Penn researchers discover novel pathway for increasing 'good' cholesterol
...level of HDL-C in the blood. We showed that mice engineered to express high levels of PCSK5A had 50 percent higher HDL-C than control mice, says senior author Daniel J. Rader, MD, the Cooper/McLure Professor of Medicine and Associate Director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at Pe...Miniature implanted devices could treat epilepsy, glaucoma
...veloped a "living electrode" coated with specially engineered neurons that, when stimulated, releases the neurotransmitter to inhibit the seizure. The engineered neurons are living tissue stimulated with a microchip. Rickus and Irazoqui have shown that a certa...Study says normal but out-of-control enzyme may be culprit that signals some cells to become cancer
...TOPK activity could lead to cancer. When they engineered mouse skin cells to produce excessive amounts of the enzyme and then injected the cells into other mice, those mice developed tumors. Control mice had none. After they had silenced the gene for TOPK in human colorectal cancer cells, growth of t...Aging stem cells in mice may hold answers to diseases of the aged, Stanford study finds
... they studied the blood-forming stem cells of mice engineered to have single mutations that make them especially prone to accumulating additional genetic errors. In each of the three different types of mutant mice they studied, the stem cells appeared to behave normally and to produce new blood cells. However...Loss of stem cells correlates with premature aging in animal study
... deletion were able to reconstitute tissues in the engineered mice, at least initially. Think of aging as a slow loss of stem cells, a deterioration of pools of cells that reside in each tissue type, says Brown. We accelerated the aging process by wiping out a large fraction of these cells prematurely, in o...Brain inflammation may be friend, not foe, for Alzheimer's patients
...r of Neurobiology and Anatomy. Shaftel genetically engineered a one-of-a-kind mouse that gives him pinpoint cont...levels of IL-1 beta in select brain regions of its engineered mouse, then applied the technology in mice specially designed to develop Alzheimers disease. The m...Detecting cold, feeling pain: Study reveals why menthol feels fresh
...cooling agents, including menthol. The genetically engineered mice did not discriminate between warm and cold surfaces until the temperature dropped to extremes. "It's been known for years that menthol and related cooling agents evoke the psychophysical sensation of cold somehow by interacting with the aspec...Scripps Research awarded $17 million for adult stem cell use to treat eye diseases
...plored under the grant is that stem cells could be engineered to express additional therapeutic molecules to further enhance neuroprotection or to interfere with the proliferation of blood vessels. If successful, this approach could have broad treatment implications not only for eye disease, but also for some t...'Smart' mice teach scientists about learning process, brain disorders
DALLAS May 27, 2007 -- Mice genetically engineered to lack a single enzyme in their brains are more a...rroundings seems to have made them smarter." The engineered mice were more adept at learning to navigate a water maze and remembering that being in a certain bo...Experimental gene therapy 'abolishes' arthritis pain and lessens joint damage
...y was done in mice, they are the first genetically engineered to develop osteoarthritis like humans, with the same genetic predisposition that makes some more likely to develop the disease, the authors said. If all goes well with a follow-up study currently underway, researchers will apply to the U.S. Food and ...Developments in tissue engineering offer new sources for stem cell treatments
... Hospital Boston have reported viable results with engineered bladder tissue in a small group of patients with myelomeningocele (a type of spina bifida). Using the patients own bladder tissue (obtained from biopsy), researchers grew urothelial and muscle cells and seeded them on collagen-based, bladder-shaped...Scavenger cells may have role blocking obesity, Stanford study shows
...of dietary fat. The researchers bred genetically engineered mice that did not have the PPAR-gamma molecule in their macrophages. It turned out that simply missing PPAR-gamma in macrophages caused mice to gain about 20 percent more weight than their normal counterparts, and predisposed them to the development ...JCI table of contents: May 10, 2007
...leagues from Harvard Medical School show that mice engineered to lack the gene CalDAG-GEFI have a combination of defects in their leukocytes and platelets, similar to those observed in LAD-III patients. In response to injury of the blood vessel lining, blood platelets adhere to fibrin, endothelial cells linin...Scientists equip bacteria with custom chemo-navigational system
...atly enhance the impressive arsenal of natural and engineered cell behaviors," says Dr. Gallivan....Researchers urge caution in using ESAs for cancer-related anemia
... epoetin alfa (Epogen and Procrit) are genetically engineered forms of a protein called erythropoietin, which stimulates red blood cell production. The drugs are widely used to treat anemia: low levels of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in the blood. They are approved for use in treating anemia in patie...Penn study on lung-infecting bacterial enzyme suggests new approach to cystic fibrosis treatment
...uptive action of SMase in frog oocytes (egg cells) engineered to place CFTR in their membrane. These oocytes are an experimental tool that allows the researchers to assess the flow of ions across the membrane by measuring electrical current. The researchers found that direct exposure of the CFTR-containing oocy...New treatment possibilities for fatal genetic disease
...rof Dragos discovery was made after he genetically engineered a mouse that displayed Huntingtons disease features by damaging only D1 neurons. While a mouse model that carries the human Huntington's disease gene already exists, A/Prof Dragos mouse model is the first in the world to accurately mimic the death ...Tissue engineering for craniofacial reconstruction
...pt to repair or regenerate damaged tissue by using engineered tissue substitutes that can sustain functionality during regeneration and eventually integrate into the host tissue. The traditional tissue-engineering paradigm combines isolated cells with appropriate bioactive agents in a biomaterial scaffold. It i...CRP liver protein induces hypertension, UT Southwestern researchers have found
... UT Southwestern researchers studied mice with an engineered gene for CRP that was under the regulation of a second gene responsive to changes in dietary carbohydrate intake. The levels of circulating CRP, which is produced by the liver, were directly manipulated by altering the mice's diets, and the effect on......as surprisingly versatile. Traditional systems are engineered for specific object classes. For instance, systems engineered to detect faces or recognize textures are poor at detecting cars. In the biological model, the same...