Professor Amiram Goldblum and his team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute for Drug Research have discovered 27 new molecules. These molecules all activate a special protein called PPAR-delta and have the potential to treat fatty liver disease, obesity, diabetic nephrotoxicity, and to heal wounds. MAGE: THIS IS PROFESSOR AMIRAM GOLDBLUM.view more CREDIT: HEBREW...
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Sleep apnea creates gaps in life memories: Study
People with sleep apnoea struggle to remember details of memories from their own lives, potentially making them vulnerable to depression, new research has shown. Estimated to affect more than 936 million people worldwide*, obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a serious condition that occurs when a person’s breathing is interrupted during sleep. People with OSA are...
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A new approach to peripheral nerve injury?
In animal models of a totally crushed peripheral nerve, the damaged axons are broken down, allowing healthy ones to regrow. But humans rarely suffer complete axonal damage. Instead, axons tend to be partially damaged, causing neuropathic pain — a difficult-to-treat, chronic pain associated with nerve trauma, chemotherapy and diabetes. A new study in Cell, led...
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Opposite effect: Protein widely known to fight tumors also boosts cancer growth
Search for a description of “p53” and it becomes clear that this human protein is widely known for its cancer-fighting benefits, leading to its renown as “the guardian of the genome.” IMAGE: UC SAN DIEGO RESEARCHERS FOUND THAT THE PUMA PROTEIN WORKS INSIDE THE CELL’S MITOCHONDRIA TO SWITCH ENERGY PRODUCTION PROCESSES AND STIMULATE CANCER GROWTH.view...
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Tweaking of hormone-producing cells in the intestine
Researchers from the group of Hans Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute (KNAW) in the Netherlands and their collaborators shed new light on the origin and function of hormone producing cells in the intestine and open new avenues to tweak gut hormone production to treat human disease. Their results were recently published in Nature Cell Biology...
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Researchers discover method to ‘turn off’ mutated melanoma
(Boston)–Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer and notorious for its resistance to conventional chemotherapy. Approximately 25 percent of melanoma is driven by oncogenic mutations in the NRAS gene, making it a very attractive therapeutic target. However, despite decades of research, no effective therapies targeting NRAS have been forthcoming. For the first time, an...
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Learning new vocabulary during deep sleep
Sleeping time is sometimes considered unproductive time. This raises the question whether the time spent asleep could be used more productively – e.g. for learning a new language? To date sleep research focused on the stabilization and strengthening (consolidation) of memories that had been formed during preceding wakefulness. However, learning during sleep has rarely been...
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Discovery points to innovative new way to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy
Researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa have discovered a new way to treat the loss of muscle function caused by Duchenne muscular dystrophy in animal models of the disease. As reported in Cell Stem Cell, the team restored muscle stem cell function that is impaired in Duchenne muscular dystophy, resulting in...
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Skin cancer can spread in mice by hijacking the immune system
Targeting these molecules with inhibiting drugs could help to prevent this aggressive skin cancercoming back after treatment. Credit: CC0 Public Domain Scientists have uncovered molecules released by invasive skin cancer that reprogram healthy immune cells to help the cancer to spread. The findings of the Cancer Research UK-funded study are published in Cell, today. Researchers...
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Commonly used anti-rejection drug could be repurposed to treat some liver cancers
Research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in animal models and patient tissues has identified a new molecular pathway in the liver that suggests a commonly used anti-rejection medication could be repurposed to treat certain liver cancers. Mouse liver tissues showing cells surrounding the central vein with active mTOR (red) and glutamine synthetase...