Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) News and Research

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ATM tumor-suppressor also recognizes damage caused by ROS and orders autophagy

ATM, a protein that reacts to DNA damage by ordering repairs or the suicide of the defective cell, plays a similar, previously unknown role in response to oxidative damage outside of the nucleus, researchers report this week in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

19 Feb 2010

Muscle-preserving therapy development may help young men keep muscle shirts a bit longer

Hey guys, remember the muscle shirts we wore in our teens and 20s? After the age of 40 that meager part of our wardrobes usually is obsolete. Yes, at the big 4-0 we begin to lose muscle, and by age 80 up to a third of it may be gone. It's an inevitable process of aging called sarcopenia.

15 Feb 2010

Treating bacteria with insufficient levels of antibiotics leads to multidrug resistance in 'superbugs'

For years, doctors have warned patients to finish their antibiotic prescriptions or risk a renewed infection by a "superbug" that can mount a more powerful defense against the same drug. But a new study by Boston University biomedical engineers indicates that treating bacteria with levels of antibiotics insufficient to kill them produces germs that are cross-resistant to a wide range of antibiotics.

12 Feb 2010

Low doses of antibiotics may serve as active mutagens and lead to multidrug resistance

Multidrug resistant bacteria such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) pose a major problem for patients, doctors, and the pharmaceutical industry. To combat such bacteria, it is critical to understand how resistance is developed in the first place. It is commonly thought that an incomplete course of antibiotics would lead to resistance to that particular antibiotic by allowing the bacteria to make adaptive changes under less stringent conditions.

12 Feb 2010

Animal experiments show old antidepressant may reverse heart failure

A team of Johns Hopkins and other researchers have found in animal experiments that an antidepressant developed over 40 years ago can blunt and even reverse the muscle enlargement and weakened pumping function associated with heart failure.

6 Jan 2010

Scientists identify the cause of age-related muscle loss

If you're an aging baby boomer hoping for a buffer physique, there's hope. A team of American scientists from Texas and Michigan have made a significant discovery about the cause of age-related muscle atrophy that could lead to new drugs to halt this natural process. This

5 Jan 2010

Study shows vitamin C can facilitate the generation of embryonic stem cells from adult cells

Famous for its antioxidant properties and role in tissue repair, vitamin C is touted as beneficial for illnesses ranging from the common cold to cancer and perhaps even for slowing the aging process. Now, a study published online on December 24th by Cell Press in the journal Cell Stem Cell uncovers an unexpected new role for this natural compound: facilitating the generation of embryonic-like stem cells from adult cells.

28 Dec 2009

High prevalence of type 2 diabetes may be linked to excess niacin intake

Facing the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes worldwide in the past few decades, one may ask what is wrong with humans. Geneticists tell us that the human genome has not changed markedly in such a short time.

23 Dec 2009

Cells protect themselves against viruses and bacteria with novel non-genetic mechanism

When cells are confronted with an invading virus or bacteria or exposed to an irritating chemical, they protect themselves by going off their DNA recipe and inserting the wrong amino acid into new proteins to defend them against damage, scientists have discovered.

26 Nov 2009

Health watch: When you eat just as vital to what you eat

When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver—the body's metabolic clearinghouse—is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body's circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.

25 Nov 2009

WPI researchers develop new model system to study fungal infections

A team of researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center at Gateway Park has developed a new model system to study fungal infections. The system can be a powerful tool for screening potential drug targets for conditions like thrush, athlete's foot and vaginal yeast infections, which affect millions of people each year but are difficult to treat with existing medications. Using the new model, the researchers also identified a gene that may be a promising target for a new anti-fungal drug.

20 Nov 2009

New data on Synta Pharmaceuticals' elesclomol presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Conference

Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp., a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing small molecule drugs to treat severe medical conditions, today presented new data on the mechanism of action of elesclomol, a first-in-class oxidative stress inducer, at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Boston, Mass.

18 Nov 2009

Study to test anti-tumor effects of AEOL 10150 initiated

Aeolus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today the initiation of a study to test the anti-tumor effects of AEOL 10150 when combined with radiation and chemotherapy in nude mice bearing human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) xenografts.

18 Nov 2009

Recent developments at Burnham Institute for Medical Research

New antibiotics for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other pesky bacteria. Andrei Osterman and collaborators have used comparisons of bacterial genomes to identify new targets for antibiotics and produced first-generation chemical inhibitors of a class of bacterial enzymes, called NadDs (nicotinate mononucleotide adenylyltransferases).

17 Nov 2009

Researchers identify cause that leads to age-related hearing loss

Age-related hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder among the elderly. But scientists are still trying to figure out what cellular processes govern or contribute to the loss.

11 Nov 2009

TNS files Provisional Use Patent application on the ability of a natural organic mushroom formula

Total Nutraceutical Solutions, Inc. (TNS), announced that it has filed a Provisional Use Patent application on the ability of a proprietary natural organic mushroom formula to control oxidative stress.

9 Nov 2009

Researchers discover a fungal protein that causes disease in plants and animals

Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech and Montana State University have discovered a fungal protein that plays a key role in causing disease in plants and animals and which also shields the pathogen from oxidative stress.

7 Nov 2009

Researchers develop new molecular tools to investigate Alzheimer's disease

One of the many mysteries of Alzheimer's disease is how protein-like snippets called amyloid-beta peptides, which clump together to form plaques in the brain, may cause cell death, leading to the disease's devastating symptoms of memory loss and other mental difficulties.

5 Nov 2009

Hydrogen peroxide may act as a signal for the active and resting phases of living things: Study

If a circadian rhythm is like an orchestra - the united expression of the rhythms of millions of cells - a common chemical may serve as the conductor, or at least as the baton.

4 Nov 2009

Optical system for simultaneous imaging electrical and metabolic quantities in the heart

Cardiac rhythm disorders can result from disturbances in cardiac metabolism. These metabolic changes are tightly linked with specific cardiac electrophysiology (CEP) abnormalities, such as depressed excitability, impaired intra- and extracellular conductivities, wave propagation block, and alteration of conduction velocity, action potential amplitude, and duration.

24 Oct 2009