Diet trends like intermittent fasting and ketogenesis are proving wildly popular for their rapid weight-loss effects, but scientists are also starting to uncover how they might benefit the body in other, longer-term ways. Case in point: a molecule produced during fasting has now been found to apply the brakes to an aging of the vascular...
Category: <span>Metabolic</span>
Chronic diseases driven by metabolic dysfunction
New model suggests natural healing cycle becomes blocked by cellular miscommunication, allowing conditions like cancer, diabetes and some neurological disorders to persist; a small but dramatic autism trial offers evidence UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SAN DIEGO IMAGE: THIS IS A FALSE-COLOR TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROGRAPH OF A MITOCHONDRION INSIDE A CELL Much of modern Western medicine is...
Miniaturized HTS assay identifies selective modulators of GPR119 to treat type 2 diabetes
A novel high throughput screening (HTS) assay compatible with an ion channel biosensor component was used successfully to identify selective and active small molecule modulators of G protein-coupled receptor 119 (GPR119), a promising target for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and related metabolic disorders. The development of this cell-based HTS assay and its miniaturization...
New test uncovers metabolic vulnerabilities in kidney cancer
DALLAS – Aug. 28, 2018 – In order to halt the growth of cancer cells, you have to know what feeds them. Researchers at the nationally recognized Kidney Cancer Program at UT Southwestern’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a novel approach using glucose that may open up new opportunities for therapeutic intervention. IMAGE: DR. RALPH DEBERARDINIS AND HIS LAB MANAGER, JESSICA SUDDERTH,...
Study provides new insights for ways to use cell metabolism to treat cancer
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI ACADEMIC HEALTH CENTER CINCINNATI–Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine have discovered that cell metabolism plays an important role in the ability of cells to start a survival program called autophagy, an unwanted side effect of some anti-cancer drugs that helps some tumor cells dodge treatment and eventually regrow into...
The natural sugar that reduces the risk of diabetes in mice
Sugar may be the villain of our time, with too much of the sweet stuff known to be a leading cause of developing diabetes. But now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a new way to reduce the risk of this condition – sugar. Trehalose is a natural sugar that has...
Powerful molecules provide new findings about Huntington’s disease
LUND UNIVERSITY Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered a direct link between the protein aggregation in nerve cells that is typical for neurodegenerative diseases, and the regulation of gene expression in Huntington’s disease. The results pave the way for the development of new treatment strategies for diseases that involve impairment of the basic mechanism...
This tiny particle might change millions of lives
Nanoparticle targets kidney disease for drug delivery UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Remember the scene in the movie Mission: Impossible when Tom Cruise has to sneak into the vault? He had to do all sorts of moves to avoid detection. That’s what it’s like to sneak a targeted drug into a kidney and keep it from...
New antibiotic candidates were inside us all along
With bacteria rapidly evolving resistance to our best antibiotics, scientists are searching high and low for new ones. In recent years promising drug candidates have turned up in some unexpected places, like rattlesnake venom, platypus milk, and tobacco flowers – and now, already inside the human body. Researchers from MIT and the University of Naples Federico II have found that a potent peptide...
Receptor protein in the brain controls the body’s fat ‘rheostat’
Scientists at the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt University have identified the function of a protein that has been confounding metabolism researchers for more than two decades. And it may have implications both for treating obesity and for understanding weight gain during pregnancy and menopause. Credit: CC0 Public Domain The protein, called the melanocortin 3 receptor (MC3R)...