Category Biology/Biotechnology

Migrating tumor cells produce a protein that aids them to set up home in bones, researchers show. If a tumor develops metastases, the chances of the patient’s survival will be severely diminished. Cancer cells that leave the primary tumor, travel through the body, and set up home in distal organs such as lungs and bones start to express cathepsin K ~ primarily found only in the bone and is secreted by osteoclasts.

Shastri and Christensen found in cell cultures, cathepsin K activated matrixmetalloprotease-9 (MMP-9), one of the key regulators of tumour development. MMP-9 can digest the bone matrix thereby allowing the arriving cancer cells to adapt and survive in their new environment...

University of Illinois Beckman Institute postdoctoral researcher Agnieszka Burzynska and her colleagues analyzed the brain and cognition of Olga Kotelko, a 93-year-old track-and-field athlete. Burzynska is now a professor at Colorado State University. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

1st glimpse of potential effects of Exercise on the brains and cognitive abilities of the ‘oldest old.’ In the summer of 2012, Olga Kotelko, a 93-year-old Canadian track-and-field athlete with more than 30 world records in her age group, submitted to an in-depth analysis of her brain.

A retired teacher and mother of two, Kotelko started her athletic career late in life: slow-pitch softball at age 65, and at 77 switched to track-and-field events...

Some of the most precise human data yet on whether cutting carbs or fat has the most benefits for losing body fat has been presented by US National Institutes of Health. The researchers show how, contrary to popular claims, restricting dietary fat can lead to greater body fat loss than carb restriction, even though a low-carb diet reduces insulin and increases fat burning.

Since 2003, Kevin Hall, PhD—a physicist turned metabolism researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases—has been using data from dozens of controlled feeding studies conducted over decades of nutrition research to build mathematical models of how different nutrients affect human metabolism and body weight...

Prev Histopathology (H&E) of (A) healthy (non-transplanted) pig liver, (B) baboon liver 31 days after allotransplantation, and (C–F) WT pig liver after pig-to-baboon xenotransplantation. Credit: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/14014/1/Genetically-Engineered_Pig.pdf

22 people die each day while waiting for a transplant and 10 minutes someone is added to the national transplant waiting list. #Revivicor is producing genetically engineered pigs to provide #human-compatible #cells. This would be relevant for organs and tissues for use in transplant surgery, ie #xenografts.

Antonio Regalado, senior editor for biomedicine for MIT Technology Review said the team has done nothing less than “shattering records in xenotransplantation, or between-species organ transplants...