Most people don't think of Arctic ground squirrels and Burmese pythons as having much in common. But Leslie Leinwand does.In a nutshell, both animals go to physiological extremes in their lifestyles.
That stress, depression and addiction are linked is obvious to any psychiatrist; to many a junkie; and to University of Washington researcher Charles Chavkin.
By using three separate immune stimulants and packaging them in a nanoparticle that mimics a live virus, researchers at Emory University were able to induce immune responses to flu virus, which were much stronger than those induced by the current vaccines – and that lasted long enough to rival the immune responses induced by live viruses.
Melanoma drug PLX4032 has set the cancer world abuzz more than once over the past year and a half. And with an interim analysis of a Phase III trial released yesterday that showed both an overall survival benefit and a progression-free survival benefit for patients taking the drug as a first-line agent, it is doing it again.
A few weeks ago, a series of four papers published in Cell provided an early glimpse of a new world of RNA regulation that interacts with microRNAs: competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNA).
By combining chemical and enzymatic synthesis, scientists have come up with a faster and cheaper way to make the smallest form of heparin.If commercialization works out, the findings could extend the market reach of ultralow molecular weight heparin, as this form is called. And the chemoenzymatic synthesis that the researchers described in the Oct. 28, 2011, issue of Science marks progress on the way to a larger goal: synthesizing full-length heparin.
