Development of a fundamentally new "candidate," or potential, vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that kills about 60,000 people annually, is reported in the current issue of ACS Chemical Biology. Spread by the bite of infected female sand flies, visceral leishmaniasis infects about 500,000 people annually, with the majority of cases occurring in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan and Brazil.

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have created a new class of hybrid virus and demonstrated its ability to find, highlight, and deliver genes to tumors in mice.

A rare Patagonian rodent known as the colonial tuco-tuco fascinates biologists because it seems to defy all odds. This threatened species has so little genetic diversity that the slightest whiff of climate change or disease should have wiped it off the face of the earth long ago. Yet the hearty gopher-like creature has not only managed to survive for thousands of years in the harsh climate of the Argentine highlands, it has evolved a complex social structure that's unique among the more than 50 closely related tuco-tuco species.

Not all biological weapons are created equal. They are separated into categories A through C, category A biological agents being the scariest: They are easy to spread, kill effectively and call for special actions by the pubic health system. One of these worrisome organisms is anthrax, which has already received its fair share of media attention. But work in Vince Fischetti's laboratory at Rockefeller University suggests that a newly discovered protein could be used to fight anthrax infections and even decontaminate areas in which anthrax spores have been released.

A team of scientists announced today a critical step on the path of realizing the promise of embryonic stem (ES) cells for medicine. As described in the April 21 issue of Cell, the researchers have discovered unique molecular imprints coupled to DNA in mouse ES cells that help explain the cells' rare ability to form almost any body cell type. These imprints, or "signatures," appear near the master genes that control embryonic development and probably coordinate their activity in the early stages of cell differentiation. Not only do these findings help to unlock the basis for ES cells' seemingly unlimited potential, they also suggest ways to understand why ordinary cells are so limited in their abilities to repair or replace damaged cells.

Concerns about the use of letrozole, an easy-to-use and inexpensive drug for the treatment of infertility, appear to be unfounded, according to a major study co–authored by Dr. Togas Tulandi, Director of Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Jewish General Hospital, and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McGill University. Their findings, which are currently available in an early online edition of Fertility and Sterility, showed that babies whose mothers were treated with letrozole had the same rate of birth defects as those whose mothers were treated with clomiphene citrate – the low-risk, first-line treatment for infertility for more than 40 years.

Rush cardiologists are hoping that transplanted stem cells can regenerate damaged heart muscle in those who experience a first heart attack. The study involves an intravenous infusion of adult mesenchymal stem cells from healthy donor bone marrow that might possibly reverse damage to heart tissue.

In the lore of marathoners and extreme athletes, lactic acid is poison, a waste product that builds up in the muscles and leads to muscle fatigue, reduced performance and pain.