Every week of the year, countless scientific papers are published in hundreds of journals. Some articles simply replicate the work of other researchers, which is an important part of the scientific process because it ensures accuracy. However, many articles are groundbreaking in their fields or even across disciplines.
In each issue, this section tries to highlight a few of the most recent and most exciting stories, especially those that come out of Hopkins, but there are always many more that we have to leave out. Here are three noteworthy breakthrough we have missed over the last few months.
Cancer
Many diseases can only be treated with one precisely targeted medication. Researchers at the Hopkins Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center have found a surprising new way to battle brain cancer by combining two very different drugs.
The research team, led by Charles Eberhart, a medical doctor and scientist in the Hopkins School of Medicine's Departments of Oncology, Ophthalmology and Pathology, published its findings in the January issue of the American Journal of Pathology.
Researchers from the cancer team encountered powerful results when they combined lovastatin, a therapeutic drug used to lower cholesterol levels, with cyclopamine, a drug that battles cancer by blocking cell proliferation pathways in various cancers.
While these drugs could only kill 15 to 20 percent of a brain tumor known as medulloblastoma when used alone, when combined they killed 63 percent of the cells that make up the tumor. Other therapies used to battle this tumor are highly toxic and produce only minimal results.
Lovastatin and cyclopamine each battles cancer in a different way. Cyclopamine inhibits pathways that allow cancer cells to divide and grow. A tumor is essentially a group of cells that have lost the ability to control their division.
Lovastatin produces proteins that encourage cancer cells to undergo apoptosis, or cell death. This function of lovastatin appears to be distinct from its anti-cholesterol abilities. The two drugs work synergistically to produce their effects: cells weakened by treatment with cyclopamine are more readily attacked by lovastatin.
This new drug cocktail has yet to be tested in animals or humans, but it seems likely to have future benefits for research into the causes and therapies for cancer.
Ecology
Loss of biodiversity is one of the central challenges facing conservationists today. Research published in the September 2006 issue of Science provides evidence that the creation of so-called landscape corridors could have a significant impact in addressing this growing problem.
Landscape corridors, also known as wildlife corridors, are dedicated tracts of land that connect isolated habitats with each other.
They have been shown to be a tool in maintaining and improving biodiversity in areas where biodiversity was previously declining, mostly by encouraging isolated populations to intermingle.
Depletion of biological diversity threatens the maintenance of ecosystems. One of the most common causes of this threat is the loss of habitats or the division of habitats into smaller, isolated fragments.
By allowing the movement of species between isolated patches of habitat, corridors serve to promote gene flow and increase species diversity. Extinction can be prevented by mechanisms such as seed dispersal, which corridors help to promote.
Seed dispersal allows plant offspring to grow in a wider geographic area than their parents. This dispersion reduces competition among related plants for resources such as land and soil nutrients. It also increases biodiversity by improving the likelihood that unrelated plants of the same species will cross-fertilize.
Landscape corridors are an old idea, but until now, little evidence has shown that corridors actually work, with previous studies being done only on a small scale. The study by Ellen Damschen of North Carolina State University and her colleagues is the first to look at an entire community of plant species on a large scale.
The researchers found that plant species diversity increased in areas connected by corridors more than in isolated patches and this difference increased over time. These findings might help support the construction of more dedicated landscape corridors in threatened habitats.
"From the perspective of whether corridors are an important conservation tool, the big question is whether they preserve a large diversity of species ... The answer, for plants anyway, appears to be yes," said Doug Levey, a University of Florida professor of zoology and co-author of the study, in a press release.
Health and fitness
Those of us who exercise can all agree we like the results: we are happier, fitter and have more energy. In comparison with these results, smoking seems to be the anti-exercise. While exercise helps our bodies, smoking destroys them slowly.
Scientists have found that small amounts of exercise on a regular basis can help smokers control their urges as they try to quit for good.
In one study, scientists from the University of Exeter and the University of London explored the effects of self-paced walking in relation to urges to smoke while a smoker is temporarily free of cigarettes.
The study asked smokers who had temporarily quit to go for one-mile walks. Participants in the study were tested at various times of the day and were asked during each test to walk on a treadmill at a brisk pace, as one would walk to catch a bus. They also rated their nicotine cravings on a standard intensity scale.
Results clearly showed a greater reduction in the urge to smoke after exercise than in the control group, who had no exercise. This study is the first to show that low-intensity exercise can reduce the urge to smoke.
Exercise affects people trying to quit smoking in multiple ways. It can act as a coping mechanism to help deal with cravings, and it can also serve as a distraction. Many subjects who were asked to avoid nicotine without exercise reported being overwhelmed by their cravings.
Additionally, the health benefits of exercise might motivate smokers to become healthier overall. Improved lung functions and better metabolism might make it easier for the body to give up a nicotine addiction.
