Investigators at CHLA have identified the molecular pathway used to foster neuroblastoma and demonstrated use of a clinically available agent, ruxolitinib, to block the pathway.
Multiple sclerosis can be inhibited or reversed using a novel gene therapy technique that stops the disease’s immune response in mouse models, University of Florida Health researchers have found.
Chronic tissue inflammation resulting from obesity is an underlying cause of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. But the mechanism by which this occurs has remained cloaked, until now. In a paper, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers identified exosomes — extremely small vesicles or sacs secreted from most cell types — as the missing link.
A team of scientists has sequenced, for the first time, a tiny worm that belongs to a group of exclusively asexual species that originated approximately 18 million years ago—making it one of the oldest living lineages of asexual animals known.
Scientists have found that ignored pieces of DNA play a critical role in the development of immune cells (T cells). These areas activate a change in the structure of DNA that brings together crucial elements necessary for T cell formation. This “big bang” discovery may aid in combating diseases.
Checkpoint inhibitor-based immunotherapy has been shown to be very effective in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer but only in a minority of patients. University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers may have found a way to double down on immunotherapy’s effectiveness.
For years, medical investigators have tried and failed to develop vaccines for a type of staph bacteria associated with the deadly superbug MRSA. But a new study by Cedars-Sinai investigators shows how staph cells evade the body’s immune system, offering a clearer picture of how a successful vaccine would work.
Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have successfully determined the full architecture of the breast cancer susceptibility protein (BRCA1) for the first time. This three-dimensional information provides a potential pathway to restore the BRCA1 protein's cancer-fighting abilities, even after it suffers damage.
Eva Anton’s lab at UNC has shown how the deletion of the protein APC in progenitor cells – which give rise to neurons – disrupts the Wnt protein pathway, which previously was linked to genes associated with autism.
In cancer cells, a membrane transport protein called P-glycoprotein, or Pgp, actively pumps anticancer drugs out of the cell, contributing to multidrug resistance. Recently, a team led by computational biophysicist Emad Tajkhorshid from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) used the Titan supercomputer to uncover new details about Pgp that could help the drug discovery community manipulate Pgp function.
An investigational therapy using modified poliovirus to attack cancer tumors appears to unleash the body’s own capacity to fight malignancies by activating an inflammation process that counter’s the ability of cancer cells to evade the immune system.
Glycosylation is the most abundant protein modification - over half of the proteins in our cells are ‘decorated’ with glycans. These sugar structures alter protein activities in all organisms – from bacteria to human - influencing fundamental processes, like protein folding and transport, cell migration, cell-cell interactions, and immune responses.
A new study of the human microbiome has uncovered millions of previously unknown genes from microbial communities in the human gut, skin, mouth, and vaginal microbiome, allowing for new insights into the role these microbes play in human health and disease.
Van Andel Research Institute scientist Scott Rothbart, Ph.D., has been awarded a five-year, $2.375 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA/R35) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health that will fuel in-depth, multidisciplinary studies into the epigenetic control mechanisms that regulate the genetic code.
A study conducted at The Wistar Institute has led to the identification of a slowly proliferating and highly invasive melanoma cell subpopulation, characterized by production of a protein associated with invasive behavior.
Specific immune cells have the ability to produce a healing factor that can promote wound repair in the intestine, a finding that could lead to new, potential therapeutic treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to a new research study.
Dr. Igor Ulitsky has found that ancient genes that lost their ability to make proteins were “recycled,” surviving across millennia – and species – by evolving to produce a type of RNA that regulates major biological processes. His findings could lead to treatments for a number of genetic diseases.
Training at altitude – meaning under low-oxygen conditions – turns athletes into super-performers. Likewise, Prof. Guy Shakhar has found, oxygen-starved T cells become super-effective at attacking cancer. These T cells could provide an immediate way to improve cancer immunotherapy.
A recent study led by Samantha Butler at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA has overturned a common belief about how a certain class of proteins in the spinal cord regulate the formation of nervous system cells—called neurons—during embryonic development.
In a multi-institutional collaborative study, scientists at The Wistar Institute and the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, have identified the role of tumor-infiltrating or tumor-associated B-cells (“TABs”) in melanoma progression and resistance to targeted therapy.
Working in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a way to convert white fat, which stores calories, into brown fat that burns them.
Eight researchers in the vanguard of biological science gathered at the inaugural symposium of the new Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University today to explore new frontiers within the dark matter of biology. The day-long symposium, which attracted guest speakers from leading research institutions such as Tufts, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Jackson Labs, was expected to draw about 300 attendees.
A Ludwig Cancer Research study has uncovered a new mechanism by which cancer cells evade destruction by the immune system. The paper, led by Camilla Jandus of the Lausanne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, describes how immune cells known as group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are recruited by leukemic cells to suppress an essential anticancer immune response.
Researchers at the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) have discovered a means of immunising cells against the biological weapon ricin, as reported in the current issue of Cell Research.
Immune-cell based therapies opening a new frontier for cancer treatment carry unique, potentially lethal side effects that provide a new challenge for oncologists, one addressed by a team led by clinicians at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center with proposed guidelines for systematically dealing with the toxicities of these drugs.
Computer Science and Life Science faculty members at NYIT will develop cutting edge tools to detect and describe RNA modifications and their potential links to serious diseases.
A discovery about the endoplasmic reticulum in hormone-producing cells shed lights on water balance under normal physiology and could open doors to better understanding of diseases related to misfolded proteins.
Some of the world’s most beloved plants — coffee, bananas, potatoes, chrysanthemums and roses, to name a few — could be made even better, but the complexity of their chromosomes either stumps or stifles scientists who study them. A meeting has been set for San Diego in January to start to address that issue.
A team led by University of Iowa researchers has identified a gene linked to rare kidney-related birth defects. When working properly, a gene called GREB1L activates a cascade of signals that ultimately tells other genes what they need to do to create a kidney. Results published in the journal Genetics.
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt is part of a select group of health care institutions recently chosen to offer a new FDA-approved immunotherapy for a subset of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Sandia National Laboratories engineer Mark Tucker has spent much of the past 20 years thinking about incidents involving chemical or biological warfare agents, and the best ways to clean them up. Tucker’s current project focuses on cleaning up a subway system after the release of a biological warfare agent such as anthrax.
As the second-oldest state in the nation, West Virginia is in dire need for professionals who can work with its aging population. To meet this need, the School of Social Work at West Virginia University has launched a new undergraduate gerontology minor.
Johns Hopkins researchers report they have genetically engineered mice that display many of the behavioral hallmarks of human bipolar disorder, and that the abnormal behaviors the rodents show can be reversed using well-established drug treatments for bipolar disorder, such as lithium.
Cells can be programmed like a computer to fight cancer, influenza, and other serious conditions – thanks to a breakthrough in synthetic biology by the University of Warwick.
NUS scientists discovered that a combination of artemisinin, which is a potent anti-malarial drug, and aminolaevulinic acid, which is a photosensitiser, could kill colorectal cancer cells and suppress tumour growth more effectively than administering artemisinin alone. This novel combination therapy could also have fewer side effects.
The proteins in human cells are extensively decorated with different types of sugars, a phenomenon called glycosylation. These modifications greatly increase the diversity of protein structure and function, affecting how proteins fold, how they behave, and where they go in cells. New research that will be published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry on Sept. 22 demonstrates that a rare type of glycosylation profoundly affects the function of a protein important for human development and cancer progression.
Out of hundreds of species of fruit flies, a handful can eat toxic mushrooms, and understanding why and how they pull this off could answer broader questions about evolution and adaptation.
Researchers have developed a medicated skin patch that can turn energy-storing white fat into energy-burning brown fat locally while raising the body’s metabolism. The patch could be used to burn off pockets of unwanted fat and treat metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes.
The incidence of heart disease is on the rise, and new therapeutic strategies are needed.
A biophysicist has been awarded a three-year National Institutes of Health Academic Research Enhancement Award to study and help explain the basic functions of the human genome.
Prior to cell division, chromosomes are seemingly a jumbled mess. Researchers have long assumed that genes become “silent” during cell division, not being transcribed into proteins or regulatory molecules. This has left open the question of how genes get properly re-activated after cell division. Now, researchers have found that gene expression actually continues during cell replication.
Researchers at Duke Cancer Institute have not only untangled an unusual wiring system that cancer cells use for carbohydrate metabolism, but also identified a natural compound that appears to selectively shut down this system in laboratory studies.
Vanderbilt University researcher Ken Catania stuck his arm into a tank with small electric eel 10 times -- the only way to get accurate measurements of the circuit created by animal, arm and water.
In a new study, published this month in Cancer Discovery, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers report that approximately half of lung and pancreatic cancers that originate with a KRAS mutation become addicted to the gene as they progress.
Using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), Berkeley Lab scientists have obtained 3-D models of a human transcription factor at near-atomic resolutions. The protein complex is critical to gene expression and DNA repair, and could aid research in targeted drug development.
Researchers at University of Utah Health clarified a molecular pathway responsible for the formation of cleft palate and identified a new treatment to reverse this defect in mouse pups in-utero.
New HHMI research reveals how three proteins help brain cells synchronize the release of chemical signals. A similar interaction may play a role in how cells secrete insulin and airway mucus, too.
Neutrons provide the solution to nanoscale examination of living cell membrane and confirm the existence of lipid rafts.
A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor is making strides toward developing an effective cancer treatment without the severe side effects of traditional therapies. Dr. Darin Jones, UA Little Rock associate professor of chemistry, envisions a day when patients can battle cancer without chemotherapy side effects such as hair loss, muscle atrophy, and compromised immune systems.
The press program for the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) will feature advances in cancer research, including reports from phase II and III clinical trials. Studies that examine innovative treatments, such as immunotherapy, mental health influences on cancer outcomes and optimal radiation dosing and sequencing, will also be presented at the largest meeting for the field of radiation oncology.
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