utenzi

In a weird and deadly twist, cells thought to protect against cancer may actually promote it. Macrophages, a component of our immune system, should help fight and kill cancer cells. Instead there's recent evidence that these macrophages, or at least a subpopulation of them, actually help malignant cancer cells spread to distant sites in a process called metastasis. According to a press release from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Jeffrey W. Pollard, Ph.D., one of their research professors, has shown that macrophages can act at the primary tumor site to enhance tumor progression and malignancy. So they've shown that macrophages can essentially become traitors, enhancing the worst aspect of cancer... metastatic tumor growth. According to the press release: Dr. Pollard and his colleagues propose that their discovery offers a potentially useful new target for anti-cancer therapy. What they've found is a vulnerable step in the cancer process that might be blocked by dr...

For as long as I can remember, people have looked down on folk that drank wine from a box . That's probably because boxed wine is typically cheap and sold in grocery stores. Just not any snob appeal there. But this might change soon. It seems that some scientists in Canada are reporting that multilayer aseptic cartons of wine (aka "boxed wines") may help reduce levels of substances that contribute odors to wine and can lower its quality. Neat, huh? Here's the reference if you want to read about it. Dr. Gary Pickering , Chair & Professor of Biological Sciences/Wine Science at Brock University has conducted research showing that trace amounts of chemicals called alkyl-methoxypyrazines are generally negative to wine quality. The chemicals give wine an unpleasant green taste by masking the desirable fruity and floral flavors. Pickering's results? Boxed wine had less alkyl-methoxypyrazines -- up to 45 percent less -- than any other type of packaging. Pretty impre...

Two weeks ago I talked about some staining I was doing but never showed a picture from the final rinse. Here's one of the slides that I didn't use in my presentation. That post also talked about an injury to my hand and that's still bothering me a little. Fortunately it's almost healed. I hate it when boo-boos last several weeks. Usually I heal faster. On the other hand, I seem to have found a new problem. I might be having issues with mitral valve prolapse. It sure does make taking my morning pulse a lot more interesting.

It's been a while since I posted anything from work so here's a few pictures I took today. This first one is the "staining flesh" part of the title. I tripped on a rubber mat that had come up from the floor. I didn't hit the floor. Fortunately I broke my fall using my hand on a bench top, however there was a centrifuge key there and it poked into my hand pretty hard when my weight came down on it. It didn't break my skin, but as you can see, there's already a black and blue mark forming from blood under the surface of the skin. It's also quite sore, swollen, and hard to the touch. It's going to be fun using it tomorrow! On to "staining slides" which is a much better topic than staining flesh. *ouch* This first picture is of 20 breast tumor slides (8 from mice and 12 from women) being boiled in citra buffer. This process brings antigens to the surface of the cells on the slide. That allows for better staining since the antibody-antigen com...

This has been an interesting week or two. We've been on the point of publishing some of our research for a number of months and just recently two lines of work showed really interesting results--as a result my boss decided to pull the trigger and get our results into print. So the past couple of weeks have had me chained to my laptop, carrying it with me everywhere I go, and endlessly making and remaking graphics in Prism (presentation graphics for research), Illustrator, and Photoshop. Gotta love it. My limited chance to link back to my "arty" days when I did some design work at dot com companies. Not as much creativity in science graphics but you take what you can, y'know? Today, after my boss and I uploaded her article and my graphics onto the publisher's server, we had a little international incident here in the lab... You see, we've been in this room at UNC for a bit over 4 months. The MD that was located here in this room previously had left for another ...

I spent too much time on this today not to show it to a wider audience. Please forgive me for not including the line legends. Until we publish, my boss is rather guarded about things like that. Essentially each graph is plotting one or more bioactive peptides against control (no drug) in a cell line. We're measuring how effective the peptides are at discouraging the growth of cancer cells in the 3 cell lines (ME, HCAE, and 2H11). The more difference between the two lines, the happier it makes us 'cause the peptide is differentially affecting the cancer cells. ...and they pay me to do this stuff. Cool, eh?

This is using a tri-chrome stain. The red is muscle and vascular tissue. The blue is adipose tissue and a special material we're using in our assay. The final color is black which stains the nuclei, but this magnification isn't high enough to see them.

It's Friday the 13th today. Yesterday saw this area banked in with nasty smoke from wildfires near the coast. They'd been suffering the effects of those fires for nearly a week but it was our first taste of it here, a couple of hours away from the coast. I can't say I liked it. But since today's a lot better, I'm wondering if it was Thursday the 12th that was unlucky--at least in this area of NC. It was quite murky here in the Chapel Hill area but just 30 miles to the East in Raleigh apparently it was dark enough to force people to use headlights while driving : Many drivers switched on their headlights in the middle of the day to help negotiate streets around Raleigh and be seen by other drivers. "Most of the cars have their lights on today. I noticed it in commuting across the city," driver Dave Bamford said. The smoky conditions definitely got everyone's attention on Thursday. The smoke prompted more than 300 people to call Wake County 911 on Thurs...

According to research conducted at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, drinking alcohol cuts the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis by as much as 50%. The results will appear in a future issue of the A nnals of the Rheumatic Diseases though they have released the gist of the findings ahead of print. The Karolinska Institute assessed 2,750 people in two studies, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases reports. The risk was up to 50% lower for those who drank the equivalent of five glasses of wine a week compared with those who drank the least, they found. Rheumatoid arthritis , an auto-immune disease caused by a malfunctioning immune system, is a condition which results in tender, stiff and swollen joints. It affects 400,000 people in the UK. The incidence of Rheumatoid arthritis is in the region of 3 cases per 10,000 population per annum. Onset is uncommon under the age of 15 and from then on the incidence rises with age until the age of 80. Women are affected three to five times as often...

For anyone that is interested out there, I'm almost over my cold. I've been to work both days this week as well as last Friday. Today was the first day that I've spent over 8 hours there though and the difference was telling. Once I got home I laid down--just for a minute!--when I got home at 6pm and the next thing I knew the phone ringing woke me up at 7pm. 10 minutes or so on the phone, during which I fell asleep momentarily twice, and then back to sleep until 11pm! Man, that's as much sleep as I usually get in a full night and it's not even midnight yet. Damn. As for these pictures, the one above is for people who've seen my house. Clear counter space isn't something I'm known for. This is proof that my clutter-free project is showing results! The second picture is my breakfast from Tuesday morning. People who know me realize that "breakfast" isn't a work normally in my vocabulary. For some odd reason I woke up this morning at 6am and ...

My boss took me out to lunch yesterday and a few people that consult with us went also. Roti Canai: Crispy Indian style pancake and curry chicken dipping sauce. We had lunch at a local Thai restaurant that my boss really loves. She's really into Thai food but neither her husband nor daughter likes it so she doesn't get to go very often. These holiday lunches are a good chance for her to eat Thai and since it's a business lunch the department picks up the tab. Thanks, department! Penang Satay: Marinated chicken or beef, grilled on skewers, served with peanut sauce. The dishes at Penang are very tasty though I avoid the spicier ones. The two dishes pictured above and to the left are appetizers that we had. We also had two others but they weren't as pretty. :-) The picture below is the main course that I had. I didn't take pictures of anyone else's lunch though Peter's did tempt me. He had some squid in his dish and they seemed very photogenic. But I decid...

Here's an excerpt from a science item in today's news: Scientists think they have discovered the energy source of the spectacular color displays seen in the northern lights. New data from NASA's Themis mission, a quintet of satellites launched this winter, found the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun. The energy is then abruptly released in the form of a shimmering display of lights visible in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, said principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles. I think the scientists have overlooked the obvious. Santa's workshop, of course. Think about how much energy is expended there and the obvious need to entertain those hard working elves. You gotta figure television reception is lousy up there so Santa came up with those pretty lights in the sky...

It's been a busy week at work but not a lot else going on. This little maple seems to be the highlight of my yard. For the most part the autumn colors have been weak and uninteresting in this section of NC but this little maple didn't hear the news and made a nice display for me to enjoy. It's not truly red, for that you need to look lower to see the cardinal pictured below. I took that picture a few days ago and the picture of the maple was taken just a few minutes ago. It seems strange to have Thanksgiving already knocking at our door. Having Turkey Day on the 22nd just seems too early. Next year it'll be on the 27th and that seems more "right" to me. That's what comes of having the first day of November on a Thursday, I guess. I was hoping to take Wednesday off and head out of town a day early but now it appears I'll be doing a lot of Westerns next week and I'll need all 3 days to get in a bunch of gels. Maybe if I get lucky and the antibody co...

I've not posted in a couple of days. I've just not felt very inspired. It's probably the whole "back to work" thing. Those three weeks I took off were so enjoyable that being back at work is sapping my will to live. Not to mention my will to blog . Work has been interesting this week. I've been getting all my cultures back up to speed again but most of my work this week has been in support of other lab members as well as creating graphics for my boss. I tend to like playing with Photoshop so that part of the week's labor was enjoyable. On the other hand, unfortunately our CAM assay isn't working yet and there's been a lot of frustrating troubleshooting trying to correct that situation. We're hoping that the problem lies in excessive CO2 levels since that's easily fixable. As is, we only have enough time before the Thanksgiving holiday to get in one more run on that... and maybe one after that before the Xmas holidays. At least the cell cu...

I read an article today on a ZDNet blog about how Apple Computer orchestrated a smear campaign on the web, and to a lesser degree in the national media, aimed at two computer researchers and the company they worked for. The actual person behind it, according to George Ou , the author of the blog, was Lynn Fox, an Apple PR director. Apparently in an attempt to dissemble in the face of growing technical problems, Fox tried to blame a glitch in the Apple OS that allowed certain forms of wireless hacking into Apples on the two researchers that happened to first describe it. In fact even months later Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X. However, possibly in retaliation for the unfair attack on the two researchers, David Maynor and Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch, the security research community responded to Apple's behavior with the MoAB (Month of Apple Bugs) and released a flood of zero-day exploits without giving Apple any notification. In ca...