Stem Cells
> Japanese experts say that because "the danger of future accidental radiation exposure is not passed" for workers at the Fukushima Nuclear Facility, blood should be taken from the workers now. That way, they could undergo treatment using their own stem cells if they were accidentally exposed to high doses of radiation during the cleanup operation. Release
> Human stem cells + mouse fetal kidney cells = lab-grown fetal kidney structure. News
Cancer Research
> There's an enzyme called FEN1 that plays an important part in repair and replication of DNA. Researchers at Scripps and Lawrence Berkeley recently watched FEN1 in action and got some ideas on how the enzyme could be exploited for anti-cancer therapy. Scripps Institute release
> The NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer has posted a series of podcasts on the subject of cancer nanotechnology. Download them here
Genetics
> A team at Johns Hopkins has uncovered the sequence of events that makes stable DNA go bad and cause cancers, psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Johns Hopkins release
> Jonathan Latham writing in the Guardian: "The failure to find meaningful inherited genetic predispositions is likely to become the most profound crisis that science has faced. ...As the failures to find significant genes have accumulated, geneticists have remained silent." Op-Ed
> The first genome scan for womb cancer has shown a region that is associated with a reduced risk of the disease. It's the same region, HNF1B, that has been linked previously to lower prostate cancer risk in men. Report