Tag Archives: biology

Why tumors become drug-resistant

A new study from MIT reveals that much of this resistance develops because a protein called AXL helps cancer cells to circumvent the effects of ErbB inhibitors, allowing them to grow unchecked. The findings suggest that combining drugs that target AXL and ErbB receptors could offer a better way to fight tumors, says Doug Lauffenburger, the Ford Professor of Bioengineering, head of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and an affiliate member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research…

Scientists discover potential new way to treat anxiety

Endocannabinoids are natural signaling molecules that activate cannabinoid receptors in the brain, the same receptors turned on by the active ingredient in marijuana. These receptors are also found in the gastrointestinal system and elsewhere in the body, and there is evidence that they play a role in wide range of physiological and pathological processes, in addition to modulating stress and anxiety. If the "substrate-selective" COX-2 inhibitors developed at Vanderbilt also work in humans without side effects, they could represent a new approach to treating mood and anxiety disorders, the researchers conclude in a paper to be posted online Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. …

New protein discovered with vast potential for treatment of cancer and other diseases

The identification of CPTP was the result of an international collaboration that built on prior research by co-lead author Charles Chalfant, Ph.D., Endowed Chair of Cancer Cell Signaling and member of the Cancer Cell Signaling program at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center as well as professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at VCU School of Medicine. The team discovered that CPTP regulates levels of biologically active lipids, which are molecules such as fatty acids that often play a role in cell signaling…

Promising new direction for organ regeneration and tissue repair

Now a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center has identified an entirely new approach to enhance normal tissue growth, a finding that could have widespread therapeutic applications. Their findings were published on-line this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Tissue regeneration is a process that is not fully understood, but previous research has demonstrated that endothelial cells lining the insides of small blood vessels play a key role in tissue growth. …

Ancient viruses that function in early human development may play role in cancer

"Understanding this previously ignored part of the human genome, its role in human development, and how it may be taken over by disease, opens a new frontier in science with important implications for medical advances," said Philipp Kapranov, Ph.D., lead researcher at the St. …

Flip of mitotic spindle has disastrous consequences for epithelial cells

Stowers Institute for Medical Research Associate Investigator Matt Gibson, Ph.D., and his team use simple animal systems like fruit flies and sea anemones to investigate how epithelial cells maintain order while getting jostled by cell division. New findings from his lab published in the July 21 advance online issue of Nature demonstrate that the way the mitotic spindle — the machinery that separates chromosomes into daughter cells during cell division — aligns relative to the surface of the cell layer is essential for the maintenance of epithelial integrity. It also hints at a surprising way that cells initiate a gene expression program seen in invasive cancers when that process goes awry. The study employs live imaging of fruit fly imaginal discs, simple larval tissues that ultimately give rise to the adult wing…

New plan of attack in cancer fight: Two-drug combination, under certain circumstances, can eliminate disease

As described in a paper recently published in eLife, Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and of biology and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and co-author Ivana Bozic, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics, show that, under certain conditions, using two drugs in a "targeted therapy" — a treatment approach designed to interrupt cancer’s ability to grow and spread — could effectively cure nearly all cancers. Though the research is not a cure for cancer, Nowak said it does offer hope to researchers and patients alike. "In some sense this is like the mathematics that allows us to calculate how to send a rocket to the moon, but it doesn’t tell you how to build a rocket that goes to the moon," Nowak said…

New insights on cancer cell signaling

Wnt proteins are a large family of proteins that active signaling pathways (a set of biological reactions in a cell) to control several vital steps in embryonic development. In adults, Wnt-mediated functions are frequently altered in many types of cancers and, specifically, within cell subpopulations that possess stem cell-like properties…