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A unique method of potentiating the effect of anti-cancer immunotoxins has been developed, thus offering to significantly improve the treatment of a number of cancers as well as autoimmune diseases. Prolonged treatment of human cancers with classical methods such as radiation and chemotherapy, or a combination of both, may cause greater damage than the underlying disease because healthy tissue is often damaged along with diseased tissue.

The invention is presently being licensed to two entities for treating dysphagia. The method and device of the invention can also be used for treating dysphonia, and the Public Health Service seeks a licensee to commercially develop this invention for that purpose. Qualified applicants are preferably those having implantable stimulators capable of inducing intramuscular stimulation of the laryngeal musculature to improve voice in humans. This invention will assist those persons who have chronic long-standing dysphonia.

Missense mutations in Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 3 (FGFR3) result in several human skeletal dysplasias, including the most common form of dwarfism, achondroplasia.

While normal breast ductal epithelium and neutrophilic granulocytes contain lactoferrin, their malignant counterparts frequently do not. The NIH announces primers or probes corresponding to the human lactoferrin gene, its promoter region, and its protein product, obtained from human breast tissue. The lactoferrin primer or probes can be used to screen for malignancy arising from tissues that normally secrete lactoferrin, or as a test to check the recovery of a patient from a malignancy.

Recently, an electroacoustic imaging apparatus and two electroacoustic imaging methods have been developed. The two methods are "forward" and "reverse" electroacoustic imaging which requires the application of a probing signal, and the detection and measurement of an induced signal to produce images. The electroacoustic apparatus offers the advantage of generating 2D and 3D images non-invasively. It can simultaneously image several contrast mechanisms, including the Hall effect, the thermoacoustic effect, and the electroacoustic effect.

This work describes a novel nucleolar mechanism that controls the cell-cycle progression in CNS stem cells and cancer cells. The inventors identified a novel peptide, nucleostemin, found in the nucleoli of CNS stem cells, embryonic stem cells, and several cancer cell lines and preferentially expressed by other stem cell-enriched populations. When stem cells differentiate, nucleostemin expression decreases rapidly prior to cell-cycle exit both in vitro and in vivo. Depletion or overexpression of nucleostemin reduces cell proliferation in CNS stem cells and transformed cells.

This invention discloses and covers polyphenolic compounds that will bind bacterial toxins, methods for the treatment of such infections, specifically Stx-1 toxins from STEC strains of E. coli.

Bacterial infections not only cause disease by their presence but also upon the release of toxins. The common enteric bacteria, E. coli O157:H7 releases such toxins (Stx-1) upon treatment with antibiotics. These toxins, when released into the lumen of the intestinal tract, will cause cellular damage thus increasing the severity of the infection.

Available for licensing is a closed chamber that provides an environment for long-term culture of stem cells, stems cells of central nervous system (CNS) origin, embryonic stem cells, and other cells. The chamber is designed with top and bottom mounted cover slips that permit the observation of cells in culture under an optical microscope. This chamber has the ability to control volume and pressure of liquids and gases by an inlet tube and outlet tubes at two different vertical positions.

Available for licensing are NIH patent pending contrast particles for use in MRI and flow cytometry to track cells migration in real time. Present cell-tracking studies rely on labeling cells with ultra-small dextran-coated iron particles that are endocytosed. The contrast agent of the present invention uses larger iron oxide particles, approximately 1 µm, situated in a tri-layer structure.

Gaucher disease, the most common lysosomal storage disease, is an inherited metabolic disorder in which harmful quantities of the lipid glucocerebroside accumulate in the spleen, liver, lungs, bone marrow and in rare cases in the brain, due to a deficiency of the enzyme glucocerebrosidase (Gba) that catalyses the first step in the biodegradation of glucocerebrosides. Type 1 Gaucher disease is the most common and is distinguished from the other forms of the disease, types 2 and 3, by the lack of neurologic involvement.