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The dilemma of dwindling drug development.
Drugs for the treatment of addiction are now a fact of life. For alcoholism alone, the medications legally available by prescription include disulfiram (Antabuse), naltrexone (Revia and Vivitrol)—and acamprosate (Campral), the most recent FDA-approved entry. A fourth entry, topiramate (Topamax), is currently only approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other uses. But none of these are miracle medications, and more to the point, no […]
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by Simon McGrath
Prof Stephen Holgate
Last Monday, 22 April, saw the launch of the new UK Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalitis Research Collaborative (CMRC). Set up by Stephen Holgate, MRC professor of immunology, and backed by the UK’s main research funders (MRC, Wellcome Trust and NIHR) it aims “to create a step change in the amount and quality of research into chronic fatigue and ME”. The launch featured some eye-catching provisional results that got good media
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A Mediterranean-style diet, rich in fish, poultry, vegetables and fruit, with minimal dairy foods and meat, may be good for the brain, a large new study suggests.
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To show its gratitude to all laboratory professionals, the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine celebrated Medical Laboratory Professionals Week April 22-26, with a host of activities, such as Phillies Night, in appreciation of all the hard work and dedication of the hundreds of staff and faculty members working in more than 30 different laboratories across the Penn campus.
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Can sleeping actually make you MORE tired? For many patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), they awake each morning thinking they had a full night’s rest, only to feel exhausted and unfocused day after day. This counterintuitive situation occurs because OSA sufferers may wake up dozens of times an hour...
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Sniffing medications (and uh, other things) up your nose is not new. Saline nasal sprays to unclog a stuffy nose have been around for a long time. There are now intranasal (in the nose) treatments for seizures, pain, congestion, and even vaccine administration. As gross as it may seem to squirt liquid up your snout, it’s actually pretty effective. The nostrils have a lot of blood vessels right near the surface so the medication can get into the bloodstream and work faster than an oral dose.
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A 2-year-old girl, named Hannah Warren, now has a new chance at life thanks to stem cell technology. The girl was born without a windpipe in South Korea in 2010 and up until now had spent her whole life at the hospital, being unable to breathe, eat or drink by her own. Hannah was operated at the central Illinois hospital, where she received a new windpipe (trachea) made out of her own stem cells. Read More
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Stemedica Cell Technologies (SCT) announced today that it has received a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office named “Culturing Ectodermal Cells Under Reduced Oxygen Tension”. The patent covers SCT's proprietary manufacturing process for enhancing the proliferation and differentiation potential of ectodermal cells of any origin.You can read the official press release here
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Yesterday, researchers presented the findings of a new study in which they have developed a method to turn mouse and human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) into microglia, small non neural cells forming part of the supporting structure of the central nervous system. The researchers say their study has implications in studying and possibly treating various diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). Read More
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In his first book, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Wrong, neurologist Robert Burton showed that our certainty that we are right has nothing to do with how right we are. He explained how brain mechanisms can make us feel even more confident about false beliefs than about true ones. Now, [...]
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Many researchers have claimed in the past that some of the eggs (oocytes) formed by mammals may actually originate from stem cells. In turn, this gave hope for a new possible source of stem cells that could be used to treat infertility and perhaps other diseases. Unfortunately, a new study by two researchers reveals that mice and probably humans don't use stem cells to produce eggs. Read More
Lei, L. & Spradling, A. (2013). Female mice lack adult germ-line stem cells but sustain oogenesis using stable primordial follicles, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1306189110
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Sen. Martin Heinrich(D-NM) has joined the Congressional Dietary Supplement Caucus for the 113th Congress.
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How would you like a job that involves grocery shopping at Trader Joes with the company credit card and cooking dishes like stir-fry? This describes Tosh Hotchi’s job, but he isn’t a chef. He is part of a research team that studies how to build healthy efficient homes, including how to improve the quality of [...]
