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Scientists identify gene that dramatically boosts yield in tomatoes

March 29, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 29 (ANI): A team of scientists has identified a gene that pushes hybrid tomato plants to spectacularly increase yield.

The yield-boosting power of this gene, which controls when plants make flowers, works in different varieties of tomato, and crucially, across a range of environmental conditions.

“This discovery has potential to have a significant impact on both the billion-dollar tomato industry, as well as agricultural practices designed to get the most yield from other flowering crops,” said Zach Lippman from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), one of the three authors on the study.

The study is co-authored by Israeli scientists Uri Krieger and Professor Dani Zamir.

The team made the discovery while hunting for genes that boost hybrid vigor, a revolutionary breeding principle that spurred the production of blockbuster hybrid crops like corn and rice a century ago.

Hybrid vigor, also known as heterosis, is the miraculous phenomenon by which intercrossing two varieties of plants produces more vigorous hybrid offspring with higher yields.

First observed by Charles Darwin in 1876, heterosis was rediscovered by CSHL corn geneticist George Shull 30 years later, but how heterosis works has remained a mystery.

Shull’s studies suggested that harmful, vigor-killing gene mutations that accumulate naturally in every generation are exposed by inbreeding, but hidden by crossbreeding.

“But there is still no consensus as to what causes heterosis,” said Lippman.

“Another theory for heterosis, supported by our discovery, postulates that improved vigor stems from only a single gene – an effect called “superdominance” or “overdominance”,” he added.

To find overdominant genes, the team developed a novel approach by turning to a vast tomato “mutant library” – a collection of 5,000 plants, each of which has a single mutation in a single gene that causes defects in various aspects of tomato growth, such as fruit size and leaf shape.

Selecting a diverse set of mutant plants, most of which produced low yield, the team crossed each mutant with its normal counterpart and searched for hybrids with improved yield.

Among several cases, the most dramatic example increased yield by 60 percent.

This hybrid, the team found, produced greater yields because there was one normal copy and one mutated copy of a single gene that produces a protein called florigen.

This protein, touted as the breakthrough discovery of the year in 2005 in Science magazine, instructs plants when to stop making leaves and start making flowers, which in turn produce fruit.

“Our results indicate that breeding with hybrid mutations could prove to be a powerful new way to increase yields, not only in tomato, but all crops,” said Lippman. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: agricultural practices, charles darwin, Cold Spring Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Crossbreeding, CSHL, Gene Mutations, Heterosis, Hybrid Crops, Hybrid Offspring, Hybrid Vigor, inbreeding, israeli scientists, Lippman, Miraculous Phenomenon, novel approach, Spring Harbor Laboratory, Tomato Industry, tomato plants, Varieties Of Tomato

New discovery may lead to improved therapies for lung disease

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 16 (ANI): Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston have discovered a protein that appears to play a crucial role in development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The protein called osteopontin (OPN) could lead to a novel approach to the treatment of a devastating lung disease.

The research conducted on mice showed that genetically removing osteopontin could prevent COPD.

The mice without the protein had less inflammation and lung disease.

“The lack of osteopontin in the mice prevented the COPD features,” said Daniel Schneider, the study’s lead author and an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at the UT Health Science Center at Houston.

To understand the applicability of their findings to humans, the researchers analyzed the airways of people with COPD and found elevated levels of the protein.

“This is an important crossover study,” said Dr Michael Blackburn, the study’s senior author and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

“Because we can show osteopontin is elevated in people with COPD, this suggests that osteopontin could serve as both an indicator of disease progression and a therapeutic target,” he added.

The findings appear online in The FASEB Journal. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: biochemistry and molecular biology, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Crossover Study, daniel schneider, department of biochemistry, department of biochemistry and molecular biology, Disease Progression, faseb journal, health science center, health science centre, Lung Disease, new discovery, novel approach, obstructive pulmonary disease, texas health science, texas medical school, therapeutic target, university of texas medical school at houston, ut health science center, ut health science center at houston

Scientists create world’s smallest semiconductor laser

September 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 31 (ANI): Researchers at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, have created the world’s smallest semiconductor laser, capable of generating visible light in a space smaller than a single protein molecule, an invention that breaks new ground in the field of optics.

The UC Berkeley team not only successfully squeezed light into such a tight space, but found a novel way to keep that light energy from dissipating as it moved along, thereby achieving laser action.

While it is traditionally accepted that an electromagnetic wave – including laser light – cannot be focused beyond the size of half its wavelength, research teams around the world have found a way to compress light down to dozens of nanometers by binding it to the electrons that oscillate collectively at the surface of metals.

This interaction between light and oscillating electrons is known as surface plasmons.

Scientists have been racing to construct surface plasmon lasers that can sustain and utilize these tiny optical excitations.

However, the resistance inherent in metals causes these surface plasmons to dissipate almost immediately after being generated, posing a critical challenge to achieving the buildup of the electromagnetic field necessary for lasing.

Zhang and his research team took a novel approach to stem the loss of light energy by pairing a cadmium sulfide nanowire – 1,000 times thinner than a human hair – with a silver surface separated by an insulating gap of only 5 nanometers, the size of a single protein molecule.

In this structure, the gap region stores light within an area 20 times smaller than its wavelength.

Because light energy is largely stored in this tiny non-metallic gap, loss is significantly diminished.

With the loss finally under control through this unique “hybrid” design, the researchers could then work on amplifying the light.

Trapping and sustaining light in radically tight quarters creates such extreme conditions that the very interaction of light and matter is strongly altered, the study authors explained.

“This work shatters traditional notions of laser limits, and makes a major advance toward applications in the biomedical, communications and computing fields,” said Xiang Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering and director of UC Berkeley’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.

The achievement helps enable the development of such innovations as nanolasers that can probe, manipulate and characterize DNA molecules; optics-based telecommunications many times faster than current technology; and optical computing in which light replaces electronic circuitry with a corresponding leap in speed and processing power.

Scientists hope to eventually shrink light down to the size of an electron’s wavelength, which is about a nanometer. (ANI)

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Indian-origin researcher tells how silver can help revolutionise wound healing

August 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 20 (ANI): An Indian-origin postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has come up with an experimental approach to wound healing that could take advantage of silver’s anti-bacterial properties, while sidestepping the damage silver can cause to cells needed for healing.

While making a presentation on the novel approach at the American Chemical Society meeting on Wednesday, Ankit Agarwal said that silver is widely used to prevent bacterial contamination in wound dressings, “but these dressings deliver a very large load of silver, and that can kill a lot of cells in the wound.”

Wound healing is a particular problem in diabetes, where poor blood supply that inhibits healing can require amputations, and also in burn wards.

Agarwal said that some burn surgeons would avoid silver dressings despite their constant concern with infection.

He said that his new approach enabled him to craft an ultra-thin material carrying a precise dose of silver.

In tests in lab dishes, the researcher found the low concentration of silver to kill 99.9999 percent of the bacteria, without damaging cells called fibroblasts that are needed to repair a wound.

Agarwal builds the experimental material from polyelectrolyte multilayers – a sandwich of ultra-thin polymers that adhere through electrical attraction.

To make the sandwich, he alternately dips a glass plate in two solutions of oppositely charged polymers, and finally adds a precise dose of silver.

“This architecture is very easily tuned to different applications,” Agarwal says, because it allows exact control of such factors as thickness, porosity and silver content.

He says that the final sandwich may range from a few nanometres to several hundred nanometres in thickness.

Nicholas Abbott, a professor of chemical and biological engineering who advises Agarwal, says during the past decade, “about a bazillion papers have been published on polyelectrolyte multilayers. It’s been a tremendous investment by material scientists, and that investment is now ripe to be exploited.”

The system is said to be so sensitive that increasing the silver dose from 0.4 percent to 1 percent of the level used in a commercial dressing severely damaged the fibroblasts.

The tiny silver nanoparticles that Agarwal embeds in the sandwich can be designed to release ions for days or weeks as needed, while commercial wound dressings contain a large dose of silver ions that are released faster and with less control.

Abbott says that the required dose of silver can also be reduced because the new material would be designed to stay in close contact with the wound.

“In a commercial dressing, the silver is part of the bandage that is placed on the wound surface. We envision this material becoming incorporated into the wound; the cells will grow over it and it will eventually decay and be absorbed into the body, much like an absorbable suture,” said the researcher.

Abbott insists that tests on animals will be needed before the new material can be tested on humans.

“A commercial dressing needs to have a large quantity of silver so it can diffuse to the wound bed, and that quantity turns out to be toxic to mammalian cells in lab dishes. We are putting the ilver where we need it, so we can use a small loading of silver, which does not exhibit toxicity to mammalian cells because the silver is precisely targeted,” Abbott said. (ANI)

Filed Under: Health News Tagged With: Ankit, Bacterial Contamination, Electrical Attraction, Exact Control, experimental approach, Experimental Material, fibroblasts, glass plate, indian origin, Lab Dishes, novel approach, Polyelectrolyte, Poor Blood Supply, Precise Dose, Silver Content, Silver Dressings, Thin Material, university of wisconsin madison, Wound Dressings, wound healing

Scientists use titanium dioxide nanoparticles to kill cancer cells, sparing healthy ones

August 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 20 (ANI): Scientists in America have developed a way to target brain cancer cells using inorganic titanium dioxide nanoparticles bonded to soft biological material.

This achievement is a result of the joint efforts of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) and the University of Chicago’s Brain Tumor Center.

Thousands of people die from malignant brain tumours every year, and the tumors are resistant to conventional therapies.

The researchers say that their nano-bio technology may eventually provide an alternative form of therapy, which targets only cancer cells and does not affect normal living tissue.

“It is a real example of how nano and biological interfacing can be used for biomedical application. We chose brain cancer because of its difficulty in treatment and its unique receptors,” said scientist Elena Rozhkova with the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The novel approach relies upon a two-pronged approach.

The researchers describe titanium dioxide as a versatile photoreactive nanomaterial that can be bonded with biomolecules.

When linked to an antibody, they say, nanoparticles recognize and bind specifically to cancer cells.

When focused visible light is shined onto the affected region, the researchers add, the localized titanium dioxide reacts to the light by creating free oxygen radicals that interact with the mitochondria in the cancer cells.

Mitochondria act as cellular energy plants, and when free radicals interfere with their biochemical pathways, mitochondria receive a signal to start cell death.

“The significance of this work lies in our ability to effectively target nanoparticles to specific cell surface receptors expressed on brain cancer cells,” said Dr. Maciej S. Lesniak, Director of Neurosurgical Oncology at University of Chicago Brain Tumor Center.

“In so doing, we have overcome a major limitation involving the application of nanoparticles in medicine, namely the potential of these agents to distribute throughout the body. We are now in a position to develop this exciting technology in preclinical models of brain tumours, with the hope of one day employing this new technology in patients,” Lesniak added.

Using X-ray fluorescence microscopy at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, the researchers have also found that the tumours’ invadopodia, actin-rich micron scale protrusions that allow the cancer to invade surrounding healthy cells, can be also attacked by the titanium dioxide.

The researchers have thus far carried out tests on cells in a laboratory setting, but animal testing is planned for the next phase.

Results show an almost 100 percent cancer cell toxicity rate after six hours of illumination, and 80 percent after 48 hours.

Also, since the antibody only targets the cancer cells, surrounding healthy cells are not affected, unlike other cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Rozhkova said that a proof of concept is demonstrated, and other cancers can be treated as well using different targeting molecules.

The expert, however, admits that the research is presently in the early stages. (ANI)

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Genetic glitch could lead to targeted therapy for neuroblastoma

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, June 25 (ANI): Scientists from University of Florida claim to have identified a genetic glitch responsible for the development of fatal childhood cancer.

They hope that the new discovery may provide a novel approach for developing treatments that target the disease also known as neuroblastoma.

“What makes our study so important is that although neuroblastoma accounts for 7 percent of childhood cancers, it is responsible for 15 percent of deaths in children with cancer,” Nature quoted Dr Wendy London, a research associate professor of epidemiology, biostatistics and health policy research at the UF College of Medicine and a member of the UF Shands Cancer Centre as saying.

“This paper adds yet another gene in the pathway that could lead to tumorigenesis (tumour formation) of neuroblastoma,” she added.

Under the supervision of Dr John J. Maris, director of the Cancer Centre at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers team conducted a genome-wide study to identify errors in DNA that could be associated with neuroblastoma.

They looked at the genetic makeup of 846 patients with neuroblastom and 803 healthy patients in a control group and found that a glitch called a “copy number variation” in a single chromosome is associated with neuroblastoma.

The copy number variation has to do with the gain, loss or duplication of snippets of DNA.

“This is part of series of papers that creates the bigger picture, an understanding of the genetic mechanisms that lead to neuroblastoma,” said London.

“We are searching for genetic targets to treat with therapy,” she added.

The researchers have also found gene called BARD1, six single-nucleotide polymorphisms – variations in tiny pieces of DNA – were also associated with neuroblastoma. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: cancer centre, childhood cancer, childhood cancers, children with cancer, college of medicine, Dr Wendy, florida claim, genetic makeup, genetic mechanisms, genetic targets, health policy research, neuroblastoma, new discovery, novel approach, nucleotide polymorphisms, research associate professor, s hospital, Tiny Pieces, Uf College, uf shands

New approach may pave way for effective HIV vaccine

May 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 23 (ANI): Using gene transfer technology, scientists have developed a new approach to overcome the biggest hurdle in the development of an effective HIV vaccine.

The researchers used gene transfer technology, which produces molecules that block infection, to successfully protect monkeys from infection by a virus closely related to HIV-the simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV-that causes AIDS in rhesus monkeys.

“We used a leapfrog strategy, bypassing the natural immune system response that was the target of all previous HIV and SIV vaccine candidates,” Nature magazine quoted study leader Dr. Philip R. Johnson, chief scientific officer at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as saying.

Johnson developed the novel approach over a ten-year period, but warned that many hurdles still remain before the technique could be translated into an HIV vaccine for humans.

Most attempts at developing an HIV vaccine have used substances aimed at stimulating the body’s immune system to produce antibodies or killer cells that would eliminate the virus before or after it infected cells in the body. But, the approach has not been proved fruitful until now.

However, the approach used in the current study was divided into two phases-in the first phase, researchers created antibody-like proteins (called immunoadhesins) that were specifically designed to bind to SIV and block it from infecting cells.

After it was proven to work against SIV in the laboratory, DNA representing SIV-specific immunoadhesins was engineered into a carrier virus designed to deliver the DNA to monkeys.

The researchers chose adeno-associated virus (AAV) as the carrier virus because it is a very effective way to insert DNA into the cells of a monkey or human.

In the second part of the study, the team injected AAV carriers into the muscles of monkeys, where the imported DNA produced immunoadhesins that entered the blood circulation.

After a month of administrating the AAV carriers, the immunized monkeys were injected with live, AIDS-causing SIV.

It was found that the majority of the immunized monkeys were completely protected from SIV infection, and all were protected from AIDS, unlike a group of unimmunized monkeys, who were infected by SIV, and two-thirds died of AIDS complications.

“To ultimately succeed, more and better molecules that work against HIV, including human monoclonal antibodies, will be needed,” said Johnson and his co-authors.

The study has appeared in the online version of Nature Medicine. (ANI)

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New approach may pave way for effective HIV vaccine

May 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 18 (ANI): Using gene transfer technology, scientists have developed a new approach to overcome the biggest hurdle in the development of an effective HIV vaccine.

Johnson developed the novel approach over a ten-year period, but warned that many hurdles still remain before the technique could be translated into an HIV vaccine for humans.

After it was proven to work against SIV in the laboratory, DNA representing SIV-specific immunoadhesins was engineered into a carrier virus designed to deliver the DNA to monkeys.

The researchers chose adeno-associated virus (AAV) as the carrier virus because it is a very effective way to insert DNA into the cells of a monkey or human.

In the second part of the study, the team injected AAV carriers into the muscles of monkeys, where the imported DNA produced immunoadhesins that entered the blood circulation.

After a month of administrating the AAV carriers, the immunized monkeys were injected with live, AIDS-causing SIV.

“To ultimately succeed, more and better molecules that work against HIV, including human monoclonal antibodies, will be needed,” said Johnson and his co-authors.

The study has appeared in the online version of Nature Medicine. (ANI)

Scientists unveil novel approach to study Parkinson’s treatment

April 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 17 (ANI): Stanford University researchers claim that they have identified a specific group of cells that can be direct targets of deep brain stimulation (DBS), a Parkinson’s treatment.

Lead researcher Karl Deisseroth attributes this advance to a technique to systematically characterize disease circuits in the brain.

The researcher says that the NSF-funded technology, termed optogenetics, enabled them to precisely control individual components of the circuit implicated in Parkinson’s disease.

The novel technology uses light-activated proteins, originally isolated from bacteria, in combination with genetic approaches to control specific parts of the brain.

It is a vast improvement over previous methods because it allows researchers to precisely stimulate neurons, and measure the effect of treatment simultaneously in animals with Parkinson’s-like symptoms.

Deisseroth’s team found that they could reduce disease symptoms by preferentially activating neurons that link to the subthalamic nucleus region of the brain.

The researchers first treated these specific cells in a way that made them sensitive to stimulation by blue light, and then implanted an optical fibre in the brain.

When researchers rapidly flashed blue light inside the animals’ brains the disease symptoms improved.

They said that treating with slower flashes of light actually made the symptoms worse, and targeting other kinds of cells had no effect at all, indicating both proper cell type and stimulation frequency are crucial components of effective treatment.

According to the research team, flashing blue light on portions of the same neurons found closer to the outer surface of the brain had an effect similar to treatment deep within the brain, raising the possibility that researchers may be able to develop treatments that are less invasive than current options.

Deisseroth said: “The brain is an electrical device, but it is a very complicated device. Think of it as an orchestra without sections: all of the types of instruments, or cells, are mixed together. Treatments like DBS are unrefined, in that they stimulate all of the cells or instruments. The optogenetic approach allows us to control stimulation of specific cells in the brain on the appropriate timescale, much like a conductor directing specific sections of an orchestra at the appropriate time.”

He added: “We need to understand the players before we can develop effective treatment strategies.”

An article on the research team’s work has been published in the journal Science. (ANI)

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Novel approach to turn skin cells into stem cells without cancer risk

March 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 27 (ANI): American scientists have made a significant advance in finding a way to endow human skin cells with embryonic stem cell-like properties without inserting potentially problematic new genes into their DNA.

Dr. James A. Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose team was supported in part by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, claims that this is the first time that any research group has endowed skin cells with the capacity to develop into any of the roughly 220 types of cells in the body-a process known as induced pluripotency-without using viruses.

He says that this work attains significance considering the fact that viruses can insert potentially harmful genes into the cells’ genetic material and trigger cancer.

Thomson’s new method imports the necessary genes on a small circle of DNA known as a plasmid.

Over time, the plasmid disappears naturally from the cell population, avoiding the danger posed by using viruses.

Pluripotent cells are viewed as invaluable to studies of normal and disease processes and to understanding the effects of certain drugs.

Thomson says that such cells may come to be used therapeutically in future, and replace the cells affected by diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s or lost to traumatic injuries.(ANI)

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Self-assembly of molecules may offer new therapeutic treatments

February 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, February 15 (ANI): Northwestern University researchers have come up with an approach to deal with some of the major health problems-gather raw materials and then let them self-assemble into structures that can address a multitude of medical needs.

Samuel I. Stupp, whose laboratory has devised the novel approach, says that at the core of the research are peptide amphiphiles (PA), small synthetic molecules that Stupp first developed seven years ago, which have been essential in his work on regenerative medicine.

The researcher says that tailoring these molecules and combining them with others can help make a wide variety of structures that may provide new treatments for medical issues including spinal cord injuries, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.

Ramille M. Capito, a research assistant professor in Stupp’s lab, recently discovered that combining the PA molecules with hyaluronic acid (HA), a biopolymer readily found in the human body in places like joints and cartilage, resulted in an instant membrane structure in the form of self-assembling sacs.

During a presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Chicago on Saturday, the researchers revealed that they had found the sac membrane to have hierarchical order from the nanoscale to microscale giving it unique physical properties.

Writing as to how they created a sac in the journal Science, the researchers revealed that they took advantage of the fact that HA molecules are larger and heavier than the smaller PA molecules.

In a deep vial, Capito pipetted the PA solution and onto that injected the HA solution.

She revealed that, as the heavier molecules sank, the lighter molecules engulfed them and created a closed sac with the HA solution trapped inside the membrane.

After creating the sacs, Capito studied human stem cells engulfed by the self-assembly process inside sacs that she placed in culture, and found that the cells remained viable for up to four weeks, that a large protein-a growth factor important in the signalling of stem cells-could cross the membrane, and that the stem cells were able to differentiate.

Making a clever demonstration of self-repair, if the sac’s membrane had a hole, Capito simply placed a drop of the PA solution on the tear, which interacted with the HA inside, resulting in self-assembly and a sealed hole.

While the underlying, highly ordered structures of the sacs and membranes have dimensions on the nanoscale, the sacs and membranes themselves can be of any dimension and are visible to the naked eye.

The researchers say that such sacs can be tailored to include bioactive regions, which would allow them to incorporate a variety of designs into one sac structure.

According to them, this capability opens the door to the creation of new methods for stem cell delivery. Stem cells can be loaded in the sac, which can be tailored to release the cells at the point of injury, they add. (ANI)

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Mama whales teach babies where to eat

February 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 9 (ANI): Biologists at the University of Utah, US, have discovered that young “right whales” learn from their mothers where to eat in the seas.

The new study used genetic and chemical isotope evidence to show that mothers teach their calves where to go for food.

“Southern right whales consume enormous amounts of food and have to travel vast distances to find adequate amounts of small prey,” said study coauthor Jon Seger, professor of biology at the University of Utah.

“This study shows that mothers teach their babies in the first year of life where to go to feed in the immensity of the ocean,” he added.

The study tracked how whales are related by analyzing maternal DNA, and then compared that with dietary information obtained by characterizing different forms or isotopes of chemical elements in their skin.

The two techniques, which the researchers say they used together for the first time, allowed the scientists to determine that whale mothers, their offspring and other extended family members eat in the same place.

According to Luciano Valenzuela, a postdoctoral researcher in biology who led the study as part of his doctoral thesis at Utah, “North Atlantic right whales feed in similar patterns and scientists have access to their feeding areas, but we don’t know where South Atlantic whales are feeding, so we had to use a combination of techniques to track this down.”

Rather than searching for right whale feeding grounds visually, the scientists took a novel approach.

During September and October of 2003 through 2006, Valenzuela collected small skin samples using a punch device that doesn’t harm the animals.

From the skin samples, Valenzuela analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from the mother.

The DNA revealed family relationships among whales. The researchers were able to distinguish individual whales by the patterns of whitish, callous-like material on their heads.

The skin samples also were analyzed for different forms or isotopes of carbon and nitrogen.

The isotopes, which are present in food, are deposited in different tissues of the body after consumption. Food from any given location has a unique isotope “signature.”

That made it possible to determine which whales fed in the same place without actually knowing where the feeding areas were.

Together, the DNA and isotope data revealed which whales were related and where each animal fed.

“The main result is that individuals from particular families have very specific isotope pattern showing that animals from specific lineages feed in the same area,” Valenzuela said. (ANI)

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Chemicals called opioids found to relieve neuropathic pain in mice

January 14, 2009 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

Washington, January 13 (ANI): Conducting experiments on mice, a group of German researchers has shown that chemicals known as opiods reduce the symptoms of neuropathic pain.

Halina Machelska and colleagues, at Freie Universitat Berlin, describe neuropathic pain as the pain that is associated with injury to nerves, such as caused by the trauma of amputation, entrapment, and compression.

The researchers point out that it can be extremely debilitating, and treatments show limited or no effectiveness.

They also reveal that nerve injury underlying neuropathic pain is associated with an inflammatory response, and immune cells are thought to be contributors to the pain.

For their study, the researchers conducted experiments with a mouse model of neuropathic pain.

Based on their observations, the researchers came to the conclusion that selectively targeting opioid-containing immune cells at sites of nerve injury could provide natural pain relief, and offer a novel approach for neuropathic pain. (ANI)

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