http://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/news-releases/2013/cancer-vaccines-ch... Vaccines designed to turn the immune system against cancer have been logically constructed and tested against many cancers. Almost all have failed or shown minimal effect. They spark creation of killer T cells against the cancer, but generally have little effect on tumors, both in patients and mouse models. Willem Overwijk, Ph.D., and colleagues at MD Anderson discovered that a common vaccine component is...

http://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/news-releases/2012/project-to-capture... Nicholas Navin, Ph.D., of MD Anderson's Genetics Department, has a plan to sort out the genetic differences among individual tumor cells at different stages of cancer development, then analyze and compare their active mutations. The results should track the evolution of triple-negative breast cancer from initial tumor, to circulating tumor cell to metastatic cell. This new approach, funded by the Damon Runyon...

Constructed in 2009 in the highly populated South End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) facility contains labs that operate at biosafety levels 2, 3 and 4. Due to its location the NEIDL has faced a raft of legal and regulatory hurdles that have prevented BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs from becoming functional. "Threading the NEIDL," is a 1-hour documentary narrated by Vincent Racaniello, PhD, Higgins Professor of Microbiology &...

Background: Weight loss (WL) is associated with a decrease in calcium absorption and may be one mechanism that induces bone loss with weight reduction. Objective: Because vitamin D supplementation has been shown to increase true fractional calcium absorption (TFCA), the goal of this study was to examine the effect of vitamin D during WL or weight maintenance (WM). Design: A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind 6-wk study was conducted in 82 postmenopausal women [BMI (in kg/...

Documentation of the UPLB Centennial Professorial Lecture on "Defining UPLB’s Role in Philippine Plant Natural Products’ Research and Development in the Early 21st Century" by Dr. Lourdes B. Cardenas, Professor, Institute of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, UP Los Baños on February 26, 2013 at the SEARCA Drilon Hall, UPLB, College, Laguna, Philippines.

Background: Although much is known about the association between dietary glycemic load (GL) and type 2 diabetes (T2D), prospective cohort studies have not consistently shown a positive dose-response relation. Objective: We performed a comprehensive examination of evidence on the dose response that links GL to T2D and sources of heterogeneity among all prospective cohort studies on healthy adults available in the literature. Design: We conducted a systematic review of all prospective...