X-ray studies done in part at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have produced surprising insights into the workings of a hormone receptor associated with blood pressure regulation. Researchers believe it could be a target for new medicines related to cardiovascular conditions, neuropathic pain and tissue growth.
Many hypertension medications currently on the market target the AT1 receptor because of its well-understood role in blood pressure regulation; they block AT1 in order to reduce blood pressure. The AT2 receptor, on the other hand, is still an elusive drug target despite multiple studies of its function. Now, researchers have solved its structure to hone in on its function. The results of the experiments were surprising in several ways. First, although both compounds were designed to block and deactivate the receptors, they left AT2 in a state that appeared to be active. In addition, although AT1 and AT2 were thought to be very similar, the pockets where the receptors bind to the compounds exhibited marked differences.
A new study from the Keck School of Medicine of USC links increased dietary potassium with lower blood pressure.
As many as 600 million people in Southeast Asia chew areca nuts with betel leaves, sometimes adding tobacco leaves. Many users are addicted to this harmful “betel quid” preparation, which can create a sense of euphoria and alertness. Yet researchers have now discovered that compounds derived from the nut could help cigarette smokers — as well as betel quid chewers — kick their habits.
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Engineering has developed a novel lens for super-resolution imaging which breaks resolution limitations in microscopy and has potential applications in high precision failure inspection and biological research.
A new facility at the University of Arkansas combines laser ablation and mass spectrometry for quick, efficient analysis of trace elements and radiogenic isotopes.
Researchers at Michigan Medicine have found the livers of patients with a rare disease that affects metabolism have responded positively to leptin therapy.
Over time, viruses have evolved very efficient methods for making us sick, but a UT Dallas researcher thinks that same efficiency could be exploited to improve human health.
Stony Brook University-led research team through the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology has created a user-friendly automated computer server that calculates complex computations of modeling protein interactions with a handful of clicks from a home computer.
A Houston Methodist-led research team showed that the systemic administration of nanoparticles triggers an inflammatory response because of blood components accumulating on their surface.
Two biophysicists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have used supercomputers to show how cell membranes control the shape, and consequently the function, of a major cancer-causing protein.
In overweight and obese children and adolescents, vitamin D deficiency is associated with early markers of cardiovascular disease, a new study reports. The research results will be presented Sunday, April 2, at ENDO 2017, the annual scientific meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Orlando.
Doctors should add an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to their hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) when they screen high-risk children for prediabetes and diabetes, new research from South Korea suggests. The study results will be presented Tuesday, April 4, at ENDO 2017, the annual scientific meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Orlando, Fla.
Although the World Health Organization ended its global health emergency on Zika last November, the virus could still make a comeback as temperatures get warmer and mosquito season ramps up.
Transparent biosensors embedded into contact lenses could soon allow doctors and patients to monitor blood glucose levels and a host of other telltale signs of disease without invasive tests. Scientists say the bio-sensing lenses, based on technology that led to the development of smartphones with more vivid displays, also could potentially be used to track drug use or serve as an early detection system for cancer and other serious medical conditions.
Brain signals that should help tell us we are full after eating appear to be dulled in obese children, according to preliminary results of a new study being presented Monday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Two doctors in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have been awarded Immuno-Oncology Innovative Research Grants (IRG) by Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C). Michael Farwell, MD, an assistant professor of Radiology, and Gregory L. Beatty, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Hematology Oncology, and are two of just 10 researchers to receive these grants.
A new study finds that a noninvasive electromagnetic brain stimulation technique helps obese people lose weight, partly by changing the composition of their intestinal bacteria—the so-called gut microbiota. Results of the technique, called deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS), will be presented Sunday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
University of Iowa researchers have documented in continuous, real time how melanoma cells form tumors. The team report the process is similar to that of breast cancer cells and have successfully screened for two antibodies that stopped tumor formation in both cancers. Results published in the journal PLOS One.
Like almost all light-sensitive living beings, human beings follow biological rhythms set on a period of about 24 hours. The circadian clock (from Latin “circa” and “dies”, which means “about a day”) therefore describes the internal system that allows us to anticipate the changes of day and night by regulating nearly all the aspects of our physiology and behaviour.
A new imaging test may provide the ability to identify ovarian cancer patients who are candidates for an emerging treatment that targets a key enzyme cancer cells need to survive.
In the second half of the 20th century, the mass use of fertilizer was part of an agricultural boom called the “green revolution” that was largely credited with averting a global food crisis.
On the list of dreaded medical tests, a prostate biopsy probably ranks fairly high. The common procedure requires sticking a needle into the prostate gland to remove tissue for assessment. Thousands of men who undergo the uncomfortable procedure, prompted by a positive PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test, ultimately don’t require cancer treatment.
Most medicines can’t get through the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a highly selective membrane that separates the circulatory system from the fluid bathing the brain. Certain peptides in animal venoms, however, can navigate across it to inflict damage. Now, researchers are capitalizing on venomous sneak attacks by developing a strategy based on a bee-venom peptide, apamin, to deliver medications to the brain.
Antibiotics save lives every day, but there is a downside to their ubiquity. High doses can kill healthy cells along with infection-causing bacteria, while also spurring the creation of “superbugs” that no longer respond to known antibiotics. Now, researchers may have found a natural way to cut down on antibiotic use without sacrificing health: a maple syrup extract that dramatically increases the potency of these medicines.
Bisphenol S (BPS), a substitute for the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in the plastic industry, shows the potential for increasing the aggressiveness of breast cancer through its behavior as an endocrine-disrupting chemical, a new study finds. The results, which tested BPS in human breast cancer cells, will be presented Saturday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society’s 99th annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Ten images and two videos by University of Wisconsin–Madison students, faculty and staff have been named winners of the university's 2017 Cool Science Image Contest.
The Kevin Rudi Foundation will host its third annual Superhero 5K Fun Run to raise money for sarcoma research at The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Blind tadpoles were able to process visual information from eyes grafted onto their tails after being treated with a small molecule neurotransmitter drug that augmented innervation, integration, and function of the transplanted organs. The work, which used a pharmacological reagent already approved for use in humans, provides a potential road map for promoting innervation – the supply of nerves to a body part – in regenerative medicine.
Using a newly developed method researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) have been able to shed light on the complexity of genome reorganization occurring during the first hours after fertilization in the single-cell mammalian embryo. Their findings have recently been published in the journal Nature. The team of researchers (from three continents) have discovered that the egg and sperm genomes that co-exist in the single-cell embryo or zygote have a unique structure compared to other interphase cells. Understanding this specialized chromatin “ground state” has the potential to provide insights into the yet mysterious process of epigenetic reprogramming to totipotency, the ability to give rise to all cell types.
Researchers from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore at the National University of Singapore have described, for the first time, the ordered arrangement of myosin-II filaments in actin cables of non-muscle cells.
A fluorescent probe developed by Michigan Tech chemist Haiying Liu lights up the enzyme beta-galactosidase in a cell culture. The glowing probe-enzyme combination could make tumors fluoresce, allowing surgeons to cut away cancer while leaving healthy tissue intact.
The chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, appears to aid the survival of inflammatory breast cancer cells, revealing a potential mechanism for how the disease grows, according to a study led by researchers in the Department of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine and the Duke Cancer Institute.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic have identified an interaction among proteins that allows cancer cells to grow and metastasize. They say the discovery may play a role in developing a better understanding of how tumors grow in a variety of malignancies, including breast, prostate, pancreatic, colon, lung and skin cancers.
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have developed a breakthrough technique to harvest cells directly from urine, and grow them into durable, clinically relevant stem cells to study Down syndrome.
Being ‘lovesick’ takes on a whole new meaning in a new theory which answers the unsolved fundamental question: why do we have sex?
In experiments with a protein called Ephexin5 that appears to be elevated in the brain cells of Alzheimer's disease patients and mouse models of the disease, Johns Hopkins researchers say removing it prevents animals from developing Alzheimer's characteristic memory losses. In a report on the studies, published online March 27 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, the researchers say the findings could eventually advance development of drugs that target Ephexin5 to prevent or treat symptoms of the disorder.
With a more accurate understanding of the characteristics and function of the receptor MRGRPX2, University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers were also able to create chemical probe that will allow them study the receptor more precisely.
Scientists partially re-insulated ravaged nerves in mouse models of multiple sclerosis (MS) and restored limb mobility by treating the animals with a small non-coding RNA called a microRNA. In a study published online March 27 in Developmental Cell, researchers report that treatment with a microRNA called miR-219 restarted production of a substance called myelin that is critical to normal function of the central nervous system.
In a new study, scientists find that the growth factor TGF-beta may play a role in the formation of secondary cataract, suggesting a direction for research into strategies to prevent it. The study appears in Molecular Biology of the Cell and was funded by the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Proton therapy is a promising form of radiation treatment used to kill cancerous cells and effectively halt their rapid reproduction, and the fundamental understanding for it is contained in the radiation induced water chemistry that occurs immediately after the interaction. The ensuing processes are therefore a subject of considerable scientific interest. Researchers describe their work exploring this ionization with an experimental setup, with enhanced temporal resolution, in this week’s Applied Physics Letters.
In a Phase I clinical study, researchers were able to transform the immune system by taking cells damaged in Parkinson’s disease and making them cells that protect and defend against brain injury.
Star-shaped cells called astrocytes, long considered boring, “support cells,” are finally coming into their own. To everyone’s surprise they even play an important role in the body’s master clock, which schedules everything from the release of hormones to the onset of sleepiness.
By inserting an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)-linked human gene called TDP-43 into fruit flies, researchers at Stony Brook University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory discovered a potential role for ‘transposons’ in the disease.
Applications by the IMP, the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, were 100% successful in the latest call of the European Research Council ERC. Over the coming five years, projects by Senior Scientists Meinrad Busslinger and Elly Tanaka will be funded with 4.8 million euros.
The brain hosts an extraordinarily complex network of interconnected nerve cells that are constantly exchanging electrical and chemical signals at speeds difficult to comprehend. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report they have been able to achieve — with a custom-built microscope — the closest view yet of living nerve synapses.
In new research, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have implicated a specific molecule in the self-destruction of axons, the wiring of the nervous system. Understanding just how that damage occurs may help researchers find a way to halt it.
Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have identified, for the first time, an epigenetic mechanism promoting breast cancer. The team found that inhibition of the PI3K pathway leads to activation of ER-dependent transcription through the epigenetic regulator KMT2D. These findings provide a rationale for epigenetic therapy in patients with PIK3CA-mutant, ER-positive breast cancer. While epigenetic factors have been known to play an important role in various cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, this is the first evidence found in breast cancer.
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists report data from a new study providing evidence that random, unpredictable DNA copying “mistakes” account for nearly two-thirds of the mutations that cause cancer. Their research is grounded on a novel mathematical model based on DNA sequencing and epidemiologic data from around the world.
The body’s ability to repair DNA damage declines with age, which causes gradual cell demise, overall bodily degeneration and greater susceptibility to cancer.
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