CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In the ten years since the human genetic code was mapped, expectations among scientists, health care industry, policy makers, and the public have remained high concerning the promise of genomics research for improving health….
Chapel Hill, NC — A new study shows that a test of biomarkers for DNA methylation is technically feasible and could aid in earlier, more precise diagnosis of melanoma.
In a paper that appeared online last week in the journal Pigment Cell & Mel…
Chapel Hill, NC — The National Cancer Institute estimates that more than 43,000 Americans were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and more than 36,000 died from the disease. Despite advances in genetic science showing that the Ras oncogen…
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Scientists around the world have been hot on the trail of a genetic mutation closely associated with some brain cancers and leukemia since the mutation’s discovery in 2008. The hunt is now yielding fruit. In the Jan. 18…
UNC scientists who study how cells repair damage from environmental factors like sunlight and cigarette smoke have discovered how a “chaperone” enzyme plays a key role in cells’ ability to tolerate the DNA damage that leads to cancer and other disea…
Chapel Hill, NC — In a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aziz Sancar, MD, PhD, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the UNC School of Medicine, and his colleagues ha…
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The promise of vaccines targeted against various types of cancer has raised the hopes of patients and their families. The reality, however, is that these promising treatments are difficult to develop. One of the challenges is i…
If a strand of your DNA was stretched out completely, it would be more than six feet long. It’s hard to imagine that it can fit inside the nucleus of one of your cells, but that’s exactly how it works.
For much of the last century, scientists h…
Chapel Hill, NC — One of the most frustrating problems faced by doctors who treat pancreatic cancer is the lack of effective therapeutic options. More than 38,000 people in the United States die of the disease each year, and new drugs and treatme…
November 4, 2010 — (BRONX, NY) — A team of scientists has found a way to eliminate a debilitating side effect associated with one of the main chemotherapy drugs used for treating colon cancer. The strategy used in their preclinical research — in…
A strong link exists between lifetime exposure to ultraviolet light, particularly lifetime sunburns, and the development of melanoma ? the most lethal form of skin cancer. Now, for the first time, scientists have identified a specific molecular pathway within cells that becomes mutated by ultraviolet light exposure, thereby speeding up melanoma development.
Researchers in North Carolina have successfully demonstrated that genetically altered stem cells from one species can be turned into a different sort of cell in another. Specifically, the researchers converted adult liver stem cells cloned from a male rat into functional adult bone marrow cells in female mice. The accomplishment, known as hematopoietic transdifferentiation, may prove useful for tapping the potential for tissue repair using human adult stem cells.