The findings were published recently in the early online edition of ACS Nano. The human body operates under a constant state of martial law. Chief among the enforcers charged with maintaining order is the immune system, a complex network that seeks out and destroys the hordes of invading bacteria and viruses that threaten the organic society as it goes about its work. The immune system is good at its job, but it’s not perfect. …
The researchers, from the lab of Charles Dann III, assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dann said the results should help chemists create more effective antifolate drugs, which act by interfering with the ability of folates — also called folic acid or vitamin B9 — to perform tasks that are essential for cell growth. …
In experiments on zebrafish, Freiburg researchers have demonstrated that the same proteins that lead to the formation of metastases in humans also cause the cells to migrate during embryonic development. The study was conducted by a team headed by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Driever and Prof. …
The problematic therapy investigated involves suppression of the protein mTOR (mammalian target Of Rapamycin). MTOR plays an important role in regulating how cells process molecular signals from their environment, and it is observed as strongly activated in many solid cancers…
The gene, SALL4, gives stem cells their ability to continue dividing as stem cells rather than becoming mature cells. Typically, cells only express SALL4 during embryonic development, but the gene is re-expressed in nearly all cases of acute myeloid leukemia and 10 to 30 percent of liver, lung, gastric, ovarian, endometrial, and breast cancers, strongly suggesting it plays a role in tumor formation. In work published in the New England Journal of Medicine, two HSCI-affiliated labs — one in Singapore and the other in Boston — show that knocking out the SALL4 gene in mouse liver tumors, or interfering with the activity of its protein product with a small inhibitor, treats the cancer. "Our paper is about liver cancer, but it is likely true about lung cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, many, many cancers," said HSCI Blood Diseases Program leader Daniel Tenen, who also heads a laboratory at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore)…
The DNA in our cells controls the form and function of every cell type in our bodies. The instructions for this are encoded in the linear sequence of the four subunits found in DNA, the bases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). …
The discovery is detailed in the current online issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. "This study identifies a novel mechanism that protects ovarian cancer cells by preventing the cell death or apoptosis which should occur when they encounter positively charged nanoparticles," say the senior authors of this study, Priyabrata Mukherjee, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic molecular biologist, and Y. S. Prakash, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist and physiologist…