Investigators working at Gladstone Institutes reported new insights into sleep disturbances and seizures that can be a late consequence of even mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI), and how we may one day best treat these conditions by targeting the complement pathway.

In Cell Metabolism, researchers working at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center reported that when fat cells (adipocytes) are chronically stressed, as is characteristic of obesity, they can release small vesicle exosomes that are respiration-competent and essentially portions of mitochondria.

Sometimes highly impactful serendipitous discoveries are made when performing genetic loss-of-function studies that were initially focused on putative tumor suppressors or other hypotheses.

In the July 12, 2021, issue of Nature Aging, researchers working at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging describe analysis from 1,001 immunomes of generally healthy patients correlating soluble immune biomarkers against measures of multimorbidity, immunosenescence, frailty and cardiovascular disease over 11 years of longitudinal study.

Researchers report in the June 21, 2021, online issue of Neuron that overexpression of the LDL receptor can reduce ApoE to prevent tauopathy-associated neurodegeneration in mouse models.

Researchers at the Center for Inflammation Research, Queen's Medical Research Institute, University of Edinburgh reported in the May 19, 2021, issue of Science Translational Medicine that the Bcl2/w/xL targeting senolytic compound, ABT-263 (navitoclax) could reverse the age-related fibrosis characteristic of and improve kidney function.

A splicing defect in the survival of motor neuron gene (SMN) leads to a deficiency of protein function that results in spinal muscular atrophy. It is the second most common autosomal recessive disease, occurring with a prevalence of 1 to as little as 6,000 births.

Researchers working at the Duke University Medical Center report on a breakthrough in UTI vaccine development in the March 1, 2021, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A packaged nanoparticle that delivered a relaxin-encoding gene therapy with microRNA reduced liver fibrosis, researchers in the laboratory of Leaf Huang at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Eshelman School of Pharmacy described in the Jan. 21, 2021, issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

The BCL6 degrader BI-3802 works by inducing polymerization of its target protein, which in turn triggers the addition of ubiquitin tags on the polymerized structure and degradation by the proteasome, scientists reported in the Nov. 18, 2020, issue of Nature.