Lipids are “very diverse, but also vastly understudied,” Anne Brunet told the audience at the recent meeting on Aging Research and Drug Discovery. Advances in the ability to predict protein structures have fueled a much better understanding of the human proteome and its estimated 20,000 members. The lipidome is much larger, numbering maybe 100,000 total. And what those lipids do remains much more fuzzy. “Very little is known about their function, and especially their function during aging,” Brunet said. Slowly, however, technological advances are enabling researchers to understand the roles of lipids as well.
DUBLIN – Sisaf Ltd. has exercised an option on an Italian preclinical program to treat a rare bone disorder, autosomal dominant osteopetrosis type 2, with an siRNA molecule, which it will deliver with its in-house Bio-courier technology.
The Warburg effect – the marked preference of tumors for fueling themselves via anaerobic metabolism – was described more than 90 years ago. Otto Warburg won the Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1931, and research into the phenomenon long dominated the field of tumor metabolism. Over the past decade, however, there has been increased attention to the fact that tumor metabolism is deregulated in multiple ways beyond the Warburg effect.