Life Sciences & Biotechnology Update articles from February 2001

Life Sciences & Biotechnology Update archives from February 2001

SUMMARY OF THE NATIONAL HOSPITAL DISCHARGE SURVEY FOR 1998.
February 1, 2001... This (National Center for Health Statistics) report presents 1998 national estimates and selected trend data on the use of non-federal short-stay hospitals in the U.S. Estimates are provided by: demographic characteristics of patients...

1999 INTERNATIONAL HEALTH DATA REFERENCE GUIDE.
February 1, 2001... This (National Center for Health Statistics) guide provides information collected in mid-1999 on the availability of selected: national vital statistics; hospital statistics; health manpower resources; and population-based health surveys....

HISTORY OF THE MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF CANADA.
February 1, 2001... This document from Canada (Medical Research Council (MRC) of Canada) presents a sketch of the history of the MRC. It is based on interviews, MRC records, and the medical and national press. It describes the founding of the MRC, its...

DESIGN FEATURES OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH INTERVIEW SURVEY (NHIS).
February 1, 2001... This (National Center for Health Statistics) (NCHS) report presents a detailed description of the sample design features for the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for the period 1995-2004. The NHIS is one of the major data collection...

ASTHMA INTERVENTION: A PILOT STUDY IN PUBLIC HOUSING.
February 1, 2001... This (Tufts University; Harvard School of Public Health; Boston Medical Center; Committee for Boston Public Housing) joint report presents baseline data and lessons learned about conducting asthma research in public housing. Nine families with...

RESIDUAL ORGANOPHOSPHATE NEUROTOXICITY INVOLVING GULF WAR VETERANS: EPIDEMIOLOGICAL AND CLINICAL EVIDENCE.
February 1, 2001... This (Oregon Health Sciences University) study seeks evidence to support or refute the proposal that certain Gulf War veterans who served in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations have nervous system effects consistent with prior exposure to...

LYME DISEASE: PATIENT OUTCOMES WITH ANTIBIOTIC THERAPY.
February 1, 2001... This (University of Maryland) research has the goal to improve the quality of care in patients having Lyme disease by: (1) investigating differences in patients outcomes resulting from variations in antibiotic therapy; and (2) performing a...

EQUINE ENCEPHALITIS: BIODEGRADABLE VACCINE MICROSPHERES FOR SYSTEMIC AND MUCOSAL IMMUNIZATION.
February 1, 2001... This (University of Alabama) study shows that: (1) pulse-release microsphere vaccines, consisting of antigen and adjuvant, are an effective and efficacious method for inducing protective immune responses; (2) the approach requires less...

DEVELOPING PROGRAMMABLE GENOTOXIN TARGETS AGAINST PROSTATE CANCERS.
February 1, 2001... This (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) research has the objective to develop better chemotherapeutic drugs for the treatment of prostate cancers. Chemical synthetic methods are being used to create bifunctional compounds, consisting of...

PROSTATE CANCER: MOLECULAR MECHANISM OF THE SUPRA- ADDITIVE RESPONSE TO ANDROGEN ABLATION AND RADIOTHERAPY.
February 1, 2001... The main objectives of this (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center) project are to: measure the molecular changes induced by androgen ablation and radiotherapy; relate these changes to the supra-additive apoptotic response of androgen ablation plus...

DENSITY OF PROSTATE-SPECIFIC ANTIGEN (PSA) IN THE TRANSITION ZONE OF ETHNICALLY-DIVERSE MEN.
February 1, 2001... This (Columbia University) report concerns the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) density of the transition zone in ethnically-diverse men. There are significant racial differences in unscreened populations in both prostate cancer incidence and...

ROLE OF PSA IN PROSTATE CANCER.
February 1, 2001... This translation from Nigeria (University College Hospital) concerns the role of PSA in prostate cancer. Since 1979, when prostrate specific antigen (PSA), found in the cytoplasm of benign and malignant prostatic cells, was first purified, it...

THERAPEUTIC RETROVIRAL VECTORS TARGETED SPECIFICALLY TO PROSTATE CANCER CELLS: A NOVEL STRATEGY.
February 1, 2001... This (Harvard University) work is developing a system useful for targeting therapeutic retroviral vectors specifically to prostate cancer cells, using novel retroviral receptor-ligand bridge-proteins that bind to specific cell-surface ligand...

HERPES VIRUS THERAPY FOR PROSTATE CANCER.
February 1, 2001... The goal of this (Georgetown University) program is to develop herpes vectors to treat prostate cancer, in order to acquire the necessary data to advance toward clinical trials. The work has studied G207, a multiple-mutated...

ANGIOGENESIS REGULATES PROSTATE CANCER METASTASIS.
February 1, 2001... The progression of primary and metastatic prostate cancer depends upon the establishment of an adequate blood supply. The purpose of this (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center) ongoing research is to evaluate the relevance of angiogenesis in the...

INTERACTION OF VITAMIN D WITH ANDROGEN IN PROSTATE CANCER.
February 1, 2001... The purpose of this (Stanford University) research is to gain an understanding of the vitamin D-androgen interaction in prostate cancer. Calcitriol, the active hormonal form of vitamin D, induces androgen receptors (AR) in prostate cells....

USING LASER MICRODISSECTION AND REPRESENTATION- DIFFERENCE ANALYSIS TO ISOLATE NOVEL PROSTATE CANCER TUMOR GENES IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND CAUCASIAN MEN.
February 1, 2001... This Johns Hopkins University) research has made significant progress on all three of its specific aims: (1) obtaining metastatic prostate cancer DNA of quality sufficient for representational difference analysis (RDA), which is obtained using...

ASSESSMENT OF PATIENTS' VALUES TOWARDS GENETIC SCREENING FOR PROSTATE CANCER.
February 1, 2001... This (University of Michigan) project on assessing patients' values towards prostate cancer genetic screening is determining the values, beliefs, and attitudes that influence a man's decision to undergo or defer genetic testing for prostate...

DETECTION OF GENETIC MUTATIONS USING A NOVEL ENDONUCLEASE.
February 1, 2001... This (Fox Chase Cancer Center) report addresses the discovery of a nuclease, CEL I from celery, that has high specificity for DNA mismatch, including base-substitutions, insertions, and deletions. It has been used to develop a robust...

BIOTHERAPY OF BREAST CANCER USING EGF-GENISTEIN.
February 1, 2001... This (University of Minnesota) research involves laboratory studies using a SCID mouse model of human metastatic breast cancer, as well as in vitro MTT (3-4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-YL-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide) and colony assays, using...

USING A CELL-CULTURE MODEL TO UNDERSTAND ESTROGEN RECEPTOR REGULATION IN NORMAL AND MALIGNANT MAMMARY CELLS.
February 1, 2001... This (University of California) paper characterizes a spontaneous epithelial-to-mesenchymal conversion (EMT) in the non-transformed `functional normal' mammary epithelial cell-line, SCp2, to determine if the mesenchymal conversion in SCp2...

ROLE OF PROTEIN KINASE-C IN BREAST CANCER INVASION AND METASTASIS.
February 1, 2001... This (Georgetown University) report concerns the protein kinase-C (PKC) family of kinases that play a key role in the regulation of cell behavior. It describes studies that set out to determine if particular isoforms of PKC are associated...

MAMMARY TUMORIGENESIS: INTERACTIONS OF TGFa-myc.
February 1, 2001... This (Georgetown University) research studies the nature of the synergistic interaction of the growth factor TCFa and the nuclear protoonco-protein product c-Myc for bitransgenic mouse mammary tumorigenesis. Evidence is found of a...

REGULATION OF BREAST TUMOR ANGIOGENESIS BY INTERACTIVE FGFR-NOTCH SIGNALING.
February 1, 2001... This (American Red Cross) report addresses the regulation of breast tumor angiogenesis by interactive FGFR-notch signaling. Since tumor cell migration and growth are dependent upon the formation of new blood vessels, it should be possible to...

THE "BREAST HEALTH BELIEF SYSTEMS" STUDY.
February 1, 2001... This (Morehouse School of Medicine) report addresses the Breast Health Belief Systems Study, a multi-institutional project designed to address the issues surrounding constructing effective health promotion messages in regard to breast cancer...

ROLE OF AFP IN CANCER OF THE LIVER.
February 1, 2001... This translation from Nigeria (University College Hospital) addresses the role of AFP in liver cancer. Liver diseases are common worldwide, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver cancer. It has varied incidences...

CANCER AND TUMOR MARKERS.
February 1, 2001... This translation from Nigeria (University College Hospital) addresses cancer and tumor markers. Cancer is a major cause of death world-wide, and in Nigeria there are six most common forms of manifestation of cancer known. Of these, prostrate...

TUMOR MARKERS IN GYNECOLOGICAL PRACTICE.
February 1, 2001... This translation from Nigeria (University College Hospital) addresses tumor markers in gynecological practice. Gynecological cancers are fairly common in developing countries and represent about 26% of all cancers. Application of cervical...

GUIDELINES FOR PROPHYLACTIC TREATMENT OF METASTATICALLY-INVOLVED VERTEBRAL BODIES.
February 1, 2001... This (University of California) report deals with prophylactic treatment of metastatically-involved vertebral bodies. Up to 1/3 of all cancer patients develop metastases to the spinal column, and over 50% of spinal metastases with neurologic...

MAGNETOCARDIOGRAPHIC AND ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHIC EXERCISE MAPPING IN HEALTHY SUBJECTS.
February 1, 2001... This translation from Finland (Helsinki University of Technology) details magnetocardiographic and electrocardiographic exercise mapping in healthy subjects. Magnetocardiographic (MCG) mapping is performed on 12 middle-aged healthy volunteers...

DETERMINING CALCIUM ACTIVITY IN ORAL FLUIDS BY ION- SELECTIVE ELECTRODE: EVALUATION OF THE METHOD AND SIMPLIFIED CALCULATION OF ION-ACTIVITY PRODUCTS.
February 1, 2001... This (American Dental Association Health Foundation) report addresses the measurement of calcium activity in oral fluids by selective electrode. The activity of calcium in plaque fluid is needed to calculate the saturation level of that fluid...

ADVERSE EFFECTS OF COW'S MILK IN INFANTS.
February 1, 2001... This (University of Iowa) study addresses two adverse effects of feeding cow's milk to infants: (1) inhibition of iron absorption: the study hypothesizes that significantly less iron is absorbed when babies are fed cow's milk than when fed...

DNA DAMAGE AND OXIDATIVE STRESS: PREVENTIVE ROLE OF SPECIFIC DIETARY FACTORS AND NATURAL COMPOUNDS.
February 1, 2001... This (Columbia University) work has developed a series of reagents and a luciferase-based functional assay for identifying and testing ligands for Notch4 receptor. The testing of several candidate genes for their ability to activate Notch4...

TRANSGENIC ENGINEERING OF CHOLINESTERASES, AND TOOLS FOR EXPLORING CHOLINERGIC RESPONSES.
February 1, 2001... This translation from Israel (Hebrew University) addresses a program involving cholinesterases and cholinergic responses. During the year 1998, progress was made in delineating the non-catalytic roles of acetylcholinesterase, involving the...

ASSESSMENT OF ENDOGENOUS ESTROGEN ACTIVITY IN PEOPLE HAVING DIFFERENT EXERCISE HABITS.
February 1, 2001... Evidence exists that exercising women have lower estrogen levels than sedentary women. These lower estrogen levels may be the mechanism behind their reduced breast cancer risk. Previous studies included athletes with high exercise levels,...