Igor Stagljar, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, and his team developed the first roadmap for ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter proteins. …
CHD7 encodes a so-called chromatin remodeler, an important class of epigenetic regulators. DNA is wound around bead-like nucleosomes consisting of histone proteins. The string of beads is then twisted into a structure called chromatin…
source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/07/03/type-2-diabetes-more-common-among-low-income-families/
The study, published June 24 online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests it may be possible to harness the power of this naturally occurring anticancer agent as a way to treat cancer, including metastases. In several different publications it has been described the ability of decorin to affect a number of biological processes including inflammatory responses, wound healing, and angiogenesis. In this new article, the study’s senior investigator, Renato Iozzo, M.D., Ph.D., has labeled decorin a "soluble tumor repressor" — the first to be found that specifically targets new blood vessels, which are pushed to grow by the cancer, and forces the vessel cells to "eat" their internal components. …
Hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, is normally toxic, but in small amounts it plays a role in cardiovascular health. In the new study, chemists developed a chemical probe that reacts and lights up when live human cells generate hydrogen sulfide, says chemist Alexander R. Lippert, Southern Methodist University, Dallas…
The work represents a major step toward truly individualized breast cancer prevention in women at high risk for the disease based on their age, family history of breast cancer, and personal medical history. "Our study reveals the first known genetic factors that can help predict which high-risk women should be offered breast cancer prevention treatment and which women should be spared any unnecessary expense and risk from taking these medications," said the study’s lead scientist, James N. Ingle, M.D., professor of oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "We also discovered new information about how the drugs tamoxifen and raloxifene work to prevent breast cancer." Ingle and Mayo-based colleagues in the NIH Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) conducted the study in collaboration with PGRN-affiliated researchers at the RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine in Tokyo. …
A group from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), headed by researcher Ralph P. Schneider, from the Telomeres and Telomerase Group led by María A. Blasco, publishes this week an article in Nature Communications on the discovery of a new gene called TRF1 that is essential for nuclear reprogramming. It is also known that TRF1 is indispensable for protecting telomeres, the ends of chromosomes. …
The MET gene is known to be amplified in about 10 percent of colorectal cancers, and is associated with worse prognosis. The paper was also presented as part of an oral session at the 2013 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting…
In a trial involving patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumor cells harbored an abnormal ALK gene, those who received the oral drug crizotinib, which acts directly on ALK, went a median time of 7.7 months before their disease began to worsen, compared to 3 months for patients who received traditional chemotherapy. Patients treated with crizotinib also had a better quality of life than those treated with standard chemotherapy. The findings will be released as an advanced online publication by the New England Journal of Medicine on June 1. …
The E7 protein is produced early in the lifecycle of the human papillomavirus (HPV) and blocks the body’s natural defences against the uncontrolled division of cells that can lead to cancer. Researchers at the University of Leeds’ School of Molecular and Cellular Biology have synthesised a molecule, called an RNA aptamer, that latches onto the carcinogenic protein and targets it for destruction, significantly reducing its presence in cells in the laboratory derived from cervical cancers…