease eventually relapse and die of the leukemia. An article to be published in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research shows that, in the lab, the molecular mutations that produce a resistance to Gleevec can be overcome. Brian Druker, M.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research at the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute, and colleagues report that a compound called PD180970 successfully stopped the activity of several mutations found in patients who developed a resistance to Gleevec.

Researchers have successfully tested micro-sized gelatin particles that may one day deliver therapeutic genes to treat a type of kidney disease. The biodegradable gelatin particles are so small that at least 10 would fit on the period at the end of this sentence. Researchers believe such particles could carry therapeutic genes to the glomerulus, a tiny cluster of capillaries within the kidney that filters toxins from the blood. This filtration system becomes blocked when patients develop glomerular disease.

Scientists have found a new wrinkle in the developmental biology dogma that cell differentiation occurs irreversibly as stem cells give rise to increasingly specialized types of offspring cells. The researchers have shown that certain mouse cells retain an ability to oscillate between very distinct blood cell types ? B-cells and macrophages ? long after what has been commonly regarded as the point of no return.

Research out of Israel has led to the discovery of a gene responsible for a type of anemia primarily found in a number of Bedouin families, called congenital dyserythropoietic anemia-1 (CDA-1). The findings, published the December issue of The American Journal for Human Genetics, could lead to effective detection and eventually treatment of the disease. In addition, understanding the role of this gene?s protein product in the body could provide important clues to other types of anemia, as well as to the general mechanisms of blood cell formation.

An international conference of European scholars and scientists, with funding from the government of Flanders, goes on record supporting research leading toward safe and effective human germ line genetic modification, saying that it does not violate human rights, including any “so-called right to be born with a human genome that has not been modified by artificial means.”

Breast cancer tumors that stop responding to the drug tamoxifen actually change their cellular characteristics and become responsive to other types of drugs, including Herceptin, according to oncologists at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. “In the process of becoming resistant to tamoxifen, the tumors alter their qualities and become receptive to Herceptin and other drugs that target the HER-2 receptor,” said Kimberly Blackwell, M.D., assistant professor of oncology at Duke.

Researchers have discovered that molecules in aging bones are unable to remain in step with one another during the complex molecular dance that results in healthy bones. The missteps by aging cells responsible for bone formation trigger cells that tear down bone. The result is the thinning of the bones characteristic of osteoporosis, according to preliminary research by Bernard Halloran, PhD, of the Laboratory for Human Aging and Bone Research at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

Transplanted hearts stayed healthier in patients who took a cholesterol-lowering drug, according to an eight-year study reported in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. After eight years, the survival rate for patients who received early simvastatin treatment was 88.6 percent compared to 59.5 percent of patients who didn’t start simvastatin treatment until four years after transplant, says the study’s lead author. The team also studied the effects of simvastatin on the development of coronary artery thickening called transplant vasculopathy, which is a major long term complication of heart transplantation. Early simvastatin treatment cut in half the incidence of vessel thickening as measured by angiography, which probably explained the improved survival rate.