Autophagy News and Research

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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.

Research opens door to development of new therapies to block HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders

While antiretroviral therapies have significantly improved and extended the lives of many HIV patients, another insidious and little discussed threat looms for aging sufferers - HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). The disorders, which strike more often in HIV patients over age 50, can result in cognitive impairment, mild to severe, making everyday tasks a challenge.

3 Feb 2015

Scientists identify strong link between beclin 1 gene and triple-negative breast cancer

UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have identified a strong link between the most aggressive type of breast cancer and a gene that regulates the body's natural cellular recycling process, called autophagy.

30 Jan 2015

New findings may lay groundwork of novel treatment for people with Huntington's disease

By adjusting the levels of a key signaling protein, researchers improved motor function and brain abnormalities in experimental animals with a form of Huntington's disease, a severe neurodegenerative disorder.

5 Jan 2015

Broccoli can help reduce HGPS-related defects

Children who suffer from Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome age prematurely due to a defective protein in their cells. Scientists at Technische Universität München have now identified another important pathological factor: the system responsible for removing cellular debris and for breaking down defective proteins operates at lower levels in HGPS cells than in normal cells. The researchers have succeeded in reactivating protein breakdown in HGPS cells and thus reducing disease-related defects by using a substance from broccoli.

18 Dec 2014

Einstein-Montefiore researchers to present latest finding on aging research at GSA 2014

Investigators at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center will present their latest aging research at the Gerontological Society of America's 67th Annual Scientific Meeting.

31 Oct 2014

TSRI scientists discover signaling pathway that contribute to Huntington's disease

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have uncovered a major contributor to Huntington's disease, a devastating progressive neurological condition that produces involuntary movements, emotional disturbance and cognitive impairment.

29 Oct 2014

Kenneth Rainin Foundation grants $2.2 million for Inflammatory Bowel Disease research

The Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced today that it will grant $2.2 million to scientists to conduct Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) research. The Rainin Foundation offers support for cutting-edge projects that typically are not eligible for funding from more traditional sources due to their ground-breaking, pioneering nature.

14 Oct 2014

Discovery may provide new therapeutic avenue to target autophagy in tumors

No matter what type of chemotherapy you attack a tumor with, many cancer cells resort to the same survival tactic: They start eating themselves.

10 Oct 2014

MicroRNA molecule plays crucial role in managing cell survival and growth

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a microRNA molecule as a surprisingly crucial player in managing cell survival and growth.

8 Oct 2014

Genoscience Pharma to present novel cancer therapeutic strategy at EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium

Genoscience Pharma, a company focused on discovering and developing small molecules to treat cancer by targeting cancer stem cells, today announces that it will present data on its most promising candidate at the 26th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, in Barcelona, Spain, on November 18-21, 2014.

3 Oct 2014

Penn Medicine, Wistar Institute awarded NCI grants for four new melanoma research projects

Penn Medicine and The Wistar Institute have been awarded a prestigious $12.1 million SPORE grant from the National Cancer Institute. The five-year Specialized Programs of Research Excellence, or SPORE, grant will fund four new melanoma research projects that aim to translate fundamental laboratory discoveries into new therapeutics to treat melanoma and other skin cancers.

18 Sep 2014

AMPK gene can slow aging process when activated remotely in key organ systems

UCLA biologists have identified a gene that can slow the aging process throughout the entire body when activated remotely in key organ systems.

9 Sep 2014

Researchers show how interplay between nutrition, metabolism, immunity involved in ageing process

Researchers from UCL (University College London) have demonstrated how an interplay between nutrition, metabolism and immunity is involved in the process of ageing.

26 Aug 2014

Reduce inflammatory reaction by losing weight, says researcher

Researchers have found a possible molecular explanation for why overweight is harmful. This new knowledge may provide new drugs for heart attack, stroke, cancer and chronic intestinal inflammation.

25 Aug 2014

Children and adolescents with autism have surplus of synapses in brain

Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain "pruning" process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC).

22 Aug 2014

Study suggests autophagy is involved in the onset of vascular dementia

Autophagy is a basic catabolic mechanism by which unnecessary or dysfunctional cellular components are degraded by lysosomes.

12 Aug 2014

Researchers discover how arginine starvation specifically kills cancer cells

Researchers at UC Davis, City of Hope, Taipai Medical University and National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan have discovered how a drug that deprives the cells of a key amino acid specifically kills cancer cells.

12 Aug 2014

Antimalarial agent chloroquine normalizes abnormal tumor blood vessels

A recent study by investigators at VIB and KU Leuven has demonstrated that chloroquine also normalizes the abnormal blood vessels in tumors. This blood vessel normalization results in an increased barrier function on the one hand -- thereby blocking cancer cell dissemination and metastasis -- and in enhanced tumor perfusion on the other hand, which increases the response of the tumor to chemotherapy.

11 Aug 2014

Scientists identify mechanism by which inherited neurological disease causes muscle weakness in men

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified the mechanism by which a rare, inherited neurodegenerative disease causes often crippling muscle weakness in men, in addition to reduced fertility.