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Getting to the heart of disease

By Guest PostMarch 29, 2013Healthanti semitism, barry l zaret, by accident, cardiology, coronary disease, coronary physiology, design, evans downing, growth factors, heart of disease, jewish parents, jews, leningrad, lymphatic diseases, lymphatic vessels, massachusetts institute, michael simons, MIT, russia, soviet union, st. petersburg, target cells, Technology, treating cancer, treatment, veins, william grossman, yale

Scientist works toward molecular therapies for cardiovascular diseases

Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, to Jewish parents before the fall of the Soviet Union, Michael Simons, M.D., says a medical career was “sort of a default.” Anti-Semitism barred Jews from many scientific pursuits, so his parents, both doctors, encouraged his interest in medicine as the basis for a strong natural science education.

Simons’ family immigrated to Boston in 1978. Simons had begun a 6-year medical program immediately after high school in Russia, so he was admitted to Boston University School of Medicine as a third-year student, but he chose instead to start anew, as an undergraduate. “I thought, if I continue in a medical program, I’ll forever have an inadequate undergraduate education,” he says, speaking with a mild accent and an understated intensity. (more…)

Sea Squirt Cells Shed Light on Cancer Development

By Guest PostJuly 28, 2011Scienceblood vessels, bradley davidson, cancer cells, cancer therapy, cancerous mutations, cell types, ciona embryo, control mechanisms, elimination processes, embryos, epithelial barriers, growth factors, heart cells, heart progenitor cell, invadopodia, laser microscope, model organism, natural barriers, periods of time, sea squirt, sea squirt ciona intestinalis, tissues, tumors, university of arizona, vertebrates

*Specialized structures used by cancer cells to invade tissues could also help them escape protection mechanisms aimed at eliminating them, a UA-led research team has discovered.*

Delicate, threadlike protrusions used by cancer cells when they invade other tissues in the body could also help them escape control mechanisms supposed to eliminate them, a research group led by led by Bradley Davidson in the University of Arizona’s department of molecular and cellular biology reports in Nature Cell Biology.

Studying embryos of the sea squirt Ciona intestinalis, the researchers discovered that even non-invasive cells make the delicate, highly transient structures known as invadopodia. The group found that future heart cells in the Ciona embryo use invadopodia to pick up chemical signals from their surroundings. These so-called growth factors provide the cells with clues as to where they are in the developing embryo and what type of cell they are supposed to turn into. (more…)

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Getting to the heart of disease

Sea Squirt Cells Shed Light on Cancer Development