Cell Signaling News and Research

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Cell signaling is vital for cells to communicate and coordinate their activities, not just in the human body, but in all organisms. There are thousands of signaling pathways, ranging from protein homeostasis to carcinogenesis and biofilm formation.

Proteomics yields new drug targets for treating cardiogenic shock

When it comes to cell signaling and bioregulation, it's tough to find a more important molecule than nitric oxide (NO). Dysfunction of NO-mediated signaling is thought to be a culprit in lethal cardiovascular conditions such as angina, and septic, cardiogenic and hemorrhagic shock; it may play a role in many other illnesses as well.

3 Apr 2006

Cellular discovery suggests possibilities for drug therapy for kidney disease

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have reported a discovery at the cellular level that suggests possibilities for drug therapy for kidney disease.

13 Feb 2006

Compounds in blackcurrants could prevent Alzheimer's disease

Compounds in blackcurrants could prevent Alzheimer's disease and the characteristics of British berries suggest they do it best, writes Jennifer Rohn in Chemistry & Industry magazine.

18 Jan 2006

Target identified for therapeutic drugs to fight adult brain cancer

A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center has discovered a cell-signaling mechanism instrumental in the most common brain cancer in adults.

16 Jan 2006

Chlamydia loves lipid droplets

Invasive bacterial pathogens, the Chlamydiae know us very, very well. The Chlamydiae learned to parasitize eukaryotic cells half a billion years ago by reprogramming cellular functions from within.

13 Dec 2005

Liver plays crucial role in iron metabolism

A new study in the December Cell Metabolism reveals an unexpected connection between a tumor suppressor gene in the liver and the normally careful control over the amount of iron absorbed from the diet.

7 Dec 2005

Prion protein codon 129 genotype prevalence is altered in primary progressive aphasia

Most people with a rare type of dementia called primary progressive aphasia (PPA) have a specific combination of prion gene variants, a new study shows.

28 Nov 2005

Nanotechnology and biochemistry provide new way to study T cell signaling

Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley, combining nanotechnology with biochemistry, have created unique synthetic membranes that, for the first time ever, enable them to directly control signaling activity in living T cells from the immune system. Already their experiments have yielded surprising results.

21 Nov 2005

Study reveals how T cells analyze and react to the signals of infection at the immunological synapse

The immune system is highly complex. The cast of characters alone required to marshal an immune response to a foreign invader can number in the millions as the body's soldiers, T cells, are called into action.

20 Nov 2005

New understanding of sphingosine kinases called SphK1 and SphK2

Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researchers have found that two enzymes that catalyze the same reaction and produce the same product have opposite effects on cell growth and death.

7 Nov 2005

Discovery of how communication between cancer cells is controlled

The discovery, by scientists at Monash University and the Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, of how communication between cancer cells is controlled has promised new treatment options for malignant tumours.

30 Oct 2005

Natural blood sugar level lowering compound could lead to new drugs to treat type 2 diabetes

A carbohydrate isolated from the liver lowers blood sugar levels after it is injected into diabetic rats, according to research carried out by a team of experts at the University of Virginia Health System (UVHS).

27 Oct 2005

New findings on brain tumors called ependymomas

Brain tumors called ependymomas that occur in different parts of the central nervous system appear to arise from subpopulations of stem cells called radial glia cells (RGCs), according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The discovery explains why some identical-looking ependymomas are actually distinctly different diseases, the researchers said.

17 Oct 2005

Biologists uncover pivotal role of a gene called "Cut"

A DNA-binding protein, Cut interprets and transcribes the developmental signals sent through the "Notch" gene, which regulates a layer of epithelial cells as they replicate and divide. But when Cut garbles those signals the result is uncontrolled cell proliferation, sometimes with dire genetic and health consequences.

12 Oct 2005

Psychological stress during infancy has been found to cause early impaired memory

The study suggests that the emotional stress associated with parental loss, abuse or neglect may contribute to the type of memory loss during middle-age years that is normally seen in the elderly.

11 Oct 2005

Discovery of signaling component that influences spread of breast cancer cells

Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center have found a new signaling component that influences movement of human breast cancer cells toward epidermal growth factor.

22 Aug 2005

Scientists show nuclear protein Ezh2 helps establish previously unknown signaling pathway in cells

Since 2001, scientists have wrestled with the discovery that there are fewer genes in humans than biological processes linked to those genes over the course of a human lifespan. One way to understand genetically coded events is by studying epigenetics, the regulation and heritability of genes at a cellular level due to molecular changes to the many proteins (called histones) that package DNA in a cell's nucleus.

23 May 2005

Research reveals atomic structure of angiopoietin-2, a key protein involved in the neo-vascularization of solid tumors

A structural biologist from the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, in collaboration with researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has identified the crystal structure of a protein that plays a role in supplying nutrients to solid tumors.

11 May 2005

Scientists inhibit tumor formation

By studying mice with skin cancer, researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah discovered a way to inhibit a mutant gene found in up to 30 percent of human tumors.

9 May 2005

Specific genes play key role in the of regulation of human-blood stem cells

This work is the first to validate gene expression analysis in human stem cells with functional experiments. The findings also suggest that changes in the expression of genes associated with universal cell signaling pathways can have a substantial impact on human stem cell behavior.

2 May 2005