Word: labs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...issue of Nature, a team of scientists based at M.I.T.'s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research has finally managed to make human cells malignant--a feat they accomplished with two different cell types by inserting just three altered genes into their DNA. While these manipulations were done only in lab dishes and won't lead to any immediate treatment, they appear to be a crucial step in understanding the disease. This is a "landmark paper," wrote Jonathan Weitzman and Moshe Yaniv of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, in an accompanying commentary...
Understanding cancer cells in the lab isn't the same as understanding how it behaves in a living body, of course. But by teasing out the key differences between normal and malignant cells, doctors may someday be able to design tests to pick up cancer in its earliest stages. The finding could also lead to drugs tailored to attack specific types of cancer, thereby lessening our dependence on tissue-destroying chemotherapy and radiation. Beyond that, the Whitehead research suggests that this stubbornly complex disease may have a simple origin, and the identification of that origin may turn...
...disservice to your readers to say the kind of peanut butter sold in most supermarkets is bad for the heart [HEALTH, July 19]. We sent samples of the major brands to an independent lab for analysis, and the amount of trans-fatty acids was well below 0.2%. This means peanut butter would classify as a trans-fat-free food. The majority of fats in peanuts and peanut butter are heart-healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats. Also, a study at Penn State found that a diet rich in peanuts and peanut butter significantly lowers total and low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol...
...Genome Sciences have discovered two new angiogenesis inhibitors -- proteins that can starve a tumor by choking off its blood supply -- called METH-1 and METH-2 that may be 50 times more effective than anything currently being studied. TIME science writer Christine Gorman says that while success in the lab is all well and good, she warns that advances like these have a long history of turning into dead ends. "Angiogenesis inhibitors have a 20-year history of disappointment when they?re tried outside the laboratory," she says. "The problem is, blood supply is how we live...
...body sends this protein to kill the cell before it can reproduce." The mystery, of course, is why it doesn?t do it every time, but the researchers dream of turning Fas ligand into a supercharged exfoliant for the sun-damaged. Someday. "It?s a long way from the lab to the drug store," says Gorman, "But it makes sense to start out with something the body has already developed for itself." Either that, or start plugging that ozone layer...