- 2013
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Press releases - 26.08.2013
Neutrophils: the Unsung Heroes of Immunotherapy Cancer Treatment
Scientists at the Institut Pasteur and Inserm have identified the group of cells within the immune system that make immunotherapy treatment (therapeutic antibodies) effective. Immunotherapy is frequently used to treat breast cancer. In animal models they showed that neutrophils, the most common white blood cells in the body, are not only necessary but suffice on their own to eliminate tumor cells.
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What's on? - 23.08.2013
Man & robot : The Interspeech 2013 – August,28th – Lyon
At the IUT GMP of Lyon 1 University, researchers for the first time were able to teach an industrial robot how to perform new tasks, by explaining the task in spoken language. Combining forces from cognitive neuroscience and industrial robotics, Peter Ford Dominey (INSERM/CNRS) and Sébastien Henry (Univ Lyon 1) made the link between language […]
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Press releases - 22.08.2013
A new therapeutic strategy to combat prion and Alzheimer’s diseases
A work performed by the teams headed by Benoit Schneider and Odile Kellermann (INSERM Unit 747, team “Stem cells, Signalling and Prions”, Université Paris Descartes) as well as Jean-Marie Launay’s team (INSERM Unit 942 Hôpital Lariboisière and the FondaMental Foundation) was published this week in the magazine Nature Medicine. The article revealed that in neurons, an enzyme, the kinase PDK1, is involved in the accumulation of the pathological proteins involved in prion and Alzheimer’s diseases. The researchers show that the pharmacological inhibition of this enzyme exerts a beneficial effect towards both pathologies.
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Press releases - 20.08.2013
Testosterone responsible for worsening iron overload in chronic liver diseases
A research team from Toulouse has just elucidated the mechanisms behind the differences in iron absorption between men and women. The team used mice to demonstrate how the action of testosterone can be “countered” with a drug already used in the treatment of some bronchial cancers.
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What's on? - 14.08.2013
Cardiac tissue from stem cells
Reprogrammed stem cells have made it possible to grow functional heart tissue in the laboratory, according to a study published on Tuesday in the magazine Nature Communications. A team from the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, United States) used pluripotent induced stem cells (iPS), taken from adult human skin cells, and reprogrammed them to obtain precursors […]
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What's on? - 12.08.2013
August, 13th : World Left-handers Day
A left-hander has sensory and motor organs that are more developed on the left side, yet it is the right hemisphere of his/her brain that is dominant, the reverse of right-handed people. Physiological, hereditary and environmental factors explain the predominance of the left side in individuals. According to the World Left-handers Days site, left-handers represents […]
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Press releases - 12.08.2013
A gene has been identified that is at cause in several forms of epilepsy with language dysfunction.
A team of researchers from Inserm led by Pierre Szepetowski (INMED: “Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée” combined inserm/ University of Aix-Marseille unit) has just succeeded in identifying a gene whose mutations are responsible for a wide spectrum of epilepsies and epileptic encephalopathies with language dysfunction in children.
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News in brief - 12.08.2013
Better dosing of “good cholesterol” for greater efficacy
The measurement of cholesterol levels in an organism during medical analyses has become routine in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. In reality, the cholesterol levels are the result of a balance in the human body between “good” (HDL) cholesterol and “bad” (LDL) cholesterol. If this balance is threatened and tilts too far towards “bad cholesterol”, the […]
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Press releases - 07.08.2013
Caffeine consumption during pregnancy and its effects on the brain during development
Christophe Bernard, Inserm research director, and his team within the “1106 Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes” unit (Inserm/Aix-Marseille University), have recently described certain harmful effects after caffeine consumption by female mice during pregnancy on the brains of their offspring.
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Press releases - 29.07.2013
The way the virus continually changes complicates the development of a vaccine against HIV
A team from INSERM Mixed Research Unit 966 “Morphogenesis and Antigenicity of HI and Hepatitis Viruses” headed by Martine Braibant and Francis Barin in Tours, has confirmed, with the support of the ANRS, that the AIDS virus has gradually adapted itself to the immune response of the human population during the course of the epidemic.