NIDCR News 2014

Infection with a virus known as KSHV (also called Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus, human herpesvirus-8, or HHV8) can cause Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer characterized by red or brownish purple growths in the mouth, on the skin, or elsewhere.

Without regulatory T cells (Treg cells), you’d likely die from out-of-control inflammation. Treg cells prevent your immune system from attacking your own tissues.

Thirty years ago, biglycan was thought to be merely a structural component that imparted mechanical stability to teeth, bones, muscles, cartilage, and tendons. Today, biglycan’s function is known to be far more complex, and scientists continue to publish papers about its many roles in the musculoskeletal system and beyond.

In 1889, the American toymaker Charles Martin Crandall patented a then-novel board game called Pigs in Clover. It consisted of a large, circular labyrinth that players held in their hands and carefully tilted in one direction then another as a means to roll a colored marble from the clovered periphery, through a gated maze, and into the pigpen in the middle.

Better treatment options are needed for people diagnosed with head and neck cancers because the current therapies of surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy control cancer at the cost of normal tissues, sometimes damaging them permanently.