"There is no one gene that is going to give you the answer to depression," Matthew Wilkinson said - an assertion that certainly is backed up by recent findings on the serotonin transporter gene. In the June 17, 2009, issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Wilkinson, a graduate student in Eric Nestler's group at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, along with Nestler and other colleagues from Mount Sinai and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, study methylation and phosphorylation
In the June 25, 2009, issue of Neuron, a paper added to the litany of ways in which A-beta oligomers contribute to the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. They enhance long-term depression, a weakening in neural connections that is the physical way in which brain cells forget. The anatomical calling cards of Alzheimer's disease are amyloid plaques, or aggregates of A-beta peptide. But a growing number of researchers believe that the real problem with plaques is not the plaques themselves, but that
Question: What's 400 miles long and gives drug developers headaches? Answer: The blood-brain barrier. That barrier - which is actually a set of three barriers: tight junctures in the microvasculature, the cerebrospinal fluid producing cells of the choroid plexus and the middle meningial layer - protects the brain from everything from infectious agents to too-wild swings in metabolite levels in the bloodstream by preventing most substances from getting at neurons from the bloodstream. And it
A study in the Oct. 15, 2009, edition of Science Translational Medicine, a recently launched offshoot of Science, provided a molecular link that may explain why epileptic patients have high rates of sudden unexplained death. Its authors showed that a mutated potassium channel, which leads to heartbeat abnormalities, also is present in the brain. Animals engineered to have the mutated channel were prone to epileptic fits in addition to their heart problems. Sudden unexplained death in epilepsy
In the Sept 20, 2009, advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience, Swiss researchers showed that a combination of drug treatment, electrical stimulation and training enabled rats to re-learn to walk on treadmills in ways that the scientists termed "nearly indistinguishable" from regular walking. Notably, the animals did so without regrowing severed nerve connections from the brain to the spine. "I don't want to give too much hope," senior author Gregoire Courtine said, adding that there
A study published in the April 7, 2009, issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggested that by developing a so-called biased ligand, it should be possible to improve on niacin's performance as a blood-lipid modifying agent, pointing to a potential new approach to lowering cholesterol. For the most part, there is little to no evidence that vitamins have any effects on the health of those taking them. Most recently, a randomized placebo-controlled study of the effects of vitamins C and
Natrecor (nesiritide, Scios Inc.) a heart failure drug that consists of recombinant B-type natriuretic peptide is a controversial drug. A sizable portion of patients develop low blood pressure from the treatment, and the drug also can negatively affect the kidneys. Studies on whether nesiritide use leads to an increased death rate have come to differing conclusions, with an analysis by Scios finding a nonsignificant 24 percent increase in mortality rate, while an independent analysis concluded
In the May 10, 2009, advance online edition of Nature Medicine scientists described a potential new target for anti-inflammatory drugs that appears to be able to prevent abdominal aortic aneurysm, a consequence of atherosclerosis. Senior author Bradford Berk said that the protein in question, cyclophilin A, has "two major targets, which are very closely related . . . inflammation and oxidative stress," and predicted it will be of "broad importance" in heart disease. Berk is professor of
Understanding cancer stem cells, and finding drugs to take them out, are major current themes of the fight against cancer. Now, a study in the Sept. 14, 2009, online edition of Cancer Research suggested that a cancer stem cell drug already may be available. In cell culture and animal studies, the diabetes drug metformin was able to specifically kill cancer stem cells, and a combination treatment of doxorubicin and metformin delayed tumor recurrence by several months. There are other compounds
Harboring a mutation in her BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes sharply increases a woman's risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Unless it doesn't. The problem with extrapolating from sequence to risk is a familiar one: "There are so many variants of BRCA1 and BRCA2," Shyam Sharan said. Some definitely raise a woman's risk; others are known to be harmless. But when a woman gets her BRCA genes sequenced to determine her personal risk, perhaps after a family member has developed breast cancer, "the problem comes
Phosphatase and tensin homolog, or Pten, is a well-known tumor suppressor. Now animal studies published in the Oct. 22, 2009, edition of Nature show that what Pten is up to is important not just in tumor cells themselves, but also in the stromal cells that make up the tumor microenvironment. The stroma is a supporting mixture of extracellular matrix, endothelial cells and microvasculature that can make up the majority of cells in a tumor. Its critical role in tumor progression has become
In cancer, it is metastases that kill. "Only about 10 percent of cancer patients die from the effects of their primary tumors," Robert Weinberg, of the Whitehead Institute, said at the Frontiers in Cancer Research meeting, organized by the American Association for Cancer Research. The other 90 percent of cancer deaths are due to the consequences of metastases. But if the death of a cancer patient is likely due to metastases, that does not mean that metastasis is a death sentence. In fact
The conversion of chronic myeloid leukemia from a likely death sentence to a chronically manageable disease by imatinib (Gleevec, Novartis Inc.) has been "one of the great breakthroughs" of modern oncology, Timothy Clackson said. Gleevec has brought the 2009 Lasker Award to its discoverer Brian Druker, and years or decades of life to many of the patients taking it. But mutations in the BCR-ABL kinase that Gleevec targets eventually render the drug ineffective for a significant subset of
By focusing on what mutated IDH1 does do, instead of what it does not, researchers have arrived at new ideas about how the enzyme contributes to cancer. The biochemical details, published in the Nov. 22, 2009, advance online edition of Nature, are nitty gritty. But their implications, David Schenkein said, are anything but academic: The findings convert IDH from a target "which really had no therapeutic potential" to an oncogene with a highly specific mutation the sort of target that makes drug
Despite mixed results and setbacks in Alzheimer's disease drug development, big pharma still seems to want a seat at the table - good news for new firms such as Cognition Therapeutics Inc., which hopes to secure a partner by early 2010 for its program aimed at reducing toxic proteins in the brain. Founded in 2007, Cognition recently closed a $1.21M Series A financing that will support the company's goal of establishing a preclinical program for its small molecule-targeting AD. The Pittsburgh
Oncoceutics Pharmaceuticals Inc. is just a few months off the ground, but the University of Pennsylvania spinout is confident its proprietary screens will turn up a small molecule capable of fixing mutant p53. The p53 protein regulates the cell cycle and has several tumor suppressor functions, including activation of DNA repair in response to damage; arrest of the cell cycle until the damage is fixed; and initiation of apoptosis (cell death) if the damage proves too severe. Those and other
Start-up Intellikine Inc. came out from under the radar in July 2009 with a $51 million Series B financing to tackle one of the hottest pathways in biotech: PI3K. Data indicate big potential for phosphoinositide-3 kinase inhibitors in cancer and other diseases, and pharma is taking notice. Sanofi-Aventis Group agreed to pay Exelixis Inc. a whopping $140 million up front in a potential billion-dollar PI3K deal, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. forked over $175 million to acquire Piramed Ltd. for
It's somewhat ironic that the blood-brain barrier - which protects the brain by keeping out more then 95 percent of drugs - also blocks most drugs aimed at treating brain disorders like Alzheimer's disease or brain cancer. AngioChem Inc. is hoping to address that conundrum with its Engineered Peptide Compound (EPiC) platform, which targets the lipoprotein receptor-related protein receptor within the blood-brain barrier to transport molecules into the brain. AngioChem was founded in 2005 as a
Early stage Swedish firm Xbrane Bioscience AB entered a global license agreement with New England Biolabs Inc., of Ipswich, Mass., based on its initial product, a novel strain of Escherichia coli, which is engineered for the optimal expression of membrane proteins and other proteins that are difficult to produce. Terms were not disclosed, but Stockholm-based Xbrane stated that the deal has the potential to generate "significant license revenues." "It's a royalty-based deal," CEO Maria
A discovery in a Johns Hopkins University lab that a nitroxyl donor appears to have an effect on cardiac physiology is being put to the test by Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., which recently moved into the clinic with its lead product, CXL-1020, in heart failure patients. "We've taken benchtop science to the clinic in about 27 months," said Chris Kroeger, who took the helm as president and CEO in 2008, coming from Aurora Funds, one of the two investors in Cardioxyl's $14.5 million Series A
"There is no one gene that is going to give you the answer to depression," Matthew Wilkinson said - an assertion that certainly is backed up by recent findings on the serotonin transporter gene. In the June 17, 2009, issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Wilkinson, a graduate student in Eric Nestler's group at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, along with Nestler and other colleagues from Mount Sinai and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, study methylation and phosphorylation