The Cross-Border Biotech Blog

Biotechnology, Health and Business in Canada, the United States and Worldwide

Category Archives: Richard Chan

Friday Science Review: October 23, 2009

A lucky find and two very different genomics projects… Connective Tissue Disorder Linked to Defects in Ltbp4:  A McGill University researcher collaborating on two independent projects, one from Washington University School of Medicine and the other from New York University School of Medicine, made the coincidental link between the two after realizing that the tissue [...]

Friday Science Review: October 16, 2009

A mixed bag of research reports but nonetheless important and significant… How MS Drug Works: Glatiramir Acetate (COPAXONE®, Teva Pharmaceuticals) is used for the treatment of patients with Multiple Sclerosis, however, it is not clear how this drug works.  In this new study, researchers demonstrate that glatiramir acetate can regulate the formation of myelin, the [...]

Friday Science Review: October 9, 2009

Breast cancer, genomics and two cover stories in prestigious journals… Cancer Evolution and Progression:  Scientists at the BC Cancer Agency have sequenced and compared the entire cancer genome of a metastatic tumour versus the primary breast tumour that originated nine years earlier.  They used next generation DNA sequencing technology to reveal 32 mutations in the [...]

Friday Science Review: October 2, 2009

Prostate cancer and H1N1 updates… Nanotechnology is Coming:  A research study by a group of University of Toronto engineers, nanoscientists, and pharmaceutical specialists has garnered a lot of media attention this week describing the use of nanomaterials in microchip technology to create a highly sensitive biosensor.  In the more technical report published in Nature Nantotechnology [...]

Friday Science Review: September 25, 2009

A quiet week for journal publications but there were a few significant research related activities… Canadian Stem Cell Charter: At the recent World Stem Cell Summit in Baltimore, Canada stepped up and demonstrated why we are one of the leaders in stem cell research.  This time it was not a lab discovery but the Canadian [...]

Friday Science Review: September 18, 2009

Some “brainy” research this week… Curiosity Driven <=> Intelligence: There is new evidence that “fostering curiosity should also foster intelligence and vice versa.“  Researchers have discovered what they believe is the region of the brain, the dentate gyrus in the hippocampus, that is responsible for generating curiosity.  They also identified that the interaction between the [...]

Friday Science Review: September 11, 2009

Two great medical discoveries… Stayin’ Alive:  During a stroke, for example, neurons deprived of oxygen undergo cell death.  In a recent discovery lead by Dr. Michael Tymianski’s team at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre at Toronto Western Hospital, the protein TRPM7 was found to play a critical role in mediating this detrimental effect.   After suppressing TRPM7 [...]

Friday Science Review: September 4, 2009

Potential future therapeutic options… Dabigatran versus Warfarin: Dabigatran (PRADAX®, Boehringer-Ingelheim) was compared with warfarin (a commonly used anti-coagulant) in a large scale study for the treatment of patients with atrial fibrillations.  The trial demonstrated that the group of patients taking the higher dose of Dabigatran had significantly reduced risk of stroke compared to patients on [...]

Friday Science Review: August 28, 2009

A Montreal flavour this week… Critical link between EGFR and Src oncogenes: On the heels of last week’s Friday Science Review post on Stat3 in breast cancer, Dr. William Muller’s research team at McGill University has published another significant find linking well known oncogenes, Src and EGFR/ErbB2.  Among their results, they demonstrated how Src can [...]

Friday Science Review: August 21, 2009

This week… cancers, brains, and fruit flies. Combinatorial therapy to fight melanoma: Malignant melanomas are aggressive cancers that are highly resistant to chemotherapy, possibly due to high levels of Bcl-2 family anti-cell death  proteins.  Although the small molecule inhibitor, ABT-737, is effective against Bcl-2 family proteins in other cancers, it is not very effective in [...]

Friday Science Review: August 14, 2009

Great stuff this week in Canadian science news… A GIFT for MS patients:  An experimental treatment tested in mice with multiple sclerosis was able to reverse the disorder with few side effects.   The new compound is called GIFT15 – a hybrid protein between GSM-CSF and Interleukin-15.  Surprisingly, it produces results that you would not expect [...]

Friday Science Review: July 31, 2009

My first post… a two week round-up. New direction for treating obesity:  A study headed by Dr. Hans-Michael Dosch’s group at The Hostpital for Sick Children in Toronto demonstrated that killer T cells in visceral fat are activated to destroy fat cells and control insulin resistance.  With increasing weight gain, however, the killer T cells [...]

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