The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center investigation showed that, in vivo, the genes p63 and p73 can be manipulated to upregulate or increase levels of IAPP, a protein important for the body’s ability to metabolize glucose. IAPP is found in some diabetes drugs already on the market. The research findings were published in today’s issue of Nature. …
The envelope (or Env) protein of HIV is a key target for vaccine makers: it is a key component in RV144, an experimental vaccine that is so far the only candidate to show promise in clinical trials. Also called gp120, the Env protein associates with another protein called gp41 and three gp120/gp41 units associate to form the final trimeric structure. The gp120 trimer is the machine that allows HIV to enter and attack host cells. …
Their findings are published today in the journal, Nature Scientific Reports. “We are using a unique software program in our lab that looks at a type of mutation called a splicing mutation that is typically overlooked using current methods,” said lead author on the study, Stephanie Dorman, a PhD student in the department of biochemistry at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. She said that where previous genetic studies of 445 tumours detected 429 of these splicing mutations, the Western-developed analysis software was able to find more than 5000. Using this software and human tumour tissue sample genetic data from The Cancer Genome Atlas, the research team pinpointed that mutations in the Neural Cell Adhesion Molecule (NCAM) and other related genes in NCAM biology were present at a much higher rate in tumours which had metastasized to the lymph nodes than those that did not…
Scientists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center report Oct. 29 in Nature they used human pluripotent stem cells — which can become any cell type in the body — to grow a miniature version of the stomach…
The epigenome is the totality of epigenetic mechanisms that decide which genes are active in a cell and which are not. Changes in internal or environmental conditions, such as nutrition, stress, or drugs, can leave behind epigenetic patterns. …
Reporting in the October 26, 2014 edition of Nature Genetics, investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard said the mutated gene helps control an important cell-signaling pathway, Wnt, that has been implicated in many forms of cancer. They suggest that the RNF43 mutation may serve as a biomarker that identifies patients with colorectal and endometrial cancer who could benefit from precision cancer drugs that target the Wnt pathway, although no such drugs are currently available. “Tumors that have this mutation may be telling us that they are dependent on the Wnt signaling pathway, and they will be uniquely sensitive to drugs that inhibit this pathway,” said Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, an author of the paper and director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancer at Dana-Farber. He is also affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health…
MIT researchers have now developed a new way to model the effects of these genetic mutations in mice. Their approach, based on the genome-editing technique known as CRISPR, is much faster than existing strategies, which require genetically engineering mice that carry the cancerous mutations. “It’s a very rapid and very adaptable approach to make models,” says Thales Papagiannakopoulos, a postdoc at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and one of the lead authors of the paper, which appears in the Oct…
An estimated quarter of the 500 U.S. adolescents and young adults diagnosed each year with this aggressive disease fail to respond to standard chemotherapy drugs that target cancer cells. In a report on the work conducted with mice and human laboratory cells, and published in the Oct. 23 edition of the journal Nature, the NYU Langone team concludes that the enzyme JMJD3 — (pronounced ju-mon-ji D3) — acts as a cancer “on” switch by splitting off a chemical methyl group of another protein that is usually methylated by a tumor-suppressing enzyme. …
It’s known that stem cells come out of the bone marrow and travel to the tiny thymus gland behind the breastbone to learn to become one of two CD4T cell types: one leads an attack, the other keeps the peace. One widely held concept of why they become one or the other is that, despite coming from the same neighborhood and going to the same school, they are exposed to different things in the thymus, said Dr. Leszek Ignatowicz, immunologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. In this case, the “things” are ligands and developing T cells are potentially exposed to thousands of these tiny pieces of us inside the thymus…
Mutations in the gene that encodes BRCA2 are well known for raising the risk of breast cancer and other cancers. Although the protein was known to be involved in DNA repair, its shape and mechanism have been unclear, making it impossible to target with therapies. …