Research

NEW YORK - How can a cancer come back after it's apparently been eradicated? Three new studies are bolstering a long-debated idea: that tumors contain their own pool of stem cells that can multiply and keep fueling the cancer, seeding regrowth. If that's true, scientists will need to find a way to kill those cells, apart from how they attack the rest of the tumor. Stem cells in healthy tissues are known for their ability to produce any kind of cell. The new research deals with a different kind, cancer stem cells.

Think back to when you slipped on the ice or in the shower: the ground rushing up, your feet shooting out, terror building even as your mind is working a mile a second to plot a soft landing. This is what Emily Keshner studies, in a lab designed to mimic all the above. Balance is something most people don't think about unless they're learning to snowboard or walking up the aisle when their plane hits turbulence. Or recovering from a stroke, as more people will be doing in an aging America.

To hear his family tell it, Irvin Gerson was a force of nature. "Everyone he met, he had an influence on," said his wife, Rosalie. "He didn't shake hands and say hello - he took over their lives. " Dr. Gerson, a longtime family practitioner, neurological researcher, and faculty member at Jefferson Medical College, died at his Bala Cynwyd home early Thursday, Oct. 18, after a brief illness. He was 93 - and, his family said, checking in at the office until the end. They said they were proud of Dr. Gerson's achievements.

The consolidation of Wyeth Laboratories and Ayerst Laboratories announced two weeks ago will result in a net gain of jobs in the region, but it won't yield nearly as many positions as previously expected, company officials said yesterday. The two pharmaceutical companies, both subsidiaries of American Home Products Corp., are being merged into a single organization, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, that will be based in the Philadelphia suburbs. Employees from Ayerst's headquarters in New York City will be moving to Wyeth's offices in Radnor and St. Davids early next year.

Joseph O. Eastlack, 83, of Moorestown, a former researcher for the Campbell Soup Co. who went on to start the master's degree program in international marketing at St. Joseph's University, died of cancer Thursday, July 15, at CareOne in Moorestown. When Mr. Eastlack joined Campbell's marketing research department in 1974, he was assigned to collect data in Eastern Europe and China on what people there were eating, how they purchased their food, and how they ate it. He would return to Campbell's headquarters in Camden and work with other employees on which products would work best in certain cultures, a former colleague, John Stanton, said.

When Anita Baxter-Wills was growing up in Coatesville, her mother talked about her great-great-grandmother who had been kidnapped in West Africa and sold into slavery, or her great-great-grandfather, a participant in the Christiana Resistance, the 1851 event that helped spark the Civil War. But it was not until Baxter-Wills's childhood on South First Avenue in Coatesville was a memory and she had moved to California that she decided to search her...

Investors who bet on a Centocor Inc. research project two years ago will begin cashing in after July 1. Centocor, a maker of diagnostic and therapeutic products based in Malvern, founded Tocor Inc. in 1989 to conduct research and development of products to treat rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus. To finance the research, Centocor sold "units" for $12, each representing one share of Tocor and a warrant to one share of Centocor common stock.

Important legislation has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Bucks County, to establish a system of sanctuaries for chimps who have been bred for research but are no longer wanted by the biomedical community. The Chimpanzee Health Improvement Maintenance and Protection Act (CHIMP) comes at a time when the use and long-term care of these animals has increasingly come under significant scrutiny. The U.S. government is spending $7.5 million annually caring for more than 1,500 chimps in research facilities, each with a life span of up to 60 years.

CHICAGO - Boy or girl? A simple blood test for mothers-to-be can answer that question with surprising accuracy at about seven weeks, a research analysis published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association has found. Though not widely offered by U.S. doctors, gender-detecting blood tests have been sold online to consumers for the past few years. Their promises of early and accurate results prompted genetics researchers to take a closer look. They analyzed 57 published studies of gender-testing done in rigorous research or academic settings.

The state Department of Community Affairs has awarded $7,500 to the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine to support Lyme disease research at Pennypack Valley Park in Abington. A group of 11 Montgomery County legislators who helped arrange the grant said last week that more government money for research on Lyme disease may be forthcoming. The legislators said they had petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide $50,000 for research in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties.