Physicians at Emory University School of Medicine are conducting a clinical trial using stem cells generated within the bone marrow to grow new blood vessels that could improve circulation in patients with blockages in the arteries of their legs -- a condition called peripheral vascular disease (PVD). Individuals with PVD have decreased blood flow to the muscles of the legs, especially during exercise, which causes pain, aching, cramping or fatigue in the muscles of their legs when they walk. This condition also is called "intermittent claudication". The Emory team, led by cardiologist Arshed A. Quyyumi, MD, and cardiology fellow Veerappan Subramaniyam, MD, is using colony stimulating factors (growth factors), to prod the bone marrow to release a type of stem cells called endothelial progenitor cells, which are used by the body to form new blood vessels or to repair damaged ones.

Medication against nicotine addiction is nowadays readily available. However, a similar and equally dangerous addiction, alcoholism, can't yet be controlled by drugs. Or can it be? Researchers from the University of California in San Diego identified a natural compound able to block alcohol addiction in rodents. We can only hope that anti-alcoholism patchs or gum will be available in a close future; it would help fix a problem that we've been struggling with for ages. A naturally occurring hallucinogen advocated by some clinicians as a potent anti-addiction drug has been rigorously studied for the first time, confirming its ability to block alcohol craving in rodents, and clarifying how it works in the brain. The new research findings about the drug Ibogaine open the way for development of other drugs to reverse addiction without Ibogaine's side effects, potentially adding to the small arsenal of drugs that effectively combat addiction.

Currently available lines of human embryonic stem cells have been contaminated with a non-human molecule that compromises their potential therapeutic use in human subjects, according to research by investigators at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. In a study published online January 23, 2005 in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers found that human embryonic stem cells, including those currently approved for study under federal funding in the U.S., contain a non-human, cell-surface sialic acid called N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc), even though human cells are genetically unable to make it. In a related paper published November 29, 2004 by the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), the Varki group has also discovered the exact cellular mechanism by which this occurs.

Along with aiding efforts to study addicted smokers, a new drug that attaches only to areas of the brain that have been implicated in nicotine addiction may help studies of people battling other disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. Developed by UC Irvine Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center scientists, the new drug – Nifrolidine – is a selective binding agent that identifies specific areas of the brain responsible for decision-making, learning and memory. Lead researcher Jogeshwar Mukherjee, UCI associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior, developed Nifrolidine to measure a subtype of nicotine receptors in the living brain by using an imaging technique, positron emission tomography, more commonly known as PET scans. After proving the drug’s effectiveness, Mukherjee believes the drug will have implications for other conditions, as well.