[cat facts]
A recent analysis of the cat genome, led by researchers at Washington University, revealed some interesting facts about our feline friends. “Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semidomesticated,” says senior author Wes Warren at The Genome Institute. “They only recently (9,000 years ago) split off from wild cats, and some even still breed with their wild relatives.” Looking at genomes of both domestic and wild cats, researchers found specific differences that serve as evidence of domestication, including memory, fear and reward-seeking behaviors. “Humans most likely welcomed cats because they controlled rodents,” says Warren. The findings were published Nov. 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. Cat genome sequencing was undertaken in 2007 to study hereditary diseases in domestic cats that are similar to diseases in humans.
[breast cancer vaccine]
A breast cancer vaccine has been designed and tested at Washington University, led by Dr. William Gillanders. Preliminary evidence in a small clinical trial suggests the vaccine is safe in patients with metastatic breast cancer and reveals that it helped slow the cancer’s progression. The study, which appeared Dec. 1 in Clinical Cancer Research, found that the vaccine causes the body’s immune system to target a protein called mammaglobin-A, apparent in high levels in breast tumors. “Being able to target mammaglobin is exciting because it is expressed broadly in up to 80 percent of breast cancers, but not at meaningful levels in other tissues,” Gillanders says. The vaccine primes a type of white blood cell, part of the body’s adaptive immune system, to seek out and destroy cells with the mammaglobin-A protein.
[for the kids]
A new Nuclear Medicine Suite at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center is a $1.6 million addition to enhance patient care. The state-of-the-art technology allows the center’s medical teams to identify disease at its earliest stages while making the diagnosis techniques less traumatic for young patients. The suite has ambient lighting and age-appropriate distractions that can help ease anxiety and minimize the use of sedation.
[staph breakthrough]
Research conducted at Saint Louis University by MeeNgan F. Yap uncovered new information about how staph becomes resistant to antibiotics. Yap and her team learned that antibiotics are not as effective in treating staph as previously thought and that the process the bacteria uses to evade the antibiotic appears to be an evolutionary mechanism developed to delay genetic replication when beneficial. The findings were reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Yap recently was awarded a prestigious Mallinckrodt Foundation grant to continue her research.
[new kidney screening]
By measuring the presence of proteins in the urine, kidney cancer can now be detected much earlier, leading to better outcomes for patients with the disease. Principal investigator Jeremiah J. Morrissey led the Washington University study, and Dr. Evan D. Kharasch was senior author of the study, which was reported March 19 in the journal JAMA Oncology. The noninvasive screening method has the potential to save 80 percent of patients, as symptoms like blood in the urine and abdominal pain often don’t develop until later in the disease’s progression. Kidney cancer is the seventh most common cancer in men and the 10th most common in women. About 14,000 patients die from it annually.
