Category Health/Medical

Linactolide

In mice, investigators found a high caloric diet turned off expression of a key hormone in the intestine, which led to deactivation of a tumor suppressor pathway. Genetic replacement of that hormone turned the tumor suppressor back on and prevented cancer development – even when mice continued to eat excess calories.

These findings position the use of the pill linaclotide (Linzess), which is structurally related to the lost hormone, as a therapeutic approach to preventing colorectal cancer in obese patients. The FDA approved linaclotide in 2012 to treat IBS with constipation as well as chronic idiopathic constipation (chronic constipation from unknown causes)...

The cause of abdominal pain in patients with irritable bowel syndrome has been identified by researchers. As a result, they were able to select a medicine that could reduce or end that pain. This medicine is already used to treat hay fever. IBS patients have extremely sensitive bowels associated with increased pain perception. The exact cause of this hypersensitivity has long been unknown. Researchers already knew that the bowels of patients with IBS contain larger quantities of the substance histamine, but the specific link with hypersensitivity had not yet been made.

KU Leuven professor of gastroenterology Guy Boeckxstaens and his team have now shown that histamine has an impact on the pain receptor TRPV1. In IBS patients, histamine released in the gut makes TRPV1 hypersensitive...

Pinna nobilis. (Image: Biodiversity Heritage Library, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons*)

FAU Materials scientists have shown for the first time that the mother-of-pearl in clam shells does not form in a crystallisation process but is a result of the aggregation of nanoparticles within an organic matrix. This could lead to a better understanding of the structure of biomaterials which may be useful in the development of new high-performance ceramics.

Prof. Wolf’s team used a diamond wire saw to cut a 60cm wedge out of the shell of a large Pinna nobilis – a type of clam found in the Mediterranean – which they then polished using a novel method before examining it under a scanning transmission electron microscope...

Drug-resistant lung cancer cells are in red. Paclitaxel-loaded exosomes (green) swarm the cancer cells and bypass their drug resistance. Credit: UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy

The cancer drug paclitaxel just got more effective. For the first time, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have packaged it in containers derived from a patient’s own immune system, protecting the drug from being destroyed by the body’s own defenses and bringing the entire payload to the tumor. “That means we can use 50 times less of the drug and still get the same results,” said A/Prof Elena Batrakova, Ph.D...