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Does Stretching Prevent Running Injuries?

New York Times - Health - Wed, 09/01/2010 - 13:17

That question is now at the heart of a notable new study.

Court Backs Injunction Blocking Generic Versions of Lilly's Evista

Wall Street Journal - Health - Wed, 09/01/2010 - 11:32

A federal appeals court affirmed a lower-court ruling that will block generic versions of Lilly's osteoporosis drug Evista from becoming available in the U.S. until 2014.

Recipes for Health: Cooked Grains Salad With Tomato Vinaigrette

New York Times - Health - Wed, 09/01/2010 - 08:00

This robust summer salad can be made with a wide variety of grains.

Pfizer Agrees to Acquire FoldRx

Wall Street Journal - Health - Wed, 09/01/2010 - 07:38

Pfizer agreed to buy privately held FoldRx Pharmaceuticals, whose leading drug candidate is a therapy for a genetic neurodegenerative disease for which the only current therapy is a liver transplant.

Fighting the Muscle Loss That Comes With Age

New York Times - Health - Wed, 09/01/2010 - 07:31

Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists, drug and food companies and aging baby boomers.

Fear of Falling

New York Times - Health - Wed, 09/01/2010 - 07:29

Can exaggerated anxiety about falling -- even if tests show your risk to be low -- increase the probability that you'll actually fall?

Deal Would Provide Dialysis to Illegal Immigrants in Atlanta

New York Times - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 23:03

The deal, if completed, would end a yearlong impasse that has come to symbolize the health care plight of the country’s uninsured immigrants and the hospitals that end up caring for them.

New Rivals to Warfarin as Blood Clot Preventer

New York Times - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 22:19

A Bristol-Myers drug shows promise in treating a heart rhythm disorder, and others combat postsurgical clotting and deep vein thrombosis.

Recipes for Health: Turkish Bean and Herb Salad

New York Times - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 21:30

This fragrant bean salad requires far less olive oil than the traditional version.

Genzyme CEO Seeks Higher Offer

Wall Street Journal - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 19:10

Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer said the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis would have to raise its $69-a-share offer if it wants to discuss the sale of the biotechnology company.

Minnesota Balks at Health-Law Funds

Wall Street Journal - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 17:26

Gov. Pawlenty acted to block Minnesota from tapping some money, citing undue intrusion by the federal government into state and private affairs.

Judge Asked to Lift Stem-Cell Funds Ban

Wall Street Journal - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 17:22

The Obama administration asked a federal judge to allow the government to continue funding embryonic stem-cell research while a case challenging the program makes its way through the courts.

Pointing Fingers in Egg Recall

Wall Street Journal - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 17:14

Companies have begun pointing fingers at one another and offering conflicting theories about the possible source of salmonella contamination that has sickened 1,470 people and led to the recall of 550 million eggs.

Race On to Prevent Clots

Wall Street Journal - Health - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 16:38

Studies of two experimental drugs provided fuel for a race to develop medicines to replace blood thinner warfarin, a global market that could eventually exceed $20 billion a year in revenue.

Novel nanotechnology collaboration leads to breakthrough in cancer research

UCLA Health Sciences feed - Tue, 08/31/2010 - 16:00

One of the most difficult aspects of working at the nanoscale is actually seeing the object being worked on. Biological structures like viruses, which are smaller than the wavelength of light, are invisible to standard optical microscopes and difficult to capture in their native form with other imaging techniques. A multidisciplinary research group at UCLA has now teamed up to not only visualize a virus but to use the results to adapt the virus so that it can deliver medication instead of disease. In a paper published last week in the journal Science, Hongrong Liu, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, and colleagues reveal an atomically accurate structure of the adenovirus that shows the interactions among its protein networks. The work provides critical structural information for researchers around the world attempting to modify the adenovirus for use in vaccine and gene-therapy treatments for cancer. To modify a virus for gene therapy, researchers remove its disease-causing DNA, replace it with medications and use the virus shell, which has been optimized by millions of years of evolution, as a delivery vehicle. Lily Wu, a UCLA professor of molecular and medical pharmacology and co-lead author of the study, and her group have been attempting to manipulate the adenovirus for use in gene therapy, but the lack of information about receptors on the virus's surface had hampered their quest. "We are engineering viruses to deliver gene therapy for prostate and breast cancers, but previous microscopy techniques were unable to visualize the adapted viruses," Wu said. "This was like trying to a piece together the components of a car in the dark, where the only way to see if you did it correctly was to try and turn the car on." To better visualize the virus, Wu sought assistance from Hong Zhou, a UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and the study's other lead author. Zhou uses cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) to produce atomically accurate three-dimensional models of biological samples such as viruses. Wu, who is also a researcher at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA, learned of Zhou's work after he was jointly recruited to UCLA from the University of Texas Medical School at Houston by the UCLA Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics and UCLA's CNSI. About a year ago, once the transfer of Zhou's lab was complete, Sok Boon Koh, one of Wu's students, sought out Zhou's group for their expertise and initiated the collaboration. "This project exemplifies my excitement about being part of an institute as innovative as CNSI," Zhou said. "Not only am I able to work with state-of-the-art equipment, but because CNSI is the hub for nanotechnology research and commercialization at UCLA, I have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues across many disciplines." Working in the Electron Imaging Center for Nanomachines at the CNSI, a lab run by Zhou, the researchers used cryoEM to create a 3-D reconstruction of the human adenovirus from 31,815 individual particle images. "Because the reconstruction reveals details up to a resolution of 3.6 angstroms, we are able to build an atomic model of the entire virus, showing precisely how the viral proteins all fit together and interact," Zhou said. An angstrom is the distance between the two hydrogen atoms in a water molecule, and the entire adenovirus is about 920 angstroms in diameter. Armed with this new understanding, Wu and her group are now moving forward with their engineered versions of adenovirus to use for gene therapy treatment of cancer. "This breakthrough is a great leap forward, but there are still many obstacles to overcome," Wu said. "If our work is successful, this therapy could be used to treat most forms of cancer, but our initial efforts have focused on prostate and breast cancers because those are the two most common forms of cancer in men and women, respectively." The group is working with the adenovirus because previous research has established it as a good candidate for gene therapy due to its efficiency in delivering genetic materials inside the body. The virus shell is also a safe delivery vehicle; tests have shown that the shell does not cause cancer, a problem encountered with some other virus shells. The adenovirus is relatively non-pathogenic naturally, causing only temporary respiratory illness in 5 to 10 percent of people. CryoEM enables such a high-resolution reconstruction of biological structures because samples, in water, are imaged directly. In contrast, with X-ray crystallography (the conventional technique for atomic resolution models of biological structures), researchers grow crystal structures replicating the sample and then use diffraction to solve the crystal structure. This technique is limited because it is difficult to grow crystals for all proteins, samples for x-ray crystallography need to be very pure and uniform, and crystals of large complexes may not diffract to high resolution. These limitations resulted in critical areas of the adenovirus surface being unresolved using x-ray crystallography. The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Defense. The California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA is an integrated research center operating jointly at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara whose mission is to foster interdisciplinary collaborations for discoveries in nanosystems and nanotechnology; train the next generation of scientists, educators and technology leaders; and facilitate partnerships with industry, fueling economic development and the social well-being of California, the United States and the world. The CNSI was established in 2000 with $100 million from the state of California and an additional $250 million in federal research grants and industry funding. At the institute, scientists in the areas of biology, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, mathematics, computational science and engineering are measuring, modifying and manipulating the building blocks of our world — atoms and molecules. These scientists benefit from an integrated laboratory culture enabling them to conduct dynamic research at the nanoscale, leading to significant breakthroughs in the areas of health, energy, the environment and information technology. For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.