Target in Biological News

Protein handlers should be effective treatment target for cancer and Alzheimer's

AUGUSTA, Ga. Cancer and Alzheimer's have excess protein in common and scientists say learning more about how proteins are made and eliminated will lead to better treatment for both. Medical College of Georgia researchers Drs. Nahid F. Mivechi and Dimitrios Moskofidis have received two National...

UCSF researchers identify new drug target for Kaposi's sarcoma

UCSF researchers have identified a new potential drug target for the herpes virus that causes Kaposi's sarcoma, re-opening the possibility of using the class of drugs called protease inhibitors against the full herpes family of viruses, which for 20 years has been deemed too difficult to attain. ...

Spallation Neutron Source sees first target replacement

OAK RIDGE, July 27, 2009 -- Having outlasted all expectations of its service life, the original mercury target of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science's record-setting neutron science facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is being replaced for ...

Munich researchers discover new target for tailored antibiotics

This release is available in German . More and more strains of bacteria are developing resistance to previously life-saving antibiotics. Researchers at TUM, the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, have shed light on a metabolic step that appears in many aggressive microorganisms -- such as t...

Possible drug target found for one of the most aggressive breast cancers

Grand Rapids, Mich. (July 8, 2009) Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) investigators have identified a gene that could be an important therapeutic target in the treatment of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. Currently, patients with these cancers have few treatment options. "Breast...

Research network wins approximately £5.7 million to target human and animal diseases in Africa

Deadly diseases including plague, Ebola and Rift Valley Fever are being targeted as part of a new multi-million pound international partnership involving African researchers and the London International Development Centre (LIDC). The Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SAC...

Lithium may help radiation target cancer, spare healthy tissue

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators have uncovered a mechanism that helps explain how lithium, a drug widely used to treat bipolar mood disorder, also protects the brain from damage that occurs during radiation treatments. In the May 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation ,...

KINAXOs Cellular Target Profiling reveals mTOR as a new target of Celebrex

Martinsried, Germany, April 29, 2009 / b3c newswire / - Kinaxo Biotechnologies GmbH has successfully applied its Cellular Target Profiling® technology to identify the protein kinase mTOR as a new cellular target of celecoxib (Celebrex®, Pfizer). Celecoxib is a non-steroidal, anti-infla...

New therapeutic strategy could target toxic protein in most patients with Huntington's disease

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have designed tiny RNA molecules that shut off the gene that causes Huntington's disease without damaging that gene's healthy counterpart, which maintains the health and vitality of neurons. Laboratory studies suggest that a single small interfering RNA ...

To fight drug addiction, UB researchers target the brain with nanoparticles

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A precise, new nanotechnology treatment for drug addiction may be on the horizon as the result of research conducted at the University at Buffalo. Scientists in UB's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics and UB's Department of Medicine have developed a stable nanoparti...

Research yields potential target for cancer, wound healing and fibrosis

New Orleans, LA Research conducted by Allison Berrier, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oral and Craniofacial Biology at the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Dentistry, and colleagues, provides insights that may help scientists design novel approaches to control wound healing and figh...

GEN reports biomanufacturers target a fully disposable process stream

New Rochelle, NY, March 4, 2009--The disposable bioprocessing market has moved far beyond plastic bags for buffer preparation toward a range of products for cell culture and upstream and downstream operations, reports Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN). Increasing numbers of biomanuf...

New potential therapeutic target discovered for genetic disorder -- Barth syndrome

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center may have discovered a new targeted intervention for Barth Syndrome (BTHS). BTHS, a sometimes fatal disease, is a serious genetic disorder occurring predominantly in males that leads to infection or heart failure in childhood. The new study entitled, "Role ...

Research uncovers promising target to treat chronic abdominal pain

COLUMBUS, Ohio High levels of a protein linked to the way pain signals are sent to the brain led to a decrease in abdominal pain in a recent study in mice. Researchers say the finding suggests the protein might someday serve as the basis of new treatments for chronic pain associated with a nu...

New target for medicine to combat Alzheimer's: VIB scientists confirm protein's key role

Alzheimer's disease Two thirds of all patients with dementia suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Estimates indicate that by 2010 our country will have more than 150,000 Alzheimer's patients. Alzheimer's is a disease that gradually destroys brain cells, with the result that the mental capacity of p...

LSUSHC researchers find potential new target for hypertension treatment

New Orleans, LA Huijing Xia, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Eric Lazartigues, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, is the lead author on a paper reporting that a recently identified enzyme in the brain plays a critically import...

Studies point to novel target for treating arrhythmias

Abnormal heart rhythms arrhythmias are killers. They strike without warning, causing sudden cardiac death, which accounts for about 10 percent of all deaths in the United States. Vanderbilt investigators have discovered a new molecular mechanism associated with arrhythmias. Their findings, repo...

HWI scientist first in world to unravel structure of key breast cancer target enzyme

The molecular details of Aromatase, the key enzyme required for the body to make estrogen, are no longer a mystery thanks to the structural biology work done by the Ghosh lab at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Debashis Ghosh's solution of the three...

A novel target for therapeutics against Staph infection

Researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center Institute of Biosciences and Technology, and the University of Edinburgh have uncovered how a bacterial pathogen interacts with the blood coagulation protein fibrinogen to cause methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, a fi...

Pitt research identifies new target in brain for treating schizophrenia

PITTSBURGH--Research from the University of Pittsburgh could expand the options for controlling schizophrenia by identifying a brain region that responds to more than one type of antipsychotic drug. The findings illustrate for the first time that the orbitofrontal cortex could be a promising targe...

Mitochondria could be a target for therapeutic strategy for Alzheimer's disease patients

New York (Sept. 21, 2008) A study in the Sept. 21 on-line edition of Nature Medicine describes the function and interaction of a critical molecule involved in cell death in Alzheimer's disease patients. These new findings reveal that blocking this molecule, called Cyclophilin D (CypD), and deve...

New therapeutic target identified for rheumatoid arthritis

Researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery have identified a potential new therapeutic target that could be used to treat inflammatory disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis. The study, published online ahead of print, will appear Nov. 15 in the journal Immunity . Specifically, the study re...

Northwest climate change is target of $3.2M in grants to University of Oregon

Climate change in the Northwest is the focus of two federal grants totaling $3.2 million awarded to two University of Oregon researchers. They will work together on a pair of multi-site projects designed to help enhance biodiversity while protecting people and property from wildfires in the face o...

Researchers identify promising gene target for neuroblastoma therapy

BOSTON--Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a set of previously unknown mutations in a single gene in 8 percent of neuroblastomas, tumors of the nervous system that occur in young children and account for approximately 15 percent of all childhood cancer deaths. The disco...

UC Davis researchers discover new drug target for inflammatory disease

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) UC Davis researchers have defined a cellular process that promotes inflammation and, at the same time, found an important starting point for identifying and testing new drugs for diseases such as sepsis, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. The s...

Researchers develop nano-sized 'cargo ships' to target and destroy tumors

Scientists have developed nanometer-sized 'cargo ships' that can sail throughout the body via the bloodstream without immediate detection from the body's immune radar system and ferry their cargo of anti-cancer drugs and markers into tumors that might otherwise go untreated or undetected. In a ...

CSHL scientists identify new drug target against virulent type of breast cancer

Tumor cells in a particular subset of breast cancer patients churn out too much of a protein called ErbB2 -- also often called HER2 -- which drives the cells to proliferate unchecked. Patients unlucky enough to be in this group -- about one in four -- have poorer prognoses and clinical outcomes t...

Research exposes new target for malaria drugs

The malaria parasite has waged a successful guerrilla war against the human immune system for eons, but a study in this week's Journal of Biological Chemistry has exposed one of the tricks malaria uses to hide from the immune proteins, which may aid in future drug development. Malaria parasit...

Potential new drug target to fight tuberculosis identified

NEW YORK (July 29, 2008) -- With antibiotic resistance on the rise, tuberculosis is emerging as a bigger global health threat than ever before. But now, innovative research at Weill Cornell Medical College suggests that Mycobacterium tuberculosis has an as yet unsuspected weakness -- one tha...

TG2 identified as potential therapeutic target in chemo-resistant ovarian cancer

HOUSTON, TX Scientists from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have found overexpression of tissue type transglutaminase (TG2) in ovarian cancer is associated with increased tumor cell growth and adhesion, resistance to chemotherapy and lower overall survival rates. When resea...

Stroke study reveals key target for improving treatment and suggests that Gleevec may help

ANN ARBOR, Mich. For over a decade, the drug called tPA has proven its worth as the most effective emergency treatment for the most common kind of stroke. But its promise is blemished by two facts: tPA can cause dangerous bleeding in the brain, and its brain-saving power fades fast after the thir...

Scientists determine drug target for the most potent botulinum neurotoxin

UPTON, NY Botulinum neurotoxin responsible for the deadly food poisoning disease botulism and for the beneficial effects of smoothing out facial wrinkles can also be used as a dreaded biological weapon. When ingested or inhaled, less than a billionth of an ounce can cause muscle paralysis and e...

Potential new target for multiple sclerosis therapy

Researchers demonstrate both genetic and pharmaceutical evidence for the role of a protein called collagenase-2 in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), providing a potential new way to combat this debilitating disease. Collagenase-2 is a member of a protein family called matrix metallop...

Humans not the major target of Shiga toxin

Washington, D.C. -- If youve survived Shiga toxin and the after-effects of food poisoning, you may have been the innocent victim of a battle for survival between predator and prey. Bacteria that carry a virus (a bacteriophage) that packs the Shiga toxin gene (Stx) may depend on it for prote...

Potential new therapeutic molecular target to fight cancer

Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center have identified the enzyme sphingosine kinase 2 as a possible new therapeutic target to improve the efficacy of chemotherapy for colon and breast cancer. In the Nov. 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research, researchers exam...

Scientists unveil structure of molecular target of many drugs

More than 40 years after beta blockers were first used clinically, scientists can finally get a detailed, three-dimensional look at the drugs molecular targetthe beta2-adrenergic receptor. This receptor hails from a family of proteins called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that control critica...

Linchpin gene may be useful target for new breast cancer therapies

University of Iowa researchers have discovered a gene that plays a linchpin role in the ability of breast cancer cells to respond to estrogen. The finding may lead to improved therapies for hormone-responsive breast cancers and may explain differences in the effectiveness of current treatments. ...

Study by Pittsburgh researchers identifies possible vaccine target for chlamydia

Scientists at Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC have identified a potential target for the development of a vaccine against Chlamydia trachomatis, the most prevalent sexually transmitted bacterial infection in the world. The researchers, led by Toni Darville, MD, chief of the Division of...

New target for anti-flu drug development

Boston, August 15, 2007---Scientists at Cure Lab, Inc., a biotechnology company based in Canton, Massachusetts, in collaboration with researchers at Boston University and Harvard Medical School have discovered a potential new target for the development of anti-influenza (flu) drugs, including thos...

Stem cell protein offers a new cancer target

A protein abundant in embryonic stem cells is now shown to be important in cancer, and offers a possible new target for drug development, report researchers from the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston. Last year, George Daley, MD, PhD, and graduate student Srinivas Viswanathan, in ...