Life Science

This science blogger brings up some intriguing, although purely correlative, studies linking human mammary tumor virus (HMTV) to human breast cancer. This virus could, in theory, jump from mice to humans. As a breast cancer researcher I don't think these data hold a lot of weight, but it can be useful to keep our eyes on what's outside the box.

This paper from Jeff Rosen's lab talk about mammary stem/progenitor cells that have active Wnt signaling are more resistant to radiation. Interesting.

I haven't looked into the underlying mechanism behind why I can't get a tan, but this article did it for me. Fascinating summary about why some people can't tan, why tanning might be protective for skin cancer, and possible treatments to prevent cancer based on these pathways.

A nice, short NY Times article that summarizes a recent publication on contamination levels in public places. The conclusion, bathrooms are cleaner than playgrounds.

p63 (a p53 family member) has been shown to be necessary for proper epithelial development. This paper elucidates some of the mechanism.

This paper identifies asymmetry in the centrosomes of Drosophila neural stem cells. This asymmetry plays a part in the stem cell divisions.

Barrett's esophagus and its progression to esophageal adenocarcinoma is a great model system to study premalignancy and progression to cancer. It is one of the most well characterized progression systems. This study demonstrates that NSAID use reduces the risk for progression in Barrett's esophagus, most dramatically in high risk individuals.

This News Focus from Science talks about a number of recent p53 papers and what they mean to cancer treatments. Although p53 has been studied for decades and it may be the most important tumor suppressor gene, very few attempts have been made to target p53 function in cancer therapies. Finally it looks like there may be some p53 specific therapies on the way.

A very sad article about how cuts in funding at the NIH are affecting clinical trials on pediatric cancer. While patient numbers and statistics are vital to the results of a trial, it is disturbing to find out that budgetary issues are forcing trials to recruit fewer patients or collect fewer samples. Budget cuts are actually hurting the data.

Here's a Nature article about a new online tool for data analysis. This article also brings up the point that scientists have not embraced the web as a tool for communication. Another article by the same author gets further into this point.