university of pennsylvania school of medicine

(University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) Flip open any biology textbook and you're bound to see a complicated diagram of the inner workings of a cell, with its internal scaffolding, the cytoskeleton, and how it maintains a cell's shape.

Yet the fundamental question remains, which came first: the shape, or the skeleton?Now a Penn research team has the answer: Both.

(University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) Researchers have identified a key step in the formation -- and suppression -- of esophageal cancers and perhaps carcinomas of the breast, head and neck.

By studying human tissue samples, they found that Fbx4, a naturally occurring enzyme, plays a key role in stopping production of another protein called Cyclin D1, which is thought to contribute to the early stages of cancer development.

(University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have shown how Argos, a fruit fly protein, acts as a "decoy" receptor, binding growth factors that promote the progression of cancer.

Knowing how Argos neutralizes tumor growth may lead to new drug designs for inhibiting cancer.