Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine have discovered that a protein called Jagged-1 stimulates human stem cells to differentiate into bone-producing cells. This protein could help both human and animal patients heal from bone fractures faster and may form...
A research team led by scientists at Mayo Clinic in Florida have decoded the entire pathway that regulates leakiness of blood vessels - a condition that promotes a wide number of disorders, such as heart disease, cancer growth and spread, inflammation and respiratory distress. They say their...
The discovery of the molecular pathway that drives the changes seen in the brains of Alzheimer's patients is reported, revealing new targets for drug discovery that could be exploited to combat the disease. The study gives the most detailed understanding yet of the complex processes leading to...
To transport substances from the site of their production to their destination, the body needs a sophisticated transport and sorting system. Various receptors in and on the cells recognize certain molecules, pack them and ensure that they are transported to the right place. One of these...
Many drugs work by "fixing" a particular biological pathway that's gone awry in a disease. But sometimes drugs affect other pathways too, producing undesirable side effects that can be severe enough to outweigh the drug's benefits. Such is the case for the thiazolidinedione drugs (also known as...
Research suggests that patients with leukemia sometimes relapse because standard chemotherapy fails to kill the self-renewing leukemia initiating cells, often referred to as cancer stem cells. In such cancers, the cells lie dormant for a time, only to later begin cloning, resulting in a return...
Maintaining the right level of sugar in the blood is the responsibility not only of insulin, which removes glucose, but also of a hormone called glucagon, which adds glucose. For decades, treatments for type II diabetes have taken aim at insulin, but a new study suggests that a better approach...
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and the American Association for Cancer Research have awarded Stephanie K. Dougan, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and Oliver G. McDonald, M.D., Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, the 2012...
In a new study published in the August 16th issue of Developmental Cell, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center identified a molecular mechanism that guarantees that new blood vessels form in the right place and with the proper abundance. "We have known for a long time that blood vessels...
T-ing up a new target for Parkinson's disease treatment Parkinson disease (PD) affects 1-2% of the population over the age of 65 years. It results from loss or loss of function of nerve cells in the brain that coordinate movement. As a result, the hallmark symptoms of PD are trembling in hands...
Most solid cancers can't grow beyond a limited size without an adequate blood supply and supporting vascular network. Because of this, cancer researchers have sought to understand how a tumor's vascular network develops - and, more importantly, how to prevent it from developing: If the vascular...