News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

For years, medical investigators have tried and failed to develop vaccines for a type of staph bacteria associated with the deadly superbug MRSA. But a new study by Cedars-Sinai investigators shows how staph cells evade the body's immune system, offering a clearer picture of how a successful vaccine would work.

The answer to the question of why some organisms can regenerate major body parts while others, such as humans, cannot may lie with the body's innate immune system, according to a new study of heart regeneration in the Mexican salamander by James Godwin, Ph.D., of the MDI Biological Laboratory. Godwin found that formation of new heart muscle tissue after a heart attack is dependent on the presence of macrophages, a type of white blood cell.

By studying rodents, researchers showed that instead of attacking germs, some neutrophils may help heal the brain after an intracerebral hemorrhage, a form of stroke caused by ruptured blood vessels. The study suggests that two neutrophil-related proteins may play critical roles in protecting the brain from stroke-induced damage and could be used as treatments for intracerebral hemorrhage.

Opening up a new pathway to fight cancer, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to target an enzyme that is crucial to tumor growth while also blocking the mechanism that has made past attempts to target that enzyme resistant to treatment. Researchers were able to use this finding to develop a drug that successfully inhibits tumor growth of melanoma as well as pancreatic and colorectal cancer in mice.

Biopharmaceuticals, medium- and high-molecular weight biologically active macromolecules, are not easily absorbed by the small intestine, the main organ responsible for gastrointestinal absorption, resulting in a bottleneck for oral administration type biopharmaceutical development. Now, researchers have found a new small intestine permeable peptide that can facilitate digestive tract absorption of biopharmaceutical products. The discovery should make it possible for oral administration of drugs that were previously only available by injection.

An investigational therapy using modified poliovirus to attack cancer tumors appears to unleash the body's own capacity to fight malignancies by activating an inflammation process that counter's the ability of cancer cells to evade the immune system.