Scientists around the world may benefit from a powerful new database, available for free online, that will help them to home in on the parts of proteins most necessary for their function. Arend Sidow, PhD, associate professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, recently launched the novel bioinformatics tool, which enlists evolution as the guide to determining the role different proteins play in a wide array of organisms.

Two studies, presented this week at the 94th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), concluded a novel technique can improve outcomes for patients with vertebral compression fractures (VCF) caused by malignant tumors in the spine. The American Cancer Society estimates 30 to 70 percent of more than half a million people who die annually of cancer have metastatic disease and 10 percent of the 750,000 vertebral compression fractures that occur each year are caused by metastatic spine tumors.

The genome of a squirrel-sized, saucer-eyed lemur from Madagascar may help scientists understand how HIV-like viruses coevolved with primates, according to new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The discovery, to be published online on Dec. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could provide insight into why non-human primates don’t get AIDS and lead to treatments for humans.

Dr. Leonel Fernandez Liriano, Professor of Medicine at Pontifical Catholic University School of Medicine (PCUSM), announced nine month follow up results for the first patient treated with engineered stem cells in a clinical study of primary pulmonary hypertension. The stem cells are extracted from patients’ own blood and trained to become new blood vessels.