Autophagy News and Research

RSS

Autophagy is a normal process in which a cell destroys proteins and other substances in its cytoplasm (the fluid inside the cell membrane but outside the nucleus), which may lead to cell death. Autophagy may prevent normal cells from developing into cancer cells, but it may also protect cancer cells by destroying anticancer drugs or substances taken up by them.

Ghrelin may help protect the elderly population from muscle loss

The hormone, ghrelin, may help protect the elderly population from muscle loss, according to a study being presented at e-ECE 2020. The study found that administering a particular form of ghrelin to older mice helped to restore muscle mass and strength.

8 Sep 2020

A potential new way of treating Alzheimer’s Disease

In this interview, Dr. Brad. L. Heckman speaks to News-Medical about a new pathway that could potentially treat Alzheimers disease.

7 Sep 2020

Scientists reconstruct factors involved in the formation of autophagosomes

Autophagy, from the Greek for 'self-eating', is an essential process that isolates and recycles cellular components under conditions of stress or when resources are limited.

4 Sep 2020

Congenital disorder of fat metabolism can cause chronic hyperreaction of the immune system

Scientists at the University of Bonn identify previously unknown disease mechanism. A congenital disorder of the fat metabolism can apparently cause chronic hyperreaction of the immune system.

24 Aug 2020

New insights into how high-protein diet protects against fatty liver

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common chronic liver disease in the world, with sometimes life-threatening consequences.

18 Aug 2020

Study shows how aging fat cells lead to lifestyle diseases

No matter how much we try and fight it, aging is a part of life. High cholesterol, diabetes, and fatty liver, the collection of conditions referred to as lifestyle diseases, all become more commonplace as we get older.

18 Aug 2020

Researchers identify new therapeutic target for Alzheimer's disease

Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital are advancing understanding of a potential Alzheimer's disease treatment.

18 Aug 2020

Discovery of enzyme could provide new route for treating Huntington's disease

Scientists at EPFL's Brain Mind Institute have identified an enzyme that can play a central role in developing a new route of treatment for Huntington's Disease.

5 Aug 2020

Can Vitamin D help combat the coronavirus?

In a new report published in The Lancet, a team of researchers discussed the possibility that vitamin D could offer protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials performed from 2007 to 2020.

4 Aug 2020

Erectile dysfunction drugs lower the accumulation of toxic proteins in zebrafish models

The aberrant buildup of misfolded proteins is a hallmark of a host of disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

22 Jul 2020

Study identifies three novel broad-spectrum SARS-CoV-2 cell entry inhibitors

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Cornell University in the U.S. just described several new inhibitors of human coronavirus spike proteins by screening a library of approved drugs with SARS-S and MERS-S pseudotyped particle entry assays. Their exciting findings are currently available on the bioRxiv preprint server.

13 Jul 2020

Study of lysosomal function during mitosis reveals new biomarker for chromosomal instability

A team from the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute and the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with a researcher from the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota, have described that lysosomes and autophagy processes are active during mitosis and are necessary for a correct cell division.

7 Jul 2020

COVID-19 complications may be associated with von Willebrand factor in the blood

Anna Aksenova, a senior research associate at the Laboratory of Amyloid Biology at St Petersburg University, has advanced a hypothesis that the severe course of COVID-19 may be associated with von Willebrand factor.

6 Jul 2020

Study identifies a promising way to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease

Currently we are facing a dementia epidemic, estimations showing that by 2050 approximately 131 million people will be affected. Every 7 seconds a patient is diagnosed worldwide.

2 Jul 2020

Scientists discover osmotic stress as stimulator of cellular waste disposal

Cellular waste disposal, where autophagy and lysosomes interact, performs elementary functions, such as degrading damaged protein molecules, which impair cellular function, and reintroducing the resulting building blocks such as amino acids into the metabolic system.

29 Jun 2020

Scientists study how magnetic nanoparticles affect cancer cells in the liver

Scientists from the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) and National University of Science and Technology "MISiS" have studied how magnet nanoparticles affect cancer cells in the human liver.

25 Jun 2020

Defective maintenance puts intestinal health in danger

In order to keep the intestinal mucosa and the entire organism healthy, intestinal epithelial cells have developed various protective functions involving a number of maintenance mechanisms that protect cells from stress.

23 Jun 2020

Antibiotic X-206 effective against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro

The current study published on the preprint server bioRxiv aims to understand how these compounds affect SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. The researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark examined 11 natural PEIs, with a single synthetic analog, screening them for inhibitory activity against the CPE of SARS-CoV-2 infecting cultured cells with overexpression of TMPRSS2, a serine protease that is instrumental in cleaving the spike protein of the virus.

16 Jun 2020

Researchers use human stem cell models to analyze degeneration in glaucoma

More than 3 million Americans have glaucoma, a serious eye condition causing vision loss. Using human stem cell models, researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine found they could analyze deficits within cells damaged by glaucoma, with the potential to use this information to develop new strategies to slow the disease process.

11 Jun 2020

Race-related differences in genetic determinants of COVID-19 severity

Researchers at the University of Iowa have identified differences in gene expression levels between African Americans and European Americans that may explain the disproportionately higher rates of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and related deaths among African Americans.

11 Jun 2020