It's a variation on the well-established breast cancer drug Taxol, which works by inhibiting cell division.
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Millennium's test detects melastatin, a skin gene that may slow cell division, and thus inhibit tumor growth.
Lots of scientists are interested in how cells maintain this state of quiescence and then resume cell division.
Until now, though, no one has tested whether reduced calorie intake actually does result in slower cell division.
It was hoped that by hitting EGFR, the out-of-control cell division that marks cancer cells could be stopped--making chemotherapy more effective.
In both cases, he used the heavy-water method to monitor cell division.
None of the genes implicated in the spread of cancer to distant organs had to do with excessive cell division, it turned out.
The drug works by inhibiting an enzyme called the proteasome, stopping the normal progression of cell division and causing cancer cells to self-destruct.
The drugs bind to rod-like structures inside the cell called microtubules that, like moving train tracks, help chromosomes arrange and split in two during cell division.
The cell is then given a jolt of electricity to activate cell division, basically tricking the cell into doing what a fertilized egg would normally do.
While most cancer drugs work by targeting mechanisms common to all cancers, such as cell division, PM drugs hit specific genetic mutations driving the cancer's spread.
Some corneal cells rarely, if ever, reproduce through the course of a lifetime, and inducing cell division could result in a cancer-like condition of uncontrolled growth.
The team managed to recreate cell division using the model, although a single pass took almost 10 hours with MATLAB software running on a 128-core Linux cluster.
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With only the genetic material from the person to be cloned inside the shell of the egg, the cell would be jolted with electricity to activate cell division.
When the enzyme complex stops functioning, cellular clutter builds up in ways that prevents basic tasks like cell division from getting done, sometimes causing the cell to kill itself.
But even if it does work (and Dr Hellerstein has yet to prove that reduced cell division translates into longer life) the temptations of life may prove just too much for wannabe Methuselahs.
The Novartis drug suppresses a protein called MTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), which receives incoming growth signals from the surface of the cell and directs them to grow fatter, a necessary step before cell division.
It transpires that they can form during cell division at the point where DNA is being replicated, and may have a hand in the development of some cancers -- meaning they're of great interest to oncologists.
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Analysts have always assumed that Intel's cell phone division has been a money pit.
Due to its strong patent position, it also collects fees from 195 licensees, spanning most of the cell-phone industry for code-division, multiple-access technology, which is the standard communications technology in cellular networks.
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, said the number of cell phones that can receive rich media ads is going to triple in the next couple of years.
The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press both reported Friday that GM is moving the engineers -- who have been working on the fuel-cell technology in the company's advanced development laboratories division -- to the company's core production engineering division, which designs vehicles to be brought into production.
Using research from the Ohio labs of the old Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio), now a division of BP, Lee has a solid oxide cell that can be configured to run on natural gas, soy oil or farm wastes.
Now, Qualcomm is a promising telecom company with a lock on a technology (called code division multiple access) that is becoming the standard for digital cell phones.
Instead, the cells previously thought to be short lived carried on dividing, but instead of producing two flourishing cells after each division, one of the cells stops growing, leaving one remaining cell to carry on the process.
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