Category Health/Medical

Mining host defense peptides found in skin mucus. A component of the skin mucus secreted by South Indian frogs can kill the H1 variety of influenza viruses, researchers from Emory Vaccine Center and the Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology in India have discovered. Frogs’ skins were known to secrete “host defense peptides” that defend them against bacteria. The finding suggests that the peptides represent a resource for antiviral drug discovery as well.

Anti-flu peptides could become handy when vaccines are unavailable, in the case of a new pandemic strain, or when circulating strains become resistant to current drugs, says Joshy Jacob, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology a...

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Until now, researchers had not had a good way to study how people actually experienced “epiphany learning.” In new research, scientists at The Ohio State University used eye-tracking and pupil dilation technology to see what happens as people figured out how to win a strategy game on a computer. “We could see our study participants figuring out the solution through their eye movements as they considered their options,” said Assistant Professor Ian Krajbich, Ohio State. “We could predict they were about to have an epiphany before they even knew it was coming.”

Most decision-making research has focused on reinforcement learning, where people gradually adjust their behavior in response to what they learn, Chen said...

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A team of researchers with the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Germany has tested the possibility of using sperm cells to deliver drugs to cancerous tumors in female patients. The group describes how such a technique might work, their initial test results and what they learned from their experiments. In this new effort, they looked into the idea of using a natural carrier to deliver helpful drugs to specified targets—sperm cells delivering drugs guided to tumors and other problem sites in the female reproductive tract...

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Dendritic cell vaccine supports further study in larger trials. A phase 1 study of 11 patients with glioblastoma who received injections of an investigational vaccine therapy and an approved chemotherapy showed the combination to be well tolerated while also resulting in unexpectedly significant survival increases, researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute report. Patients treated with the study drug (dose-intensified temozolomide and vaccines) were continuously monitored for toxicity and adverse events. Study patients experienced known side effects with temozolomide, including nausea, lymphopenia, thrombocytopenia and fatigue.

There were no treatment limiting a...

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