Categories
Miscellany

UNC plans “mini” medical school

UNC’s popular Mini-Medical School features all the benefit of lectures and discussions hosted by researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill without those pesky dissections and labs. The three-part program, designed for non-medical people, includes:

March 3 — Small Wonders: Nanotechnology Medicine
March 10 — Bug Wars: Bacterial Infection Control
March 17 — Personalized Medicine: Treatment Tailored to Your Genome

Classes are from 7-9p.m. at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. Details and registration information is available at www.med.unc.edu/cme.

Categories
Miscellany

Circadian clock and cancer progression linked

This from UNC:

UNC study: Tinkering with the circadian clock can suppress cancer growth

CHAPEL HILL – Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill have shown that disruption of the circadian clock – the internal
time-keeping mechanism that keeps the body running on a 24-hour cycle –
can slow the progression of cancer.

The study disputes some of the most recent research in the field
indicating that alteration of this daily cycle predisposes humans and
mice to cancer. The UNC researchers found that genetically altering one
of four essential “clock” genes actually suppressed cancer growth in a
mouse model commonly used to investigate cancer. The findings could
enable clinicians to reset the internal clock of each cancer cell to
render it more vulnerable to attack with chemotherapeutic drugs.