Monthly Archives: February 2012

Dr. Renato Dulbecco, an Italian American virologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for demonstrating how certain types of viruses invade mammalian cells to cause cancer, died of natural causes Sunday at his home in La Jolla. He was 97. Dulbecco developed a method for measuring the quantity of virus in animal cells in tissue culture, a finding that greatly facilitated the study of such viruses and paved the way for the development of the Sabin polio vaccine. He was a faculty member at Caltech from 1949 to 1963 before moving to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla. He later served as president of the institute. Dulbecco was also one of the first proponents of the human genome project, which many researchers initially thought would be both excessively expensive and relatively useless but which has since proved invaluable in biological research. "Renato was one of the most brilliant scientific minds of our generation," current Salk Institute President William R. Brody said in a statement. "His contributions have truly made this a better world for all of us." It has been known since the early 1900s that certain viruses can cause tumors in animals. … Continue reading →

ROME (AP) — Renato Dulbecco, who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine for his seminal research on the interaction between tumors and cells, has died in California. He was 97. Dulbecco, an early proponent of sequencing genomes that led to the Human Genome Project, died in La Jolla, California overnight, Italy's National Research Council — where Dulbecco worked on the genome project in the 1990s — said Monday. Dulbecco was a founding fellow of the La Jolla-based Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he was an emeritus president and distinguished professor. He moved from Italy to California early in his career, working first at Caltech in 1949, then at Salk in 1962, and then onwards to England, where he worked at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London from 1972-1977. Dulbecco — who would have been 98 on Wednesday — shared the Nobel prize in medicine in 1975 along with David Baltimore and Howard Martin Temin "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell" according to the Nobel committee. His prize-winning research gave the first clue to the genetic nature of cancer, showing how a virus could insert its own … Continue reading →

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Biocept, Inc., a privately-held, CLIA certified laboratory testing company focused on detection and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer patients, announced that two of its senior scientists, Farideh Bischoff, Ph.D., Vice President of Translational Research, and Lyle Arnold, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, R&D and Chief Scientific Officer, will be making presentations at the 19th Annual Molecular Medicine Tri-Con being held in San Francisco February 19-23. Dr. Arnold spoke during the “Blood-Based Cancer Diagnostics” session on Monday, February 20th. His talk, entitled “The Capture, Identification and Interrogation of Circulating Tumor Cells,” touched on a proprietary, highly sensitive mutation detection technology developed at Biocept called “SelectorTM.” Dr. Bischoff will speak during the “Clinical Use of Circulating Tumor Cells” session on Wednesday, February 22nd. Her talk, entitled “Capture and Detection of CK+ and CK- CTCs for Subsequent Molecular Analysis Using the OncoCEETM Platform,” will cover in part a continuing clinical study in breast cancer with collaborators at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Biocept’s first test, OncoCEE-BRTM for breast cancer, is available through its commercialization partner Clarient, Inc., a GE Healthcare Company. The test includes CTC enumeration and determination of HER2 status by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) from … Continue reading →

In a report in the Feb. 9 edition of Nature, the researchers showed that a chemical modification on the thermostat protein changes how it's controlled. Without the modification, cells use stored energy, and with it, they default to stockpiling resources. When cells don't properly allocate their energy supply, they can die off or become cancerous. The Johns Hopkins team focused especially on enzymes that add or remove so-called acetyl groups from protein molecules. "Understanding how cells are affected by adding acetyl groups to proteins, particularly those involved in energy use, is important because there is increasing use of drugs that block acetyl-removing enzymes for treatment of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases," says Jef Boeke, Ph.D., professor of molecular biology, genetics and oncology, and director of the High Throughput Biology Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Blocking acetyl-removing enzymes turns on anticancer genes that help fight cancer; however, it is not known what other genes and cellular processes may also be affected by these treatments." To determine which enzymes remove acetyl chemical groups from which proteins, the researchers engineered human cells with reduced levels of each of 12 enzymes known to remove acetyl chemical groups. In each of these … Continue reading →

Public release date: 21-Feb-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Vanessa McMains vmcmain1@jhmi.edu 410-502-9410 Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions Johns Hopkins and National Taiwan University researchers have discovered more details about how an energy sensing "thermostat" protein determines whether cells will store or use their energy reserves. In a report in the Feb. 9 edition of Nature, the researchers showed that a chemical modification on the thermostat protein changes how it's controlled. Without the modification, cells use stored energy, and with it, they default to stockpiling resources. When cells don't properly allocate their energy supply, they can die off or become cancerous. The Johns Hopkins team focused especially on enzymes that add or remove so-called acetyl groups from protein molecules. "Understanding how cells are affected by adding acetyl groups to proteins, particularly those involved in energy use, is important because there is increasing use of drugs that block acetyl-removing enzymes for treatment of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases," says Jef Boeke, Ph.D., professor of molecular biology, genetics and oncology, and director of the High Throughput Biology Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Blocking acetyl-removing enzymes turns on anticancer genes that help fight cancer; however, it is not known … Continue reading →

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b93d9c/evolutionary_biolo) has announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd's new book "Evolutionary Biology: Cell-Cell Communication, and Complex Disease" to their offering. Evolutionary Biology: Cell-Cell Communication, and Complex Disease - An Integrative View of the Evolution of Genetics and the Natural World Even in this advanced age of genomics, the evolutionary process of unicellular and multicellular organisms is continually in debate. Evolutionary Biology, Cell-Cell Communication, and Complex Disease challenges current wisdom by using physiology to present an integrative view of the nature, origins, and evolution of fundamental biological systems. Providing a deeper understanding of the way genes relate to the traits of living organisms, this book offers useful information applying evolutionary biology, functional genomics, and cell communication studies to complex disease. Examining the 4.5 billion-year evolution process from environment adaptations to cell-cell communication to communication of genetic information for reproduction, Evolutionary Biology hones in on the "why and how" of evolution by uniquely focusing on the cell as the smallest unit of biologic structure and function. Based on empirically derived data rather than association studies, Evolutionary Biology covers: A model for forming testable hypotheses in complex disease studies The integrating role played by the … Continue reading →