Word: vessels
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Brain tumors have long presented a major challenge to drug delivery because of the especially leakproof blood-vessel walls in the brain, which make it difficult to administer conventional chemotherapy there. Drug-bearing wafers may be one answer. After the brain surgeon removes as much of the tumor as possible, small drug wafers are inserted at the tumor sites. Over time the wafers slowly release a chemical that prevents the recurrence of new tumors. The technique seems to work. A 1997 clinical trial showed that after two years, 31% of glioblastoma patients with implanted wafers were still alive, compared with...
...heart attack. But statins don't work for everyone. So drug companies are studying the biochemical pathways by which the body pulls cholesterol that has already been manufactured out of a cell. "By turning this reverse cholesterol transport on, you'd be able to stimulate removal of cholesterol from vessel walls back to the liver for excretion," says Dr. Richard Gregg, vice president of metabolic- and cardiovascular-drug discovery at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Taken in combination with statins, such drugs could virtually sweep the arteries clean of cholesterol...
Noah's Ark has set sail again, crossing stormy scientific waters and buffeted by winds of controversy. Unlike the Old Testament vessel, however, today's metaphorical ark is not carrying threatened animals two by two to safety. Rather, if it lives up to its billing, it could produce potentially unlimited numbers of endangered creatures...
...already suspected: when it comes to heart attacks, angioplasties save more lives than clot-busting drugs. Both treatments aim to clear arterial blockages that deprive the heart of oxygen. But the odds of dying in a hospital after an emergency angioplasty--a balloon-tipped catheter is threaded through the vessel--are 40% lower than after a round of clot busters. Caveat: the finding applies only to centers that perform angioplasties frequently--at least 50 times a year...
...Haiti's imaginative narco welders have forced an inspection revolution. Customs teams often spend days dismantling keels, engine rooms and even onboard septic tanks and voodoo shrines that have yielded as much as 1,100 lbs. of coke at a time. "We've never seen the Colombians use a vessel's structure this way," says Miami customs supervisor Tom Stefanello over the racket of his agents' riveters...