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Researchers from Columbia and Cornell Universities (NY) have been studying whether patients in poor countries suffering from certain medical conditions could benefit from surgical treatment. The results of the study could potentially lead to the implementation of surgical infrastructure in countries where none currently exists.

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Scientists at the Medical College of Virginia have genetically manipulated liver cells to function as pancreatic islets and produce insulin. The researchers are now working to alter the liver cells further so that they will release insulin in response to changes in blood sugar levels, they said at the American College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress held Oct. 10-15 in San Francisco.

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Surgeons at the University of Colorado, Denver, have shown for the first time that raloxifene (a new class of drugs known as selective estrogen receptor modulators) exerts a protective effect on blood vessels. An animal study that mimics the development of atherosclerosis in women who have undergone menopause showed that raloxifene prevented an increase in intimal hyperplasia in the aorta, they reported at the American College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress held Oct. 10-15 in San Francisco.

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Researchers from McGill University and other cancer research centers in Canada and the US will begin testing a technology that uses a biochip microarray to tailor chemotherapy to the genetic makeup of a specific malignancy, they reported at the American College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress held Oct. 10-15 in San Francisco.

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Studies conducted at the Comprehensive Breast Cancer Center at the University of South Florida indicate that low-dose radioactive seeds may prove to be an accurate and safe new way of taking biopsies from lesions in the breast. Surgeons inserted low-dose radioactive seeds adjacent to suspicious nonpalpable lesions, they reported at the American College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress held Oct. 10-15 in San Francisco.

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Experimental studies have found that hepatocyte growth factor reduced inflammatory bowel disease in animals to the point where most visible lesions in the bowel were eliminated, they reported at the American College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress held Oct. 10-15 in San Francisco.