Novel brain tumor vaccine acts like bloodhound to locate cancer cells

A national clinical trial testing the efficacy of a novel brain tumor vaccine has begun at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, the only facility in the Southeast to participate.

The vaccine will be tested in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most aggressive and highest grade malignant glioma. Wake Forest Baptist will treat a minimum of 25 patients in this randomized, placebo-controlled phase II clinical trial of ICT-107. A total of 20 sites across the country are participating in the trial to test the safety and efficacy of this novel cancer vaccine.

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UCLA neuroscientists demonstrate crucial advances in ‘brain reading’

At UCLA’s Laboratory of Integrative Neuroimaging Technology, researchers use functional MRI brain scans to observe brain signal changes that take place during mental activity. They then employ computerized machine learning (ML) methods to study these patterns and identify the cognitive state — or sometimes the thought process — of human subjects. The technique is called “brain reading” or “brain decoding.”

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Scientists discover how brain corrects bumps to body

Researchers have identified the area of the brain that controls our ability to correct our movement after we’ve been hit or bumped — a finding that may have implications for understanding why subjects with stroke often have severe difficulties moving.

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Bioengineering yields new approaches for diagnosing and treating traumatic brain injury

Bioengineering — the application of engineering principles to understand and treat medical conditions — is delivering innovative solutions for diagnosing and repairing damage to the brain caused by a traumatic injury. A broad sample of these new, cutting-edge techniques is presented in a special issue of Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com) The entire issue is available online at http:// www.liebertpub.com/neu

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Phase I trial begins using gene therapy and bone marrow stem cells in the treatment of brain cancer

Initiated by Lentigen and UH Case Medical Center

Cleveland, OH. and Gaithersburg, MD. – University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Lentigen Corporation announced today the initiation of a novel Phase I clinical trial of LG631 gene therapy for the protection of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from the dose limiting toxicity of chemotherapy with Temodar.

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Einstein study indicates brain plays role in regulating blood sugar in humans

November 7, 2011 — (Bronx, NY) — Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have demonstrated for the first time that the brain is a key player in regulating glucose (sugar) metabolism in humans. The findings, published today in the online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, suggest that drugs targeting the brain and central nervous system could be a novel approach to treating diabetes.

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Zinc’s role in the brain

Zinc plays a critical role in regulating how neurons communicate with one another, and could affect how memories form and how we learn. The new research, in the current issue of Neuron, was authored by Xiao-an Zhang, now a chemistry professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), and colleagues at MIT and Duke University.

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How the brain makes memories: Rhythmically!

The brain learns through changes in the strength of its synapses — the connections between neurons — in response to stimuli.

Now, in a discovery that challenges conventional wisdom on the brain mechanisms of learning, UCLA neuro-physicists have found there is an optimal brain “rhythm,” or frequency, for changing synaptic strength. And further, like stations on a radio dial, each synapse is tuned to a different optimal frequency for learning.

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Study finds bidirectional relationship between schizophrenia and epilepsy

Researchers from Taiwan have confirmed a bidirectional relation between schizophrenia and epilepsy. The study published today in Epilepsia, a journal of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), reports that patients with epilepsy were nearly 8 times more likely to develop schizophrenia and those with schizophrenia were close to 6 times more likely to develop epilepsy.

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Stanford researchers identify possible trigger point of epileptic seizures

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a brain-circuit defect that triggers absence seizures, the most common form of childhood epilepsy.

In a study to be published online Aug. 21 in Nature Neuroscience, the investigators showed for the first time how defective signaling between two key brain areas — the cerebral cortex and the thalamus — can produce, in experimental mice, both the intermittent, brief loss of consciousness and the roughly three-times-per-second brain oscillations that characterize absence seizures in children. Young patients may spontaneously experience these seizures up to hundreds of times per day, under quite ordinary circumstances.

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