A fully automated process is designed to improve the production of artificial tissue: skin made in the lab can be used by medical professionals for transplantation. It is also possible to inexpensively test chemicals without animal experiments on this tissue.
Will a new generation of anti-cancer drugs currently in clinical trials harm more than they help? A discovery Würzburg scientists suggests this suspicion. Further investigations are therefore urgently needed.
Nervous disorders of the intestine can have genetic causes. Scientists from the Institute of Human Genetics at the University Hospital Heidelberg have discovered this connection. So far, the causes of the so-called irritable bowel syndrome, one of the most common diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, as unclear - which greatly complicates diagnosis and therapy. The Heidelberg results published in the prestigious journal "Human Molecular Genetics" improve the prospects for a powerful drug for a condition that is often trivialized as a functional disorder.
Glioblastoma is one of the most common but also most aggressive brain tumors and usually leads to death quickly. It consists of different cell types and their precursors, which makes successful treatment difficult. To fight the driving force behind the tumor, the tumor stem cells, researchers are trying to drive the tumor cells into suicide, programmed cell death.
More and more people around the world are dying from being infected with both HIV and tuberculosis. The worldwide growing threat from the co-infection of the two life-threatening diseases was the focus of the international symposium of the Koch-Metschnikow-Forum "HIV & TB - a deadly alliance" on Monday evening in Berlin.
A research team at the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene (IMMH) of the University Hospital Freiburg identified a new population of immune cells. This discovery could be pointing the way for new therapeutic strategies chronic inflammatory bowel disease. To the research team from IMMH include Stephanie Sano, Viet Lac Bui, Arthur Mortha, Karin Oberle, Charlotte Heners and Prof. Dr. Andreas Diefenbach. Also working on the project Caroline Johner from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg. The results of the research group are published in the current online edition of the scientific journal "Nature Immunology" that. Since 23 will be held November 2008 posted on the Internet (www.nature.com/ni/journal/vaop/ncurrent/index.html).
A scientific study at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg is: The number of births is not influenced by the moon. Dr. Oliver Kiss has it analyzed more than four million births.