A few days of fasting may delay tumor progression and improve chemotherapy, a new study in mice reports. The findings indicate that fasting prior to chemotherapy treatment protects animals – and possibly humans – against the side effects of treatment. Here, Valter Longo and colleagues show in mice that fasting for 2 days in the absence of other treatments can delay the progression of different types of cancer, and may in some cases be just as effective as toxic chemotherapy drugs. However, the combination of fasting and chemotherapy appears to be more effective at making normal cells stronger (more able to resist damage from chemotherapeutic drugs) than either alone. In fact, combined fasting and chemotherapy promoted long-term, cancer-free survival in up to 40 percent of mice with neuroblastomas. Although clinical trials testing the effect of fasting in cancer treatment are still in early stages, these studies suggest that fasting cycles have the potential to boost the efficacy of chemotherapy. The results are particularly relevant for advanced-stage patients for whom standard treatment is ineffective.  » Read more...

An FDA-approved drug called bexarotene counters many of the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in mouse models, researchers report. The build-up of protein fragments called amyloid-beta is a key feature of the disease; everyone’s brain produces amyloid-beta, but in healthy individuals, enzymes break the fragments down, with help from a protein called ApoE. Paige Cramer and colleagues knew that bexarotene activates a protein that helps switch on the ApoEgene, and they hypothesized that the drug might therefore enhance the clearance of amyloid-beta in the brain. They gave the drug to mice engineered to have an Alzheimer’s-like condition and observed that levels of the protein fragments in the mice’s brains dropped substantially within just a few days. The mice also showed improvements in their cognitive, social and olfactory performance. Bexarotene, also known as Targretin, is currently used to treat a form of skin cancer and has a favorable safety profile, the authors note. The drug activates the nuclear receptor protein known as RXR, which binds one of two other nuclear receptors, PPAR and LXR. These receptor pairs then activate the transcription of the ApoE gene.  » Read more...

Everybody knows of instances in their own life where initial “mistakes” or wrong decisions turned out to be exactly the right thing. Trivial examples include going to a party that you never really wanted to attend and ending up meeting the person of your life – or running ten minutes late and thereby avoiding a fatal car crash that had just occured down the road.

But what about the most carefully managed area in life – your own career and business? Thinking that wrong business decisions must mean the end of your career? The opposite may be the case, says Paul J.H. Schoemaker, research director of Wharton’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation and chairman and founder of consulting firm Decision Strategies International.  » Read more...

Everyone is talking about Web 2.0 – but only slowly the benefits of it are being integrated into consumer products. Here we introduce two novel examples for technologies greatly improving everyday products by adding features only possible thanks to the web.

The first product is Lytro, a camera capturing pictures without the need of focusing. The camera does not even look like a camera any more; it is just an angular aluminum tube surrounding the lens, with the aperture at one end and a display screen at the other – no viewer, no control buttons, only a power button, a shutter button and a zoom slider.  » Read more...

German Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Europe’s largest application-oriented research organization, last week launched its new research blog – forschungs-blog – featuring research, scientific discoveries and developments that might someday change our daily life.

The blog is run by the quite prominent German blogger, author and social media specialist Sascha Lobo and is supported by  Martina Schraudner and Solveig Wehking from Fraunhofer’s “Discover Markets” team and freelance science writers Lars Fischer and Florian Freistetter (others will join in).

The blog is following a concept Fraunhofer calls “dual blogging”, i.e. the same topic is featured in scientifically accurate terms in the left column of the blog while the right column is featuring the same topic in a more entertaining, “drawn from life” perspective.  » Read more...