Category Archives: Cell Medicine

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 23-Dec-2013 Contact: Robert Miranda cogcomm@aol.com Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair Putnam Valley, NY. (Dec. 23 2013) A study carried out at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine for "The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis" has found that transplanting self-donated Schwann cells (SCs, the principal ensheathing cells of the nervous system) that are elongated so as to bridge scar tissue in the injured spinal cord, aids hind limb functional recovery in rats modeled with spinal cord injury. The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation but is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-ct1074Williams. "Injury to the spinal cord results in scar and cavity formation at the lesion site," explains study corresponding author Dr. Mary Bartlett Bunge of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "Although numerous cell transplantation strategies have been developed to nullify the lesion environment, scar tissue - in basil lamina sheets - wall off the lesion to prevent further injury and, also, at the interface, scar tissue impedes axon regeneration into and out of the grafts, limiting functional recovery." The researchers determined that the properties of a spinal … Continue reading →

Dec 23, 2013 by Daniel Stolte Thanks to a special imaging technique, the nucleus is visible here in green inside a plant cell. Credit: David Galbraith/BIO5 Researchers have successfully isolated and sequenced the entire messenger RNA the "genetic photocopies" contained in the nucleus of a single brain cell. This research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will help researchers better understand how organs function in health and disease and provide another stepping stone toward personalized medicine. Most cells in animals and plants contain a nucleus, which stores the cell's DNA. Since the DNA never leaves the nucleus, the information stored in the genetic material has to be copied before it can serve in its role as a blueprint for protein synthesis, which happens outside the nucleus. This is accomplished by transcribing sequences of the DNA code into strands of so-called "messenger" RNA. The entirety of messenger RNA at any given time is called the transcriptome; the entirety of DNA inside the nucleus is referred to as the genome. Transcriptomes tell researchers which genes are being actively transcribed at any given time, and therefore are indicative of a cell's identity and condition. A team of researchers … Continue reading →

Los Angeles, Dec 21 : Researchers at UCLA's (University of California, Los Angeles') Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have discovered a mechanism by which certain adult stem cells suppress their ability to initiate skin cancer during their dormant phase an understanding that could be exploited for better cancer-prevention strategies. The study, which was led by UCLA postdoctoral fellow Andrew White and William Lowry, an associate professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology who holds the Maria Rowena Ross Term Chair in Cell Biology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science, was published online Dec. 15 in the journal Nature Cell Biology. Hair follicle stem cells, the tissue-specific adult stem cells that generate the hair follicles, are also the cells of origin for cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, a common skin cancer. These stem cells cycle between periods of activation (during which they can grow) and quiescence (when they remain dormant). Using mouse models, White and Lowry applied known cancer-causing genes to hair follicle stem cells and found that during their dormant phase, the cells could not be made to initiate skin cancer. Once they were in their active period, however, they began growing … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 15-Dec-2013 Contact: Cathy Yarbrough cyarbrough@ascb.org 858-243-1814 John Fleischman jfleischman@ascb.org 513-706-0212 American Society for Cell Biology NEW ORLEANS, LA, DEC. 15, 2013Time-lapse movies of a cellular heaven and hell, a crane fly sperm cell undergoing cell division, and the early development of muscle cells were recognized with the top three awards in the American Society for Cell Biology's Celldance "Really Useful" Cell Biology Video Contest for 2013. The awards were announced and the winning videos shown at the ASCB Annual Meeting, Sunday , Dec. 14, in New Orleans. The Celldance Awards Ceremony will be Tuesday, Dec. 17, and a winners' reel will be posted at: http://www.ascb.org/ascbpost/index.php/live-from-ascb-2013 Celldance 2013 also presented its special Public Outreach award to cell biologists at the Dartmouth College, Geisel School of Medicine who videotaped their performance as "The Cell Dance!" "Cell biology is the most visual of the sciences, and our 'Celldance' awards have become the 'Cell Oscars,'" said Simon Atkinson, PhD, chairman of ASCB's Public Information Committee (PIC), which organizes the annual competition. "Taken as a whole or taken apart, these videos will be extremely suitable for classroom use," added Atkinson, professor and chair of the Department of Biology, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 12-Dec-2013 Contact: John Fleischman jfleischman@ascb.org 513-706-0212 American Society for Cell Biology NEW ORLEANS, LADECEMBER 12, 2013They are coming to New Orleans to talk science with their fellow members of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) on Monday, December 16, but the ASCB winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Randy Schekman, PhD, and James Rothman, PhD, are speaking out on controversial issues they believe threaten American science and American society. On Saturday in Stockholm, Rothman of Yale University closed his Nobel lecture with a warning that "brutal cuts" in federal research funding are destroying American competitiveness in science. On Tuesday in an opinion column published in the British newspaper, The Guardian, Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley, said that the world's three leading scientific journalsCell, Nature, and Scienceare warping science for their own commercial purposes. Calling them "luxury" journals, Schekman wrote, "These journals aggressively curate their brands, in ways more conducive to selling subscriptions than to stimulating the most important research." Longtime ASCB members, Schekman and Rothman won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how molecules move through the cell in vesicles and fuse to target membranes in … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise Bethesda, Md -- A 50-year-old mystery surrounding the existence of a cell wall in the bacterial pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis, or chlamydia, has been solved by researchers at the F. Edward Hbert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU). Chlamydia is the leading cause of sexually transmitted infections worldwide, infecting nearly 1.5 million Americans each year. It can cause sterility in men and women, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, and ectopic pregnancy and is also the leading cause of preventable blindness. Other types of chlamydia cause a variety of diseases in humans and animals, including two strains of the bacterium that are threatening survival of the koala population in Australia. Since the 1960s, scientists have tried to solve the chlamydial anomaly. All chlamydial species are sensitive to antibiotics that target the bacterial cell wall, or peptidoglycan, but no one has ever been able to show that peptidoglycan exists in chlamydia until now. In an article, "A new metabolic cell-wall labeling method reveals peptidoglycan in Chlamydia trachomatis," published in the Dec. 11 advance online issue of Nature, study lead co-author Dr. George Liechti, a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Anthony … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 9-Dec-2013 Contact: Emmanuelle Rial-Sebbag rialseb@cict.fr 33-056-114-5616 INSERM (Institut national de la sant et de la recherche mdicale) The purpose is to submit the data obtained to the European Commission for it to draw up legislative measures in line with medical advances in this field. On 4 December the nine research teams in Europe and Canada met at the Political Sciences Research Centre in Paris (CEVIPOF) for the launching of the project. Biobanks: the future of regenerative medicine Today, human biological specimens are seen as resources essential to advances in the life sciences and medicine. The analytical data obtained enable a better understanding of the various diseases and also make it possible to propose the appropriate treatment, notably in the field of regenerative medicine . Gathering, storing, processing and distributing them are all done by the biobanks - key players in the transfer of scientific knowledge to clinical practice. These biological databanks will enable researchers to identify new clinical biomarkers and develop new therapeutic approaches such as regenerative medicine. In this field, research into stem cells continues to be promising, stimulating as it does the body's self-healing ability. Need for a legal definition of the use of human … Continue reading →

Press Release 2012-10-08 The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent The Nobel Prize recognizes two scientists who discovered that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop. John B. Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialisation of cells is reversible. In a classic experiment, he replaced the immature cell nucleus in an egg cell of a frog with the nucleus from a mature intestinal cell. This modified egg cell developed into a normal tadpole. The DNA of the mature cell still had all the information needed to develop all cells in the frog. Shinya Yamanaka discovered more than 40 years later, in 2006, how intact mature cells in mice could be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells. Surprisingly, by introducing only a few genes, he could reprogram mature cells to become pluripotent stem cells, i.e. immature cells that are able to develop into all types … Continue reading →

Squamous cell carcinoma is a type of skin cancer.A.D.A.M. Skin cancer falls into two groups: nonmelanoma and melanoma. Squamous cell is a type of nonmelanoma skin cancer. Squamous cell cancer may occur in normal skin or in skin that has been injured or inflamed. Most skin cancers occur on skin that is regularly exposed to sunlight or other ultraviolet radiation. The earliest form of squamous cell skin cancer is called Bowen's disease (or squamous cell in situ). This type has not spread to nearby tissues. Actinic keratosis is a precancerous skin lesion that rarely may become a squamous cell cancer. Risks for squamous cell skin cancer include: Having light-colored skin, blue or green eyes, or blond or red hair Long-term, daily sun exposure (such as in people who work outside) Many severe sunburns early in life Older age See original here: Squamous cell carcinoma - National Library of Medicine ... … Continue reading →

Press Release 2013-10-07 The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Sdhof for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells The 2013 Nobel Prize honours three scientists who have solved the mystery of how the cell organizes its transport system. Each cell is a factory that produces and exports molecules. For instance, insulin is manufactured and released into the blood and signaling molecules called neurotransmitters are sent from one nerve cell to another. These molecules are transported around the cell in small packages called vesicles. The three Nobel Laureates have discovered the molecular principles that govern how this cargo is delivered to the right place at the right time in the cell. Randy Schekman discovered a set of genes that were required for vesicle traffic. James Rothman unravelled protein machinery that allows vesicles to fuse with their targets to permit transfer of cargo. Thomas Sdhof revealed how signals instruct vesicles to release their cargo with precision. Through their discoveries, Rothman, Schekman and Sdhof have revealed the exquisitely precise control system for … Continue reading →