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PHOENIX, Ariz. Dec. 14, 2020 The results of a pre-clinical study led by researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest how a compound derived from the thunder god vine an herb used in China for centuries to treat joint pain, swelling and fever is able to kill cancer cells and potentially improve clinical outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer.
The medicinal plant s key ingredient, triptolide, is the basis of a water-soluble prodrug called Minnelide, which appears to attack pancreatic cancer cells and the cocoon of stroma surrounding the tumor that shields it from the body s immune system. Investigators recently published the study results in the journal
December 13, 2020 AS SCIENTISTS and pharmaceutical companies in rich countries around the world are racing for the development and application of vaccine against the killer coronavirus disease (Covid-19), a Filipino Dominican priest-microbiologist based in the United States has also decided to make a vaccine that will be affordable and accessible to other middle to low income countries, including the Philippines.
“I thought about developing this vaccine when I realized that many of the available vaccines being manufactured today have already been promised to resource-rich countries,” said Father Nicanor Austriaco, chief researcher at Austriaco Laboratory.
Austriaco, who is associate professor of biology and theology at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, said his proposal is to create an oral Covid-19 vaccine using a probiotic yeast.
Scientific American
About a year ago, SARS-CoV-2 (which wasn’t called that yet) was just beginning to emerge in a cluster of cases inside China. We know what has happened since then, but it bears repeating: there have been 69 million cases and more than 1.5 million deaths globally as of December 10, 2020, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
And as the virus raced around the world, science has also raced to understand how it actually works, biologically. Today on the Science Talk podcast, a virologist who has been part of that massive effort joins us.
Britt Glaunsinger is a professor in the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has been studying viruses for 25 years, with a particular focus, before December 2019, on the herpesvirus. Over the past 12 months, her lab has been focusing on strategies the virus uses to suppress the body s innate
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IMAGE: This photo shows a tick on a blade of grass, waiting for passing prey. view more
Credit: Matt Pinski
One of the reasons ticks spread Lyme disease so well goes back to a unique evolutionary event. Researchers reporting in the journal
Cell on December 10 have discovered that an antibacterial enzyme in ticks, Dae2, protects them from bacteria found on human skin, while still allowing them to harbor Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Ticks acquired the gene for this enzyme 40 million years ago from an unknown species of ancient bacteria through horizontal gene transfer. Bacteria exchange DNA with each other all the time, but what s remarkable is that 40 million years ago a gene in bacteria jumped across kingdoms all the way into ticks, says senior author Seemay Chou, a professor of biochemistry at University of California San Francisco. The ticks effectively stole a page out of the bacteria s playbook, repurposing their arsena
Angelika Amon, a pioneering geneticist and cell biologist, died on 29 October after a long battle with ovarian cancer. She was 53 years old. Angelika made important discoveries involving the control of chromosome segregation and the consequences of segregation errors. An innovative and outspoken scientist, she thrived on challenging dogmas and tackling unorthodox questions.
Born in Austria on 10 January 1967, Angelika first encountered the two loves of her life in high school. There, she met her future husband, Johannes Weis, who would become her constant companion for almost 40 years and the father of her beloved daughters, Theresa and Clara. In a science class, she also came across a grainy, black-and-white movie of chromosomes separating during mitosis. She would later identify that movie as the catalyst that spurred her to a lifetime of studying cell cycle genetics.