Curated News: National Institutes of Health (NIH)

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• A study shows female physicians have more equitable income when they work in practices with more doctors who are women. • The analysis shows a 12 percent relative difference in income for practices with equal numbers of female and male physicians, compared with a 20 percent income difference in practices dominated by men. • The findings offer important evidence that workplace diversity can help reduce earnings gaps, other inequities.

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Researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine are among the contributors to a package of 10 studies in the journal Nature, describing the latest results from the ongoing Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project, a worldwide effort led by the NIH to understand how the human genome functions.

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In an effort to better understand how our cells work, scientists have studied the function of 208 proteins responsible for orchestrating the regulation genes in the human genome. A paper appearing in the journal "Nature" describes the collaborative effort.

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With COVID-19 still spreading in the United States, where it has already killed more than 140,000 people, improved screening and treatment options are critically important for high-risk patients with comorbidities, such as diabetes, pulmonary disease, and cardiovascular disease. A new grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will support the rapid development and integration of a series of artificial intelligence algorithms that will analyze multiple pieces of health data — from chest computed tomography (CT) images to vital signs — in order to help clinicians assess disease severity and predict patient outcomes. The effort is being led by Pingkun Yan, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

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A protein that is critical for retrovirus replication may select viral genetic material for packaging within the nuclei of host cells, rather than in the cytoplasm, as was previously believed.

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Using information from a national database, investigators took an evidence-based approach to defining the lower limit of pulmonary vascular resistance

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While heat shock protein 90 inhibitors have shown limited benefit in directly treating cancer, low doses may improve the efficacy of radiotherapy, a new study finds.

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Dozens of molecules may tangle up with rogue bundles of tau, a protein that normally gives nerve fibers structure, to cause brain cell damage that contributes to neurodegenerative diseases, a new study shows.

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Health care entrepreneur Bobby Brooke Herrera, a New Mexico native who grew up just south of Las Cruces, may hold the key to testing millions of Americans to see if they are infected and spreading the coronavirus. His company, E25Bio, is currently pushing to get the Federal Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization by September 1 to launch on the market. As of July 2020, the company has raised $12.92 million in funding from Venture Capital, National Institutes of Health, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Herrera was named among Forbes 2019 '30 under 30' for healthcare entrepreneurs.

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Researchers at Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that inhibiting a key enzyme caused human cancer cells associated with two major types of breast and ovarian cancer to die and in mouse studies reduced tumor growth.

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Albert Einstein College of Medicine has received a $9.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center (ES-DRC). The multi-institutional center is a leader in basic, translational, clinical, and community-based research and training in type 1 and type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic disorders.

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Researchers have identified a microRNA (miRNA) that could promote hair regeneration. This miRNA – miR-218-5p – plays an important role in regulating the pathway involved in follicle regeneration, and could be a candidate for future drug development.

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The George Washington University will participate in a clinical trial for an investigational COVID-19 vaccine.

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DALLAS – June 22, 2020 – For decades, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol has been dubbed “good cholesterol” because of its role in moving fats and other cholesterol molecules out of artery walls. People with higher HDL cholesterol levels tend to have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, studies have shown.

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About 30% of stroke patients develop dementia, yet researchers understand very little about why. UChicago Medicine joins a NIH-led national network of institutions working to better understand the risk factors that lead to vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID), early stroke recovery and approaches to prevention.

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Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a new computational algorithm that has, for the first time, identified a spectrum of mutations in the noncoding portion of the human genome across five major pediatric cancers. The study, which was published today in Science Advances, used the algorithm to analyze more than 500 pediatric cancer patients’ mutations and gene expression profiles to develop a comprehensive list of potentially cancer-causing mutations.

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At La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) researchers are dedicated to finding a way to stop plaques from forming in the first place. In a new study, LJI scientists show that certain T lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell, that start out trying to fight the disease can end up increasing inflammation and making atherosclerosis cases even worse.

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Bacteriophages, or phages, may play a significant role in treating complex bacterial infections in prosthetic joints, according to new Mayo Clinic research. Suggesting phage therapy could provide a potential treatment for managing such infections, including those involving antibiotic-resistant microbes.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor has received a $443,854 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop unique deep learning methods to identify key cell networks in complex diseases. Dr. Mary Yang, professor of information science and director of the Midsouth Bioinformatics Center at UA Little Rock, will conduct research that will help doctors and scientists further understand how complex diseases evolve and develop in the body as well as how to identify effective drug targets.

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CAR-T cell therapy, which attacks cancer cells using a person’s reprogrammed immune cells, has been used to treat Hodgkin lymphoma with remarkable success for the first time, according to the results of an early phase clinical trial.

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Florida State University researchers have new insight into the tiny packages that cells use to move molecules, a structure that is key to cellular metabolism, drug delivery and more.

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DALLAS – July 23, 2020 – Deleting a key gene in mice in just their fat made tissues throughout these animals insulin resistant, in addition to other effects, a new study by UT Southwestern researchers shows. The findings, reported in a recent issue of PNAS, could shed light on Type 2 diabetes and other insulin resistance disorders, which remain poorly understood despite decades of study.

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Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have combined two immunotherapy strategies into a single therapy and found, in studies in human cells and in mice, that the two together are more effective than either alone in treating certain blood cancers, such as leukemia.

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The inflammatory molecule interleukin-17A (IL-17A) triggers immune cells that in turn reduce IL-17A’s pro-inflammatory activity, according to a study by National Eye Institute (NEI) researchers.

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Why do some people stay sharp into their 90s, even if they have the amyloid plaques in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease? And why do others reach their 90s without ever developing any plaques? These questions are explored in a new study published in the July 22, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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In a new study looking at adoptive cell transfer products bearing a transgenic T-cell receptor (TCR), researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a discordant phenomenon in which a subset of patients displayed profoundly decreased expression of the transgenic TCR over time, despite the transgenic TCR being present at the DNA level.

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PDE5 inhibitors, such as sildenafil, activate protein quality-control systems and improve cells’ ability to dispose of misfolded proteins. Researchers find lowered accumulation of mutant proteins and reduced cell death and anatomical defects in zebrafish models of neurodegeneration after treatment.

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Researchers from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health have found that pregnant women exposed to high levels of ultrafine particles from jet airplane exhaust are 14% more likely to have a preterm birth than those exposed to lower levels.

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A chance mutation that led to spinal defects in a zebrafish has opened a little window into our own fishy past.

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Study results documenting parental hesitancy to begin and complete their child's HPV vaccine series were published in The Lancet Public Health by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

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A growing number of chemicals in pesticides, flame retardants, and certain plastics have been linked to widespread health problems including infertility, diabetes, and impaired brain development, a set of reviews of hundreds of studies concludes.

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Researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and UCLA School of Dentistry have identified a potential new combination therapy to treat advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, the most common type of head and neck cancer.

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When prostate cancer progresses to a more-dangerous metastatic state, it does so by resurrecting dormant molecular mechanisms that had guided the fetal development of the prostate gland but had been subsequently switched off, say scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

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It was a surprising thing to see on the otherwise lifeless peak of a South American volcano — a mouse, specifically a yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse, or Phyllotis xanthopygus, scurrying among the rocks on the summit.The find was especially startling because the mouse was living at an elevation of 22,100 feet, a higher elevation than scientists had ever observed mammals living at previously.

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The research focuses on axonal transport — the way in which vital materials travel along pathways called axons inside nerve cells, or neurons. Scientists found that HTT sometimes journeys along these roadways in cellular vehicles (called vesicles) that also carry freight including a protein called Rab4.

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Scientists have unraveled key mechanisms behind the mysteries of aging. They isolated two paths that cells travel during aging and engineered a new way to genetically program these processes to extend life. The researchers also identified a master circuit that guides these aging processes.

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Researchers systematically surveyed the entire protein landscape of normal and nutrient-deprived cells to identify which proteins and organelles are degraded by autophagy, to shed light on the question of how cells decide what to recycle when they are starving.

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The Center for Clinical and Translational Science, or CCTS, at the University of Illinois at Chicago will receive $22 million in new funding from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, to continue its work supporting critical clinical and translational health research programs.

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For the first time, researchers detai the potential implications of a specific P53 mutation, including an association with a specific type of Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS), an inherited predisposition to a wide range of cancers.

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Older women who eat more than one to two servings a week of baked or broiled fish or shellfish may consume enough omega-3 fatty acids to counteract the effects of air pollution on the brain, according to a new study published in the July 15, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Deaths from COVID-19 will have a ripple effect causing impacts on the mental health and health of surviving family members. But the extent of that impact has been hard to assess until now. Every death from COVID-19 will impact approximately nine surviving family members, according to a study.

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In a groundbreaking new study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have 3D printed a functioning centimeter-scale human heart pump in the lab. The discovery could have major implications for studying heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States killing more than 600,000 people a year.

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Cerebral (cortical) visual impairment (CVI) is a condition that interferes with the ability of the brain to process information from the eyes, and it has become a leading cause of visual impairment in the U.S.

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While 93 percent of U.S. pediatricians surveyed were aware of the national guidelines on peanut allergy prevention in infants, only 30 percent were fully implementing the recommended practices and 64 percent reported partial implementation, according to the study published in JAMA Network Open.

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UCLA faculty - including Dr. David Eisenman, professor-in-residence of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health - contributed to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviews and grades the evidence underpinning public health emergency preparedness and response (PHEPR) practices generated since the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

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UCLA & USC study of natural gas flaring finds high risks to babies; researchers found exposure was associated with 50% higher odds of preterm birth compared with no exposure.

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A team led by UT Southwestern researchers has identified brain circuitry that plays a key role in the dysfunctional social, repetitive, and inflexible behavioral differences that characterize autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The findings, published online this week in Nature Neuroscience, could lead to new therapies for these relatively prevalent disorders.

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New study on how immune memory can be targeted and improve immunotherapy and prevent cancer recurrence.

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The discovery of the oncogene responsible for glioblastoma could be the brain tumor's Achilles' heel, one researcher says.

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The mechanisms of action of acalabrutinib led to the hypothesis it might be effective in reducing the massive inflammatory response seen severe forms of COVID19. Indeed, it did provide clinical benefit in a small group of patients by reducing their inflammatory parameters and improving their oxygenation.