Pythons may help heal hearts

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File image: Python.

by Staff Writers
Boulder, Colo. (UPI) Aug 29, 2008
A biotech firm is teaming with the University of Colorado at Boulder to use pythons as a model for new ways to treat heart disease.

Pythons dramatically increase their heart size for a short time after swallowing prey, the university said in a release.

Researchers are working with Hiberna Corp., based in Boulder, which is developing drugs based on natural models of extreme metabolic regulation.

CU professor Leslie Leinwand said the ability of pythons and other constricting snakes to enlarge and then decrease their heart muscle mass in just days may help researchers target new drugs for treating cardiac growth in response to disease.

"This may be a unique path toward potential drug development," Leinwand said. "If we are able to understand the genetic cues involved in rapid python heart muscle increases and decreases, that to me says there is the potential to develop therapeutics for humans."

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Two years on, face transplant patients can smile: study

Paris (AFP) Aug 22, 2008
Two facial transplants -- one on a Chinese man who had half his face ripped off by a bear -- have proved highly successful two years on, opening the way for wider use of the procedure, studies released Friday report.

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