Monthly Archives: December 2009

If you are a supplement follower, you may have already read a newspaper article today on the major study on Ginkgo and cognition just reported in JAMA.  Here is a firsthand copy of the abstract of the original article Ginkgo … Continue reading →

A number of interesting studies related to calorie restriction (CR) have shown up recently.   I will discuss a few of these studies here, particularly ones relating CR to cancers.   I will discuss additional studies relating CR to gene activation in … Continue reading →

A news item appeared this week citing mortality and morbidity statistics for patients who undergo abdominal surgery.  This led me to probe a bit into how surgery risks increase with age and even to speculate on why.  First of all, … Continue reading →

Genetics, genomics, epigenetics and epigenomics are important recurrent topics in the writing of this blog.  The discussions have included many examples of longevity-related  genes, “shortivity” genes, cancer and inflammation-related genes, gene silencing and gene mutations.  For reference purposes I list … Continue reading →

A news item appeared this week saying that British researchers have succeeded in creating complete genome mappings for normal tissues, lung-cancer tissues and melanoma tissues in a single patient.  While the result is an exciting breakthrough in one sense, it … Continue reading →

I have covered a number of new-science approaches to detecting, preventing or curing cancers in this blog and in other writings.  The context was set in an early blog entry From four-pound hammer to smart molecules – on cancer treatments.  … Continue reading →

Newly-reported research involves progress in disabling cancer stem cells via the notch pathway.  Regarding cancer stem cells, see the blog entry Big pharma is targeting cancer stem cells. “As I wrote in my July 2009 post On cancer stem cells, … Continue reading →

The nanotechnology and epigenomics fields are barely 10 years old.  Both show enormous future potential.  An important application has recently emerged that involves both of them as pointed out in a recent research announcement New DNA Test Uses Nanotechnology to … Continue reading →

The concept here is engineering stem cells so they differentiate into body cells that target, go after and kill “bad” cells, such as cells infected with HIV or cancer cells.  It is a fairly new approach.  Since stem cells have … Continue reading →

I remember an old Star Trek movie where severely debilitated people without functional vocal chords could readily speak to each other by merely thinking their sentences.  Recent research is bringing us closer to having such a capability.  The article A … Continue reading →