While Huntington's disease (HD) is currently incurable, the HD research community anticipates that new disease-modifying therapies in development may slow or minimize disease progression. The success of HD research depends upon the identification of reliable and sensitive biomarkers to track disease and evaluate therapies, and these biomarkers may eventually be used as outcome measures in clinical trials. Biomarkers could be especially helpful to monitor changes during the time prior to diagnosis and appearance of overt symptomatology.
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Scientists investigating the interaction of a group of proteins in the brain responsible for protecting nerve cells from damage have identified a new target that could increase cell survival.
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When cells suffer too much DNA damage, they are usually forced to undergo programmed cell death, or apoptosis. However, cancer cells often ignore these signals, flourishing even after chemotherapy drugs have ravaged their DNA.
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Many medical issues affect nerves, from injuries in car accidents and side effects of chemotherapy to glaucoma and multiple sclerosis. The common theme in these scenarios is destruction of nerve axons, the long wires that transmit signals to other parts of the body, allowing movement, sight and sense of touch, among other vital functions.
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Abuse during childhood is different. A study of adult civilians with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) has shown that individuals with a history of childhood abuse have distinct, profound changes in gene activity patterns, compared to adults with PTSD but without a history of child abuse.
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Proteins, unlike diamonds, aren't forever. And when they wear out, they need to be degraded in the cell back into amino acids, where they will be recycled into new proteins.
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Melatonin injections delayed symptom onset and reduced mortality in a mouse model of the neurodegenerative condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
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Pluripotent stem cells can turn, or differentiate, into any cell type in the body, such as nerve, muscle or bone, but inevitably some of these stem cells fail to differentiate and end up mixed in with their newly differentiated daughter cells.
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Senesco Technologies, Inc. reported today that it has completed cohort 2 in its Phase 1b/2a clinical study of SNS01-T.
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Pharmacyclics, Inc. announced today that the enrollment target of 350 patients for its Phase III study using ibrutinib monotherapy versus ofatumumab in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia / small lymphocytic lymphoma, (RESONATE) was achieved on April 3, 2013.
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The journal Accounts of Chemical Research, which has a profound impact on Chemistry and other related sciences, publishes on its current issue the article "Anion Transporters and Biological Systems", signed by Professor Ricardo Pérez Tomás, from the Department of Pathology and Experimental Therapy of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Barcelona, Roberto Quesada, from the Department of Chemistry of the Sciences Faculty at the University of Burgos, and Philip A. Gale, from the University of Southampton, in the United Kingdom.
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Researchers from the University of Alberta are abuzz after using fruit flies to find new ways of taking advantage of caffeine's lethal effects on cancer cells-results that could one day be used to advance cancer therapies for people.
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A new, pre-clinical study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center suggests that a novel drug combination could lead to profound leukemia cell death by disrupting the function of two major pro-survival proteins.
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Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a previously unknown biological mechanism involved in the regulation of pancreatic islet beta cells, whose role is to produce and release insulin.
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Pharmacyclics, Inc. today announced results from a Phase II trial of the investigational oral agent ibrutinib which demonstrated rapid and sustained disease control as a monotherapy in untreated, relapsed and refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients, irrespective of characteristics that predict poor outcomes to chemoimmunotherapy.
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These results incentivise the development of targeted therapies enabling improved neurone production to alleviate cognitive decline in the elderly and reduce the cerebral lesions caused by radiotherapy.
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BioLineRx, a biopharmaceutical development company, announced today that it has received all necessary regulatory approvals in the US to commence a Phase IIa trial for BL-8040, for the treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
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The most recent in a series of studies from a team at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center has shown that a single molecule is at the heart of one of the most basic survival tactics of prostate cancer cells.
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Researchers from Fox Chase Cancer Center have found that omega-3 fatty acids and their metabolite products slow or stop the proliferation, or growth in the number of cells, of triple-negative breast cancer cells more effectively than cells from luminal types of the disease.
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Collaborative research presented by the University of Colorado Cancer Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Harvard Medical School and the University of Pittsburgh, at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Conference, shows that the protein receptor Mer is overexpressed in melanoma and that the investigational drug UNC1062 blocks Mer survival signaling in these cells, killing them.
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