RESEARCH ROUNDUP

Prostate cancer

The drugs commonly given to help men beat prostate cancer may actually help the cancer grow under some conditions, a Cancer Center team shows in a study published in the June 23 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The work provides a possible explanation for why most forms of hormone therapy, a common treatment for prostate cancer, almost always lose effectiveness after one or two years.

The team showed that drugs known as anti-androgens, often given to men to shrink the prostate and kill the cancerous cells within, can trigger the protein that makes the prostate and its cancer grow. Chawnshang Chang, the George Whipple Professor of Pathology and Urology, is the lead investigator.

For details, see www.rochester.edu/pr/News/NewsReleases/bio&med/chang.698.html.

Magma clues

The lava that engulfed the Earth 250 million years ago, coinciding with the greatest mass extinction the world has ever known, originated near the Earth's core, University geochemists have found.

Their work plays into a long-running debate among scientists about the floods of flaming rock that sporadically well up and burn through the Earth's crust. Geologists have long debated whether the volcanic outpourings come from deep within the Earth or closer to its surface.

By studying rare isotopes of neodymium, strontium, lead, and helium, a team led by University geochemist Asish Basu found that the rock matches up chemically with magma found deep within the Earth.

For more information, see www.rochester.edu/pr/News/NewsReleases/physsci/basalt.txt.html.

Alzheimer's "snapshots"

A team led by Paul Coleman, director of the University's Alzheimer's Disease Center, has developed a technology that sheds light on Alzheimer's disease at its origins, in the nerve cells throughout the brain that sicken and die.

The team has simultaneously measured the activity of 20 genes within cells affected by the disease and found significant differences in the activity of five; now the team is looking at nearly 100 genes.

"There is good reason to be excited about this technology," said Zaven Khachaturian, former director of Alzheimer's disease research at the National Institutes of Health. "This is a significant starting point toward understanding what is happening much, much earlier in the brains of people who have this disease."

The work is reported in the August 4 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For details, see www.rochester.edu/pr/releases/med/coleman.