The promotion of crude shark cartilage extracts as a cure for cancer has contributed to at least two significant negative outcomes: a dramatic decline in shark populations and a diversion of patients from effective cancer treatments. An alleged lack of cancer in sharks constitutes a key justification for its use. Herein, both malignant and benign neoplasms of sharks and their relatives are desc...

A new method for selectively detecting sodium ions in anisotropic environments is presented. A spin-lock (SL) sequence, followed by a coherence transfer pulse, generates rank-two zero-quantum coherences, and converts them into observable transverse magnetization. The quadrupolar polarization is only generated when there are residual quadrupolar couplings in the sample, and provided the SL field...

This is part of an occasional series that recalls some of the stories reported 10 years ago in the News section of the Journal. This September, results of a phase III study of the shark cartilage extract AE-941 (Neovastat) suggested no benefit of the product on overall survival of patients with renal cell cancer. The findings come as a disappointment to researchers in a field plagued by negativ...

Descriptions of the mechanical behaviors of articular cartilage and their correlations with collagen, proteoglycan, water, and ions are summarized, with particular emphasis on understanding the osmotic effect inside the tissue. First, a descriptive explanation is presented of the biphasic theory required to understand how interstitial water contributes toward the viscoelastic behavior of any hy...

Interstitial fluid pressurization has long been hypothesized to play a fundamental role in the load support mechanism and frictional response of articular cartilage. However, to date, few experimental studies have been performed to verify this hypothesis from direct measurements. The first objective of this study was to investigate experimentally the hypothesis that cartilage interstitial fluid...

Near-infrared spectroscopy is a widely adopted technique for characterising biological tissues. The high dimensionality of spectral data, however, presents a major challenge for analysis. Here, we present a second-derivative Beer's law-based technique aimed at projecting spectral data onto a lower dimension feature space characterised by the constituents of the target tissue type. This is inten...

There are many objects for which the attenuation varies significantly as they are rotated during computerized X-ray tomography, for example plate samples. This can lead to significant ring artefacts in the subsequent tomographic reconstructions. In this paper a new method is presented that can successfully suppress such ring artefacts and is applicable to both parallel and cone-beam geometries....

BACKGROUND Cartilage loss is a hallmark of arthritis and follows activation of catabolic processes concomitant with a disruption of anabolic pathways like insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). We hypothesized that two natural products of South American origin, would limit cartilage degradation by respectively suppressing catabolism and activating local IGF-1 anabolic pathways. One extract, deri...

The aim of this study is to isolate, characterize, and identify the bioactivity of an angiogenesis inhibitor derived from the Dasyatis akajei cartilage. By guanidine hydrochloride extract, refrigerated centrifugation, ultrafiltration, 20%-80% acetone precipitation, dialysis and refrigerated desiccation, the DCGE (Dasyatis akajei cartilage guanidine hydrochloride extract) of molecular weights fr...

Osteoarthritis is characterized by a loss of extracellular matrix that leads to cartilage degradation and joint space narrowing. Specific proteases, including the aggrecanases ADAMTS-4 and matrix metalloproteinase 3, are important in initiating and promoting cartilage degradation in osteoarthritis. This study investigated protease-specific and disease-specific cleavage patterns of particular ex...