Discovery's Edge Fall Issue

Monday, September 15, 2008

Here are highlights from the fall issue of Discovery's Edge, Mayo Clinic's research magazine. You may cite and link to this publication as often as you wish. Reprinting is allowed with proper attribution. Please include the following subscription information as your editorial policies permit: Visit Discovery's Edge for subscription information.

Mayo Clinic Aims 'Gold Bullets' to Save Lives

"Do something, because people are dying."

Those words from a physician colleague at Mayo Clinic spurred Debabrata Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D., to work even harder at using gold nanoparticles — gold bullets — to deliver tumor-killing drugs to the right place in a patient's body. Not only will the technique make the drugs more effective, but it will limit toxicity to other parts of the body.

Nanoparticles — roughly 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair — pack a lot of therapeutic power. They have a large surface area and strong bonding properties, allowing researchers to load onto them anti-cancer drugs, as well as agents that target drug delivery to a specific disease site. Gold's bonding properties also help the drugs stay on-site rather than dissociate into the bloodstream.

See the full article at: Nanomedicine: Treating disease with gold bullets and nanorods

Cocaine Rescue

Cocaine can be lethal. In first-time users and confirmed addicts, even small doses can cause heart attack, stroke, seizure and death. There has been no known antidote until now. A Mayo Clinic team, led by Stephen Brimijoin, Ph.D., has restructured a naturally occurring enzyme to prevent cocaine metabolism in laboratory animals. By blocking the state of euphoria caused by cocaine, the antidote also may help prevent drug relapse, which occurs in 80 percent of former addicts who undergo rehabilitation. The research team is preparing to transfer their findings into a potential therapy for cocaine addiction that could prevent cocaine-related deaths.

See the full article at: Cocaine Rescue

Prevention Approaches for HIV

Once HIV invades a cell's DNA, it's impossible to remove it. Preventing HIV from lodging in a cell's DNA is the goal of one Mayo Clinic research team. The investigators discovered that a specific protein is involved in this integration. They hope their work will lead to a new therapy for HIV. A second Mayo team is focusing on preventing infection well before integration by developing vaccines that will provide a barrier to block the virus at the site of entry.

See the full article at: Prevention Approaches for HIV

Asthma's Immune Response

Two Mayo research teams are proposing innovative ideas for asthma treatments — and perhaps even a cure. Mayo Clinic investigators have discovered that an antibody previously identified as a treatment for cancer also diminishes the overactive immune responses patients experience in asthma. Attacking asthma from another angle, a different Mayo research team is studying cellular mechanisms in the smooth muscle of the airways that contribute to asthma symptoms.

See the full article at: Asthma Immune Response: How a Cancer Antibody Diminishes It and Airway Smooth Muscle Cells Influence It

Discovery's Edge, Mayo Clinic's online research magazine, highlights stories of leading medical investigators. Many features cover ongoing projects long before they reach the journals. Science writers and medical reporters seeking story ideas will want to check out the articles, which span a wide range of conditions and feature visuals they can use in their own publications.

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To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. MayoClinic.com is available as a resource for your health stories.