Doctor Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa is with the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He and other researchers are working to improve a treatment aimed at the cancer cells left in patients after the operation.

In recent years, doctors have been studying an adult stem cell -- called mesenchymal -- which move toward these cancer cells. The stem cells now used on patients come from bone marrow from donors. Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa wants to get them from the patient’s own fat tissue. That method would be less costly and avoid the risk of rejection.

Laboratory test results seem promising. But it is not clear how these stem cells seek out the cancer cells.

The Johns Hopkins researcher and his team have begun experiments with animals. He says it will be three to five years before human testing begins.

The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers in the United States are working on a new way to fight plasmodium, the organism responsible for malaria in humans. The new drug is called ELQ-300. As Jeri Watson tells us, the drug acts quickly and in an unusual way.

Researcher Michael Riscoe is with the Oregon Health and Science University. He says the drug attacks the mitochondria -- energy-producing structures in the plasmodium -- and the genetic building blocks they produce.

“So the plasmodium mitochondrion serves as a factory to make these DNA building blocks, but this is completely blocked by ELQ-300. Studies show that the drug acts very quickly to shut down this process -- in fact, only about 10 minutes.”