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UCSF inaugurates new endowment of PhD education programs in basic sciences

Sequoia Capital Chairman Sir Michael Moritz, KBE, and his wife, Harriet Heyman, in collaboration with UC San Francisco, have kicked off a new endowment with a $60 million contribution to ensure the future of PhD education programs in the basic sciences.

25 Sep 2013

Researchers identify alterations in proteins responsible for RNA splicing in Alzheimer's

Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center have identified a previously unrecognized type of pathology in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

11 Sep 2013

Researchers develop TSUNAMI method to create animal model of adult-onset version of SMA

A research team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has used a recently developed technology they call TSUNAMI to create the first animal model of the adult-onset version of spinal muscular atrophy, a devastating motor-neuron illness.

10 Sep 2013

Scientists identify RNA regulator that plays critical role in proper functioning of hESCs

Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore, in collaboration with their counterparts from Canada, Hong Kong and US, have discovered a protein mediator SON plays a critical role in the health and proper functioning of human embryonic stem cells. This finding was reported on 8th September 2013 in the advanced online issue of the prestigious science journal Nature Cell Biology.

10 Sep 2013

UTHealth researchers find cause for rare type of bleeding disorder

Fifteen years ago, a hematologist came to Dianna Milewicz, M.D., Ph.D., with a puzzle: Multiple generations of an East Texas family suffered from a moderately severe bleeding disorder, but it wasn't hemophilia.

28 Aug 2013

Medical investigators discover new aspect of gene-splicing process that produces mRNA

A rare, small RNA turns a gene-splicing machine into a switch that controls the expression of hundreds of human genes. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of Biochemistry Gideon Dreyfuss, PhD, and his team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered an entirely new aspect of the gene-splicing process that produces messenger RNA (mRNA).

22 Aug 2013

Brain tumor cells in arrested development contribute to cell variety that protects cancer

A program that pushes immature cells to grow up and fulfill their destiny as useful, dedicated cells is short-circuited in the most common and deadly form of brain tumor, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

8 Aug 2013

Novel way to dramatically raise potency of drug candidates targeting RNA

Scientists from the Jupiter campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown a novel way to dramatically raise the potency of drug candidates targeting RNA, resulting in a 2,500-fold improvement in potency and significantly increasing their potential as therapeutic agents.

6 Aug 2013

ASH to award 2013 William Dameshek Prize to Andrew S. Weyrich

The American Society of Hematology will present the 2013 William Dameshek Prize to Andrew S. Weyrich, PhD, of The University of Utah for his seminal research on the cellular and molecular causes of blood clots.

2 Aug 2013

Study discover two new mechanisms that govern editing in key neurodevelopmental gene

RNA editing gives organisms a way to adapt the instructions that their DNA provides for making proteins. Few people would have described RNA editing as a simple process, but a new paper in Nature Communications demonstrates the process as more complex and difficult to predict than previously assumed. The study, done in living fruit flies, discovered two new mechanisms that govern editing in a key neurodevelopmental gene.

1 Aug 2013

Researchers are a step closer to producing stem cells for research and therapy

A team of Toronto-based researchers may be one step closer to a 'recipe' for large-scale production of stem cells for use in research and therapy.

6 Jul 2013

TSRI scientists identify small molecules to control genetic defect responsible for muscular dystrophy

For the first time, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified small molecules that allow for complete control over a genetic defect responsible for the most common adult onset form of muscular dystrophy.

28 Jun 2013

3D motion-tracked PET imaging uses MR micro-coils to reduce movement-related imaging artifacts

One of the biggest hurdles of hybrid positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging is the prevalence of motion artifacts-blurring and ghostly visual anomalies caused by patient motion on the table during imaging.

13 Jun 2013

International researchers find how brain cancer cells survive and drive tumor growth

An international team of researchers - led by principal investigator Paul S. Mischel, MD, a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine - has found that a singular gene mutation helps brain cancer cells to not just survive, but grow tumors rapidly by altering the splicing of genes that control cellular metabolism.

1 Jun 2013

Scientists design 'fishing' technique to show health benefits of foods

New research suggests that a compound abundant in the Mediterranean diet takes away cancer cells' "superpower" to escape death.

21 May 2013

New hope for patients with myotonic dystrophy

There's hope for patients with myotonic dystrophy. A new small molecule developed by researchers at the University of Illinois has been shown to break up the protein-RNA clusters that cause the disease in living human cells, an important first step toward developing a pharmaceutical treatment for the as-yet untreatable disease.

2 May 2013

Evidence shows progerin induced by ultraviolet light is responsible for premature skin aging

A study conducted by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) provides new evidence that longwave ultraviolet light (UVA) induces a protein that could result in premature skin aging.

26 Apr 2013

Isis Pharmaceuticals starts ISIS-SMNRx Phase 2 study in infants with SMA

Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the initiation of a Phase 2 study of ISIS-SMNRx in infants with spinal muscular atrophy. SMA is a severe and rare genetic neuromuscular disease characterized by muscle atrophy and weakness and is the most common genetic cause of infant mortality.

24 Apr 2013

Researchers find new potential target for anti-telomerase cancer therapy

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that alternative splicing - a process that allows a single gene to code for multiple proteins - appears to be a new potential target for anti-telomerase cancer therapy.

20 Apr 2013

MD Anderson scientists demonstrate new way to restore tumor suppression

Tumor suppression, the family business of the sibling genes p53, p63 and p73, is undermined from within by the split personalities of p63 and p73, which each produce protein forms that not only block the work of the other two genes but also shut down its own cancer-stifling fraternal twin.

10 Apr 2013