Another chemotherapy drug which helps treat breast cancer in its advanced stages was made recently from sea sponge. According to reports, this drug helped extend the lives of women who are suffering from metastatic breast cancer up to two and a half months. The drug, known as erubulin, was presented during the recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology which was held in Chicago.

The study’s author, Dr. Christopher Twelves, said that there is a big need for these therapies as they significantly improve the survival rate of breast cancer patients. This particular drug (Erubulin) happens to target the mechanisms which make cells divide. Previous agents used to treat breast cancer did not do this.

More than 750 women suffering from advanced breast cancer were randomly chosen for this clinical study. This included patients who have been previously treated using other therapies to treat their cancer. According to the study’s findings, there was a 23% improvement in survival when erubulin was taken. Compared to the average survival of 10.7 months using conventional treatments, patients who were given erubulin lived for another 13 months.

While erubulin can lengthen the survival period of women with metastatic breast cancer, there is no proof yet that it can actually cure the cancer. An expert in the meeting also cautioned that not all women who underwent the said clinical trial had access to other drugs released in the past years. Because the controlled group was also chosen randomly, the findings might not be that accurate.

There are a lot of clinical evidences that points out that depression makes a person more susceptible to cardiovascular diseases. Although there are studies that arrived with some facts that genes play a major role in making a person at risk for developing heart diseases.

The twins study had covered an approximately, or more than 1,200 middle-aged men, makes out a little conclusion of how genetic make-up can bring cardiovascular diseases, and this study also arrived to the fact that depression takes a major part in the pathophysiology of the disease.

Jeffrey Scherrer of Washington University and of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Louis is the head of the study. He stated that heart diseases are not only brought by depression, but also by diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol.

The twins in the study gave way to unique methods of knowing how genetic make-up can influence one’s health. Identical twins are known to share 100% of their genes, while fraternal twins have 50% of shared genes. The study of Scherrer involved identical and fraternal twins.

But according to Francois Lesperance, a psychiatrist at the University of Montreal, there is no exact evidence that will point out that treating depression would make a person have fewer chances of heart attacks. Lesperance pioneered researches that link depression to cardiovascular problems.

The treatment that is being developed will involve lower risk of cells being rejected by the body since they will be coming from the patient’s own body.

Whitehead scientists recorded success in converting the skin cells of five Parkinson’s patients into neurons that can produce dopamine, the primary neurotransmitter affected by the disease. The lack of dopamine in people with Parkinson’s disease manifest as tremors, rigidity, and difficult slowed movement.

The short term goal of the study is to reproduce dopamine producing cells and expose them to toxins which are suspected to contribute in the development of Parkinson’s. In the long run, the proponents are hoping to use the developed dopamine producing neuron in transplantation to give more meaningful years to potential Parkinson’s patients. The cells of patients afflicted with the disease are shown to have predisposition to it.

The experiments were inspired by a Japanese study in 2007 which showed that mature cells can be reprogrammed back to their embryonic stage. The tweaking involves inserting genes of embryonic cells through a carrier virus.

The team of experts this time improved on the procedure upon finding out that production of the mature cells from the tweaked embryonic state is affected by the virus in them. They have designed a way to take out the virus after completing the delivery.