New study affirms the use of large-scale protein measurements to validate disease biomarkers and drug targets
Nearly 90 percent of children and adults with a highly aggressive form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) showed no evidence of cancer after receiving a novel, personalized cell therapy that reprograms a patient's immune system.
• Glioblastoma is the most common and deadly form of brain cancer. • Drugs target specific mutations on the surface of glioblastoma cells. • Glioblastoma cells are able to eliminate the gene mutation to avoid detection when the targeted drug is present. • When the drug is stopped, tumor cells are able to reacquire the gene mutation, which resensitizes them to the drug.
A new study, published in Cell Stem Cell, identifies a molecular pathway that can be activated to prompt hair growth of dormant hair follicles, or blocked to prevent growth of unwanted hair.
Researchers have identified a new tool that could help facilitate future stem cell therapy for the more than 700,000 Americans who suffer a heart attack each year.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team reports today that the brain can produce and release estrogen — a discovery that may lead to a better understanding of hormonal changes observed from before birth throughout the entire aging process.
University of Utah and German biologists discovered how nerve cells recycle tiny bubbles or “vesicles” that send chemical nerve signals from one cell to the next. The process is much faster and different than two previously proposed mechanisms for recycling the bubbles.
Damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack turns on immune cells in the spleen that accelerate heart failure.
For what is believed to be the first time, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have illuminated the inner workings of an important class of enzymes located inside the outer envelopes of cells. Much to their surprise, they report, these protein cutters, called rhomboid proteases, are entirely different than nearly every other type of enzyme studied, showing no attraction to the proteins they cut and being extremely slow in making their cuts.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have identified an enzyme that can halt or possibly even reverse the build-up of toxic protein fragments known as plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s disease. The research appeared in a recent edition of the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered a natural mechanism that cells use to protect mitochondria, the tiny but essential “power plants” that provide chemical energy for cells throughout the body.
A new approach to mapping how proteins interact with each other, developed at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, could aid in the design of new drugs for diseases such as diabetes and osteoporosis.
For the first time, scientists have succeeded in transforming human stem cells into functional lung and airway cells. The advance, reported by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, has significant potential for modeling lung disease, screening drugs, studying human lung development, and, ultimately, generating lung tissue for transplantation. The study was published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
A byproduct of cholesterol functions like the hormone estrogen to fuel the growth and spread of the most common types of breast cancers, researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute report.
Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) present a novel approach for precise biological imaging with applications for sensitive and dynamic samples.
Study uses patient-derived stem cells to show that a mutation in the α-synuclein gene causes increased vulnerability to pesticides, leading to Parkinson’s disease.
Most trisomic pregnancies arise as a consequence of chromosome missegregation in egg precursor cells called oocytes. Austrian researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) aim to understand the molecular causes of female age-dependent chromosome missegregation in oocytes. They have now discovered that a “molecular glue” called cohesin plays an important role in proper functioning of checkpoint control, ensuring correct chromosome segregation and production of euploid eggs.
A protector for PTEN, a tumor-thwarting protein often missing in cancer cells, has emerged from research led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center published online at Nature Cell Biology this week.
• Prostate cancer stem cells evolve into different cells as prostate cancer progresses becoming a moving target for therapy. • Scientists must be prepared for the continual evolution of the stem cell as tumors adapt and become resistant to new and more potent therapies. • With this knowledge, researchers can now design therapies that target the elements of the cancer stem cells that remain unchanged.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have successfully targeted T lymphocytes – which play a central role in the body’s immune response – with another type of white blood cell engineered to synthesize and deliver bits of non-coding RNA or microRNA (miRNA).
Dr. Hanna Mikkola and researchers at UCLA’s Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have identified a novel progenitor cell and a related cell communication pathway key to growth of a healthy placenta.The team’s discovery gives scientists a “tool box” for understanding the developmental hierarchy of progenitor cells that initiate growth of the placenta, and greatly increases the knowledge of what might cause pregnancy complications.
Most people have experienced the effects of circadian-rhythm disruption. To have any hope of modulating our biological “clocks,” we need to first understand the physiology at play. A new JGP study helps explain some of the biophysical processes underlying regulation of circadian rhythms.
A new discovery may help explain the surprisingly strong connections between sleep problems and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
One protein called Notch, which has well-known roles in the development of multiple tissues, plays an essential role in triggering T-cell development. Notch signaling induces expression of genes that promote the maturation of T cells and discourage alternative cell fates. Deficiency of the Notch target gene Hes1 in blood stem cells results in extremely low T-cell numbers, and could shed light on how normal cells are transformed in the context of cancer.
Using a new method to catch elusive “jumping genes” in the act, researchers have found two human proteins that are used by one type of DNA to replicate itself and move from place to place. The discovery breaks new ground in understanding the arms race between a jumping gene driven to colonize new areas of the human genome and cells working to limit the risk posed by such volatile bits of DNA.
Our epigenome is a set of chemical switches that turn parts of our genome off and on and are impacted by environmental factors including diet, exercise and stress. Research at the Buck Institute reveals that aging also effects the epigenome in human skeletal muscle. The study provides a method to study sarcopenia, the degenerative loss of muscle mass that begins in middle age.
Biologists from the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT have found that tumor cells with mutated p53 can be made much more vulnerable to chemotherapy by blocking another gene called MK2.
Adelaide researchers have found that a specific gene plays an important role in suppressing lymphoma, a type of blood cell cancer.
Diseases affecting the kidneys represent a major and unsolved health issue worldwide. The kidneys rarely recover function once they are damaged by disease, highlighting the urgent need for better knowledge of kidney development and physiology.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have developed a new method that generates a high-resolution protein structure from crystals one-million times smaller than those needed for X-ray crystallography, the most common method for determining protein structure. The new technique, called MicroED, has the potential to accelerate structural biologists' efforts and to expand the repertoire of proteins whose high-resolution structures can be solved.
Regardless of the way in which muscle was damaged, either through trauma or disease, Xin was strongly correlated to the degree of damage.
Australian researchers have found that zinc can ‘starve’ one of the world’s most deadly bacteria by preventing its uptake of an essential metal.
Scientists have identified a pathway that regulates fibrosis, suggesting a possible pharmacologic approach to treat patients with a broad range of fibrotic diseases.
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report that disrupting the light-dark cycle of mice increased their susceptibility to inflammatory disease, indicating that the production of a key immune cell is controlled by the body’s circadian clock.
Two groups of scientists at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have made complementary discoveries that break new ground on efforts to turn back the body’s clock on cellular activity, paving the way for a better understanding of stem cells, tissue growth, and regeneration.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a chain reaction that triggers the regrowth of some damaged nerve cell branches, a discovery that one day may help improve treatments for nerve injuries that can cause loss of sensation or paralysis.
Clay, a seemingly infertile blend of minerals, might have been the birthplace of life on Earth. Or at least of the complex biochemicals that make life possible, Cornell University biological engineers report in the Nov. 7 online issue of the journal Scientific Reports, published by Nature Publishing.
Whitehead Institute scientists report that the gene mutated in the rare hereditary disorder known as Birt-Hogg-Dubé cancer syndrome prevents activation of mTORC1, a critical nutrient-sensing and growth-regulating cellular pathway.
New evidence suggests that aneuploidy patterns of chromosome deletion or amplification that are recurrent among tumors actually represent a driving force during tumor evolution and are very frequent in cancer.
A small molecule called VIP, known to synchronize time-keeping neurons in the brain’s biological clock, has the startling effect of desynchronizing them at higher dosages, says a research team at Washington University in St. Louis. Neurons knocked for a loop by a burst of VIP are better able to re-synchronize to abrupt shifts in the light-dark cycle like those that make jet lag or shift work so miserable.
Only a few genetic changes are needed to spur the evolution of new species—even if the original populations are still in contact and exchanging genes. Once started, however, evolutionary divergence evolves rapidly, ultimately leading to fully genetically isolated species, report scientists from the University of Chicago in the Oct 31 Cell Reports.
Imagine a 1950s horror movie monster—a creeping, gluey tangle of gunk that strangles everything around it. That’s what amyloid plaques are like when they form in body tissues. These gooey protein clumps are associated with many chronic and debilitating disorders, and scientists have made enormous strides in understanding how these structures play roles in disease.
Body temperature follows a 24-hour rhythm, peaking during the day, low at night. The benefit might be the conservation of energy while sleeping. It is also critical to be able to adapt to changes in ambient temperature regardless of the time of day. A new mouse study shows how body temperature rhythms are synchronized while maintaining the ability to adapt to changes in environmental temperature day or night.
Researchers at NIH have developed two new microscopes, both the first of their kind. The first captures small, fast moving organisms at an unprecedented rate and the second displays large cell samples in three dimensions while decreasing the amount of harmful light exposure to the cells. Both microscopes surpass in clarity any other currently on the market.
Using a discovery platform whose components range from yeast cells to human stem cells, Whitehead Institute scientists have identified a novel Parkinson’s disease drug target and a compound capable of repairing neurons derived from Parkinson’s patients.
Our ability to hear relies on hair cells, sensory receptors that mechanically amplify low-level sound that enters the inner ear through a transduction channel. A new study in The Journal of General Physiology could help lead to a definitive identification of this mystery channel.
Ram Dixit’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that a protein named after the katana, or samurai sword, plays a crucial role in patterning the “skeleton” inside plant cells. The work provides a clue to the long-standing mystery of how the cytoskeletons within both plant and animal cells become organized in function-specific patterns.
Bioengineers from the University of California, San Diego have created a new method for analyzing RNA transcripts from samples of 50 to 100 cells. The approach could be used to develop inexpensive and rapid methods for diagnosing cancers at early stages, as well as better tools for forensics, drug discovery and developmental biology.
A UCLA study is the first to identify a biological clock able to gauge the age of most human tissues. Some parts of the anatomy, like a woman’s breasts, age faster than the rest of the body.
Cell biologists have discovered that message-relaying proteins inside cells always initiate the cellular projections that act as hands to help cells "crawl." The messenger protein network was known to be required for directional movement but scientists now know that it can self-activate spontaneously to direct random movement as well.
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