Breast cancer that spreads often infiltrates bone, causing fractures and intense pain. In such cases, chemotherapy is ineffective because the environment of the bone protects the tumor, even as the drug has toxic side effects elsewhere in the body. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a nanoparticle that…
Rogue Breast Tumor Proteins Point to Potential Drug Therapies
Popular Heartburn Drugs Linked to Gradual Yet ‘Silent’ Kidney Damage
Taking popular heartburn drugs for prolonged periods has been linked to serious kidney problems, including kidney failure. The sudden onset of kidney problems often serves as a red flag for doctors to discontinue their patients’ use of so-called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), which are sold under the brand names Prevacid, Prilosec, Nexium and Protonix, among…
New Technique Aids Search for Genetic Roots of Disease
Some 10 million points of genetic variation are scattered across a molecule of DNA, and those variations make us who we are as individuals. But in some cases, those variants contribute to diseases, and it’s a major challenge for scientists to distinguish between harmless variants and those that are potentially hazardous to our health. Now,…