Progeria News and Research

RSS

Potential drug therapy for Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome

Researchers have identified a potential drug therapy for a premature ageing disease that affects children causing them to age up to eight times as fast as the usual rate.

2 Nov 2011

Pill for rare ageing disease on the horizon

Scientists have found that a drug used in transplant patients could reverse the effects of premature ageing and extend human life by over 10 years.

1 Jul 2011

Salk researchers successfully edit diseased gene in patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells

In principle, genetic engineering is simple, but in practice, replacing a faulty gene with a healthy copy is anything but. Using mutated versions of the lamin A gene as an example to demonstrate the versatility of their virus-based approach, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies successfully edited a diseased gene in patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells as well as adult stem cells.

21 May 2011

Scientists develop novel genetic model of premature aging disorders

Working with a group of national and international researchers, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have developed a new genetic model of premature aging disorders that could shed light on these rare conditions in humans and provide a novel platform for large-scale screening of compounds to combat these and other age-related diseases.

29 Apr 2011

Progeria-derived iPS cells may treat aging-related disease in children

The current pace of population aging is without parallel in human history but surprisingly little is known about the human aging process, because lifespans of eight decades or more make it difficult to study. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have replicated premature aging in the lab, allowing them to study aging-related disease in a dish.

24 Feb 2011

Human model of rare genetic disease reveals new clues to aging process

Scientists from A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in Singapore and the University of Hong Kong's Department of Medicine have produced the world's first human cell model of progeria, a disease resulting in severe premature ageing in one in four to eight million children worldwide. This model has allowed them to make new discoveries concerning the mechanism by which progeria works.

25 Jan 2011

Scientists uncover minute mechanism of nuclear pore complexes at molecular level

Dr. Joseph Glavy at Stevens Institute of Technology studies the smallest and most basic elements of life. The Assistant Professor of Chemical Biology runs the Glavy Lab, where advanced student scientists study the nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) in cells, observing the minutest mechanisms of life as they unfold during mitosis. The Glavy Lab's formal purpose is to study the NPC at the molecular level in the pursuit of the unknown or unexpected in the well-studied but not always well-understood nuclei of living cells.

17 Nov 2010

Knome announces winners of KnomeDISCOVERY Awards

Knome, Inc. today announced the winners of its inaugural KnomeDISCOVERY Awards, a program designed to spur new genetic insights into health.

6 Oct 2010

Progerin may contribute to risk of atherosclerosis: Study

Progeria, also known as Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), is a rare, fatal genetic disease characterized by an appearance of accelerated aging in children. All children with Progeria die of the same heart disease that affects millions of normal aging adults (atherosclerosis), but instead of occurring at 60 or 70 years of age, these children may suffer heart attacks and strokes even before age 10, and the average age of death is 13 years.

8 Sep 2010

24% more children with progeria discovered

Spectrum, a health and science communications firm, announced the results of a global awareness campaign that "found" 24 percent more children identified with a rare, fatal, and rapid aging disease called Progeria. The findings are being shared at a Centers for Disease Control national conference on health communications.

19 Aug 2010

"Hope – It's In Our Genes" rare disease campaign slogan translated into multiple international languages and Braille

The Global Genes Project (www.globalgenesproject.org), today announced that its rare disease campaign slogan, "Hope – It's In Our Genes™," has been translated into multiple international languages and Braille by rare disease patient advocates and supporters from around the world. The translation of this slogan unifies the rare disease community and global network under one banner.

25 Feb 2010

Findings suggest variations in accelerated aging disorders

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have provided the most extensive account to date of the unique observable characteristics seen in patients with an extremely rare premature aging syndrome.

15 Dec 2009

Discovery of cell fibrous structure may provide clues to diagnose and treat medical disorders

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Engineering in Oncology Center have shown that in healthy cells, a bundled "cap" of thread-like fibers holds the cell's nucleus, its genetic storehouse, in its proper place.

3 Dec 2009

Secretary Sebelius announces Senate confirmation of Dr. Francis Collins as Director of NIH

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that the United States Senate unanimously confirmed Dr. Francis Collins as the next Director of the National Institutes of Health.

10 Aug 2009

Emphysema linked to accelerated aging protein

A University of Iowa study is apparently the first to make a connection between a rare, hereditary premature aging disease and cell damage that comes from smoking.

8 Feb 2009

Researchers find link between two aging pathways in mice

Two previously identified pathways associated with aging in mice are connected, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

9 Jan 2009

Promising clinical trial for Progeria "premature aging" disease

One of the fastest translations of a basic research discovery into a promising clinical trial for an "untreatable" and fatal disorder will be discussed publicly for the first time by the key players in this remarkable research story, on Sunday, Dec. 14, at the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB)'s annual meeting in San Francisco.

14 Dec 2008

Adult stem cell changes underlie Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome associated with accelerated aging

Adult stem cells may provide an explanation for the cause of a Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), a rare disease that causes premature aging in children, according to researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

3 Mar 2008

Many medical disorders may be languishing in mountains of discarded gene data

Previously hidden obesity-related genes have been uncovered from old experiments by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

24 Oct 2007

Insights into side effects of HIV protease inhibitors

UCLA scientists, along with collaborators from Purdue University, have demonstrated that HIV protease inhibitors, crucial drugs for HIV treatment block a cellular enzyme important for generating the structural scaffolding for the cell nucleus.

17 Jul 2007