Scientists at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have constructed a computer simulation that allows them to study the relationship between biochemical fluctuations within a single cell and the cell's behavior as it interacts with other cells and its environment.

The simulation, called AgentCell, has possible applications in cancer research, drug development and combating bioterrorism. Other simulations of biological systems are limited to the molecular level, the single-cell level or the level of bacterial populations. AgentCell can simultaneously simulate activity on all three scales, something its creators believe no other software can do.

Remember how it felt the last time you burned your finger on a hot stove? Imagine what it's like to have that burning pain in your hands or feet all the time and know there's virtually nothing you can do about it.

David Fink, M.D.It's called neuropathic pain, and it's a common complication of many diseases and medical conditions, especially diabetes. Drugs have little effect on this type of pain, which is caused by damage to sensory neurons that transmit pain, temperature and touch signals to and from the brain.

Continued arctic warming may be causing a decrease in the number and size of Arctic lakes. The issue is the subject of a paper published in the June 3 issue of the journal "Science." The paper, titled, "Disappearing Arctic Lakes" is the result of a comparison of satellite data taken of Siberia in the early 1970s to data from 1997-2004. Researchers, including Larry Hinzman with the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, tracked changes of more than 10,000 large lakes over 200,000 square miles.

Today, the most common childhood cancer is cured in about 80 percent of patients; only forty years ago, this number was closer to five percent. In efforts to further increase the survival rate, researchers from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Chicago studied how an individual's genetics might play a role in the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs. Their findings will be published in the June 15, 2005, issue of Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology.

A University of Alberta research team has discovered important new information they hope will lead to more effective treatments for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)--a deadly form of high blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries caused by uncontrolled cell growth. Therapies are currently limited for a disease that can lead to heart failure and death within a few years.

Abnormal prion proteins are little understood disease agents involved in causing horrific brain-wasting diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in people, mad cow disease in cattle and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk. Now, new research suggests that a variant form of abnormal prion protein--one lacking an "anchor" into the cell membrane--may be unable to signal cells to start the lethal disease process, according to scientists at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health.