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UTSW study suggests combination therapy might help prostate cancer patients overcome resistance to current treatments

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The National Academy of Medicine today announced the election of two UT Southwestern Medical Center faculty members – Lora Hooper, Ph.D., Chair of Immunology, and Zhijian “James” Chen, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology and Director of the Center for Inflammation Research – one of the highest honors attainable in the fields of health and medicine.

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Physicians at the UT Southwestern Spine Center are now offering a minimally invasive ablation procedure to provide relief for low back pain caused by injury or degeneration of the vertebral endplates.

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Despite decades of medical advances, children who develop the pediatric eye cancer retinoblastoma often lose their vision or an eye due to a lack of specific, targeted therapies and a poor molecular understanding of the cancer. Now researchers at UT Southwestern and the University of Miami have discovered that a molecule – estrogen-related receptor gamma, or ESRRG – becomes hyperactive and promotes tumor cell survival in retinoblastoma. Blocking ESRRG, the team reported in Science Advances, kills retinoblastoma cells.

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An enzyme called Fic, whose biochemical role was discovered at UT Southwestern more than a dozen years ago, appears to play a crucial part in guiding the cellular response to stress, a new study suggests. The findings, published in PNAS, could eventually lead to new treatments for a variety of diseases.

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Fat cells, or adipocytes, that grow in close proximity to breast cancers can shift into other cell types that promote tumor growth, a new study by UT Southwestern researchers suggests. The findings, published in Cell Reports, could lead to new ways to fight breast cancer, a disease that is diagnosed in more than 300,000 U.S. women each year and kills nearly 45,000 annually.

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Thousands of residents, business owners, and regional leaders gathered Saturday at the community celebration for the opening of UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird, the largest of its regional campuses and the first to bring academic medicine to the booming southern Dallas region.

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Low-income seniors were seven times more likely to visit a food pantry in the year after becoming eligible for Medicare, resulting in improved food security, according to a new study from UT Southwestern.

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The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has renewed UT Southwestern’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center Kidney Cancer Program (KCP) Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) award. First awarded in 2016, the KCP SPORE is focused on translating discoveries and innovation at UT Southwestern into advances in patient care.

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Blocking the inhibition of PKD1 and PKD2 gene expression by deleting a binding site for microRNAs hindered the formation and growth of kidney cysts in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) models, UT Southwestern researchers reported. The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest a strategy for gene therapy with the potential to arrest or cure ADPKD.

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A set of interacting molecules in immune cells of the gut is responsible for preventing the inflammation seen in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), UT Southwestern researchers report in a new study. The findings, published in Cell Reports, suggest a new drug target for treating IBD and related conditions.

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Two UT Southwestern postdoctoral fellows – Gabriel Muhire Gihana, Ph.D., and Victor Lopez, Ph.D. – are among 25 early career scientists in the United States selected as 2022 Hanna H. Gray Fellows. The fellowship program, run by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), aims to increase diversity in the biomedical sciences by recruiting and retaining individuals from underrepresented groups in the life sciences and disadvantaged backgrounds.

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The role of the microbiome in intestinal and systemic health has garnered close attention among researchers for many years. Now evidence is mounting that this collection of microorganisms in the human gut can also impact a person’s neurological and emotional health, according to a recent perspective article in Science by a UT Southwestern researcher.

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Using a genetic screening platform developed by a UT Southwestern Nobel Laureate, scientists with the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified genetic mutations that contribute to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), providing a potential future target for therapeutic interventions.

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Culinary medicine programs are emerging at medical schools to meet a critical need to improve nutrition education in an era of unprecedented diet-related health problems including obesity and cardiovascular disease, according to a review of programs by UT Southwestern researchers published in Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

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A new study by UT Southwestern’s Simmons Cancer Center scientists suggests that lactate, a metabolic byproduct produced by cells during strenuous exercise, can rejuvenate immune cells that fight cancer. The finding, published in Nature Communications, could eventually be used to develop new strategies to augment the anti-tumor effect of cancer immunotherapies, the study authors said.

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Summertime means lots of opportunities for fun in the sun. But this year’s high temperatures also bring an increased risk of dehydration that can cause urinary tract infections (UTIs), said Maude Carmel, M.D., Associate Professor of Urology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. These common infections are marked by a burning sensation or pain with urination, increased urinary frequency, urinary urgency, and blood in the urine (a condition called hematuria).

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Breastfeeding offers a wealth of benefits both for mothers and their babies. Although diabetes can complicate the process, it does not prevent mothers from giving their babies this wonderful start to life, according to UT Southwestern endocrinologist Maria Ramos-Roman, M.D., Associate Professor of Internal Medicine.

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A multidisciplinary effort to improve care for older patients who arrive at the emergency room with a hip fracture has decreased the time before they have surgery, shortened hospital stays, and resulted in better follow-up care, UT Southwestern physicians reported in Geriatric Nursing.

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A single mutation in a gene, Kcnc3, which encodes a potassium channel in neurons, causes learning deficits in mice, UT Southwestern researchers report in a new study in PNAS. The novel mutation decreases the activity of neurons in the hippocampus, the area of the brain important for learning and memory, and highlights a new role for potassium channels.

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The earlier individuals develop Type 2 diabetes or hypertension in life, the earlier they are likely to develop primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, researchers from UT Southwestern reported in a recent study. The findings, published in Clinical Ophthalmology, could lead to better screening protocols for POAG, which accounts for up to 90% of all cases of glaucoma.

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Following Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols designed to minimize surgical stress results in improved patient recovery and satisfaction, reduced postoperative complications, and shorter hospital stays, according to a review of ERAS programs in minimally invasive gynecologic surgery by UT Southwestern researchers.

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Kidney cancer encompasses a wide spectrum and can present with extensive metastases or just a handful. However, today all patients are treated the same. They all receive medication.

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With antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the rise, scientists have been searching for ways to shut down the Type IV secretion system (T4SS), a protein complex on the outer envelope of bacterial cells that helps them to exchange DNA with neighboring bacteria and resist antibiotics.

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Using UT Southwestern’s Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility, researchers have captured images of an enzyme for Wnt lipidation, which is pivotal to human development and cancer and crucial for Wnt signaling activation. The findings, reported in Nature, shed light on the mechanisms behind this activity and could eventually lead to new drugs to treat various malignancies.

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A new imaging device at UT Southwestern is making complex aortic repairs safer for patients and operating room staff by dramatically reducing their exposure to radiation. The device, known as Fiber Optic RealShape (FORS) and manufactured by Philips, uses light to visualize blood vessels, nearly eliminating the need for X-rays typically used during minimally invasive vascular procedures.

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A team led by UT Southwestern researchers has identified how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, builds a structure called the RNA cap that’s critical for successful viral replication. The finding, published in Nature, could lead to new strategies to attack COVID-19, which has sickened nearly 600 million and killed more than 6 million worldwide thus far.

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UT Southwestern researchers have identified a molecular pathway responsible for the spread of glioblastoma to surrounding tissue in the brain, as well as an existing drug that curbed tumor growth in animal models. The findings, published in Nature Cell Biology, have led to a clinical trial that could offer new hope to patients with glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer in adults that kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.

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UT Southwestern will lead a multisite initiative funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to identify biomarkers to improve risk assessment and early detection of hepatocellular cancer (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer, among patients with cirrhosis.

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Over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 30% of patients with obesity gained more than 5% of their body weight, and 1 in 7 gained more than 10%. While diet and exercise habits were factors, people with the highest levels of stress, anxiety, and depression reported the most weight gain, UT Southwestern researchers reported in the journal Obesity.

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Newly developed artificial intelligence (AI) programs accurately predicted the role of DNA’s regulatory elements and three-dimensional (3D) structure based solely on its raw sequence, according to two recent studies in Nature Genetics. These tools could eventually shed new light on how genetic mutations lead to disease and could lead to new understanding of how genetic sequence influences the spatial organization and function of chromosomal DNA in the nucleus, said study author Jian Zhou, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics at UTSW.

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A clinical trial is only as powerful as its participants. For years, researchers have struggled to fill clinical trials and enroll sufficiently diverse groups of patients for results to reflect the broader population, in part because of stringent guidelines on who can participate.

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More than 225,000 tweets with the hashtags #scamdemic and #plandemic led to an “infodemic” of misinformation and disinformation on Twitter during the first year of the pandemic, according to a study by UT Southwestern researchers published in PLOS ONE.

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A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center has been approved for a five-year, $7 million funding award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The funding will support multisite clinical research on hypothermia therapy, a cooling treatment that aims to help protect the brains of babies deprived of oxygen at birth.

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Leveraging its broad expertise in biomedical informatics, data sciences, and clinical sciences, UT Southwestern Medical Center is aggressively expanding its involvement in clinical informatics, which aims to harness the power of big data to improve patient care and public health.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center is the No. 1 hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth – the nation’s fourth-largest metro area – for the sixth consecutive year and ranks among the top hospitals nationally in nine specialties ranging from brain to heart to cancer care, according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals list released today. Five specialties rank among the nation’s top 25.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center has been selected as the nation’s first academic medical center to participate in the American Chemical Society (ACS) Bridge program, designed to increase the number of Black, Latino, and Indigenous students earning doctorates in chemistry.

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Pregnant women with active rheumatic disease carry a higher risk of adverse outcomes than the general population including hypertension, preeclampsia, higher cesarean section rate, small for gestational aged infants, preterm delivery, and fetal loss. To decrease the risk of these complications, rheumatic disease should be under control before conception with medications that are safe to use during pregnancy.

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A team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center cardiologist Ambarish Pandey, M.D., was awarded the grand prize in the American Heart Association Heart Failure Data Challenge hosted by the American Heart Association and the Association of Black Cardiologists. The six-month data challenge asked researchers to test the relationships between heart failure and health disparities, social determinants of health, and structural determinants of health.

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Summertime trips to lakes or pools to escape the heat can sometimes lead to ear infections caused by excess moisture in the ear canal. Hongzhao Ji, M.D., Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at UT Southwestern, offers information on swimmer’s ear, how to treat it, and how to prevent it.

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Reuben Arasaratnam, M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern, has been named one of 11 2022 Scholars in Diagnostic Excellence by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The award, which comes with a flexible research grant, mentorship, and learning and professional networking opportunities, will help advance his work on correcting penicillin allergy misdiagnoses.

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Triptans, a commonly prescribed class of migraine drugs, may also be useful in treating obesity, a new study by scientists at UT Southwestern suggests. In studies on obese mice, a daily dose of a triptan led animals to eat less food and lose weight over the course of a month, the team reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

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Using UT Southwestern’s Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility, researchers for the first time have captured images of an autoantibody bound to a nerve cell surface receptor, revealing the physical mechanism behind a neurological autoimmune disease. The findings, published in Cell, could lead to new ways to diagnose and treat autoimmune conditions, the study authors said.

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UT Southwestern is joining with medical centers around the nation to apply advanced sequencing to pediatric brain tumors as part of the National Cancer Institute’s new Molecular Characterization Initiative, a subset of the Cancer Moonshot Childhood Cancer Initiative.

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Swallowing fluoroscopy is the most common diagnostic test for patients with swallowing problems caused by conditions such as stroke, head and neck cancer, neurodegenerative disease, or prolonged intubation. Despite widespread use, there has been no standard practice to guide its use in the United States.

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Interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAF) is a disease with many possible causes and no standard of care, making it particularly difficult to treat. While immunosuppressant drugs are primarily prescribed, they don’t work for all patients.

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A few years ago, American Heart Association leaders realized something. While two national committees regarding quality of care for heart disease and stroke patients each served a unique purpose, there also was some overlap. That wasn't a problem – it was an opportunity.

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Using artificial intelligence, UT Southwestern researchers have discovered a new family of sensing genes in enteric bacteria that are linked by structure and probably function, but not genetic sequence. The findings, published in PNAS, offer a new way of identifying the role of genes in unrelated species and could lead to new ways to fight intestinal bacterial infections.

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In just a few hours, UT Southwestern scientists can tell which variant has infected a COVID-19 patient – a critical task that can potentially influence treatment decisions but takes days or weeks at most medical centers.

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As they grow, solid tumors surround themselves with a thick, hard-to-penetrate wall of molecular defenses. Getting drugs past that barricade is notoriously difficult. Now, scientists at UT Southwestern have developed nanoparticles that can break down the physical barriers around tumors to reach cancer cells. Once inside, the nanoparticles release their payload: a gene editing system that alters DNA inside the tumor, blocking its growth and activating the immune system.